Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998, by Rodney W. Jones, Mark G. McDonough, Toby Dalton, and Gregory Koblentz

 

Foreword

Jessica T. Mathews
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, President

Just as we were beginning to take some comfort in the nuclear non-proliferation successes of recent years, the May 1998 bomb blasts by India and Pakistan remind us that we are not out of the woods at all. There have been other signs, too, that proliferation problems are becoming much bigger. The end of the Cold War seemed at first to pave the way to wider cooperation against proliferation, but it also brought cash-starved defense firms from the former communist states into the global market place — with strong pressures to sell nuclear and missile technology and services to hostile actors and unstable regions. The Soviet collapse left unsecured bomb-grade materials in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and the fear that smugglers might feed these into a global black market. Even where progress has been visible in heading off dangerous nuclear transactions, the spread of missiles and of chemical and biological weapon capabilities is accelerating. The vivid demonstration of nuclear weapons in South Asia threatens not only the danger of nuclear war but the specter of corrosion in the regime and a chain reaction in proliferation to neighboring regions.

Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998 examines these problems as well as preventive measures in considerable detail. It is a major resource on the contemporary diplomatic history of the non-proliferation regime and a guide to U.S. policy and legislative efforts. It provides unique reference and university teaching materials on case histories of nuclear programs, technical activities, and import-export transactions. Its primers on nuclear technology and terminology make it exceptionally useful as an introduction to the nuclear policy field.

Tracking, 1998 is the latest volume in the nuclear proliferation series that Leonard S. Spector began in his former capacity as Senior Associate and Director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project. Mr. Spector left the Endowment for a position in the U.S. Department of Energy in early September 1997, when this volume was under way but not yet complete. We are no less indebted to him, however, for his pioneering role in the series, and the vision and inspiration he brought to this vital subject over many years. Rodney W. Jones, an expert on nuclear arms control and non-proliferation who has published earlier works, generously and skillfully took over the task of producing this volume, with the support of Carnegie’s Non-Proliferation Project staff and contributions from selected outside authors and advisors, as detailed in the acknowledgments.

Tracking, 1998 focuses primarily on nuclear proliferation. But it also covers key developments in the proliferation of missiles, and chemical and biological weapons. It places non-proliferation squarely in the complex, often fluid, post-Cold War security context of U.S.–Russian strategic arms control and the 1996 de-nuclearization of three post-Soviet states. The book traces China’s step-by-step acceptance of non-proliferation norms, the continued dangers in Iraq and Iran, and the evolution of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programs. It elucidates in each case the regime instruments and policy tools that have been developed to cope with proliferation.

Reining in the proliferation of nuclear weapons and of other weapons of mass destruction must remain at the top of our foreign policy priorities. Even if no final solution is close at hand, the record shows there are ways to contain proliferation through international vigilance and cooperation, buying time for diplomacy to work and to create improved security conditions. Barriers to proliferation could quickly give way, however, without sustained attention and energetic effort. Indeed, as this study makes clear, the nuclear tests in South Asia and the growing missile, chemical, and biological proliferation challenges stretch the existing regimes to their limits and demand fresh commitment, innovation, and resources to make them work.

We wish to express special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the John Merck Fund, the Prospect Hill Foundation, and the Ploughshares Fund for making this book possible through their programmatic support of the Carnegie Endowment’s Non-Proliferation Project.

 

Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998