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Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998, by Rodney W. Jones, Mark G. McDonough, Toby Dalton, and Gregory Koblentz
Until the Indian and Pakistani nuclear detonations of May 1998, international efforts to arrest the spread of nuclear arms in the 20th century’s last decade seemed to be enjoying substantial success. The rate of nuclear proliferation appeared to be slowing, the geographic scope of proliferation was shrinking, and a landmark de-nuclearization was achieved in 1996 in part of the former Soviet Union. Three post-Soviet states with nuclear weapons left on their territory—Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine—cooperated in the removal of those weapons to Russia and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-weapon states. The indefinite extension of the NPT itself in May 1995 showed that the norm of non-proliferation had become more deeply entrenched in international affairs than ever before. The positive trends were real, as this book shows in detail. Innovative diplomatic efforts, favorable political developments within potential proliferant states, and broader historical trends—especially the end of the Cold War and global economic expansion—contributed importantly to these accomplishments.
At the same time, one could see powerful countervailing currents that could place recent non-proliferation achievements at risk and even threaten to rupture the painstakingly built non-proliferation regime. Among these, the danger of leakage of nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials from the former Soviet Union was rightly regarded as the most serious and came in for the lion’s share of U.S. attention in the early 1990s. As for South Asia, the possibility surely was known that the lid might suddenly blow off the ambiguous nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan, but this scenario was too easily discounted in major-power official circles because of nuclear arms control successes, both in strategic arms reduction and in the 1996 conclusion of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The CTBT was viewed as a crucial new global restraint on both nuclear proliferation and the strategic arms race. But the nuclear lid did blow in South Asia in May 1998. India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear explosive tests and self-declarations that they had become "nuclear weapon powers" could now give political cover to other proliferants that would be only too eager to follow suit. These events certainly could spawn a geographically continuous nuclear proliferation chain from Delhi to Baghdad.
While the sudden accrual of bombs in South Asia overshadowed almost everything else on the proliferation scene as this book went to press, it is important to note, also on the darker side, that nuclear proliferation threats in the 1990s became increasingly interwoven in the most hostile proliferant states with the spread of other "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD): chemical and biological weapons and missile delivery systems. Moreover, there are now increasing signs that the ability to manufacture portable WMD, especially chemical and germ weapons, is spreading among terrorist groups. Such weapons could be home-grown or smuggled past normal defenses to strike deep in domestic societies—imposing potentially unbearable stresses on democracies. Thus not only is it too early to declare victory with non-proliferation but newly emerging aspects of proliferation suggest it may be necessary to go back to the drawing board.
Promising Trends
Fewer States of Concern
The nuclear status chart at the end of this chapter shows that today only seven countries remain on the active nuclear proliferation "watch list": Israel, India, and Pakistan, all of which are deemed capable of deploying or launching nuclear arms; and Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, which are less advanced in their quest for nuclear arms but nevertheless remain states of significant proliferation concern. It is possible that Algeria also bears watching because of violent internal conflict and earlier, questionable nuclear technology cooperation with China. In addition, a late 1997 report of Syrian efforts to acquire nuclear research installations from Russia suggests that Syria may return to the nuclear watch list.
Yet considerably fewer countries are currently attempting to acquire nuclear weapons (or the ability to make them) than were trying to do so during the 1980s. The seven states that are of greatest concern today were already then considered proliferation threats. Moreover, it is now known that Argentina, Brazil, Romania, and Taiwan all then took steps of one type or another to pursue nuclear arms but backed away or renounced their acquisition. South Africa—which had secretly acquired a six-weapon undeclared nuclear arsenal in the late 1970s—actually eliminated the weapons it possessed in 1991, before disclosing it had done so in the process of formally renouncing nuclear arms in a dramatic move the following year.
De-Nuclearization of Former Soviet Republics
The presence of Soviet nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union raised the separate fear that one or more of these states might seize possession or assert political and military control over nuclear arms in order to become a de facto nuclear power overnight. Had this occurred, it would have had serious repercussions on the stability of Central Europe as well as on the viability of the traditional nuclear non-proliferation regime. All three states, however, have since cooperated with Russia and the United States in the removal to Russia of all the nuclear arms on their soil, and all have implemented earlier commitments to join the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states. This de-nuclearization process had begun well before 1995, but de-nuclearization was not finally consummated in all three states until November 1996. Today, Russia is the only Soviet successor state with nuclear weapons.
Roll-backs and Renunciations
Significantly, most of the states that are no longer on the proliferation "watch list" did not merely cease the activities that had triggered concern. Rather, they took affirmative steps to dispel concerns through measures such as accepting new treaty restrictions on their nuclear affairs, disclosing and dismantling clandestine nuclear-weapon-related programs, and/or permitting wide-ranging international inspections to verify the cessation of offending activities. Moreover, South Africa’s unprecedented elimination of its stock of six nuclear weapons demonstrated that the spread of nuclear weapons is not an irreversible process, a development that significantly bolstered the norm of non-proliferation.
Expansion of Export Controls
Beyond the roll-backs and renunciations, Argentina, Brazil, Romania, South Africa, and Ukraine have taken steps to halt proliferation elsewhere by joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the informal organization of states that have adopted parallel controls on their nuclear exports. Recently China joined the NPT’s Nuclear Exporters (Zangger) Committee, which operates in parallel with the NSG to coordinate controls on exports of nuclear materials, equipment, and technology. In addition, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa have become members of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Israel has adhered through a memorandum of understanding, and Ukraine has agreed to abide by its standards—all thereby demonstrating a commitment to an important set of non-proliferation export control norms.
Robust Non-Proliferation Regime
In May 1995, the centerpiece of the regime, the NPT, was extended indefinitely by consensus. Adherence to the Treaty now is nearly universal. All five nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, and China) and, as of late 1997, 180 non-nuclear-weapon states had become parties to the accord. Under the Treaty, all non-nuclear-weapon state parties agree to renounce nuclear arms and to accept inspection of all their nuclear installations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify that they are not being used for military purposes (a system known as "full-scope IAEA safeguards.") Today, apart from the five established nuclear powers, the only states with significant nuclear programs that are not subject to such full-scope IAEA inspections are India, Israel, and Pakistan. The remarkable pervasiveness of the NPT/IAEA system has helped to create an increasingly powerful norm of nuclear weapons renunciation.
Strengthened Safeguards
As detailed in the chapter on the International Non-Proliferation Regime and in Appendix X on IAEA Safeguards, other key elements of the non-proliferation regime also have been significantly strengthened in recent years. For example, IAEA safeguards inspectors now have the authority to demand special inspections of suspected (undeclared) nuclear sites in non-nuclear-weapon NPT state parties. Moreover, the export controls of the Nuclear Suppliers Group now extend not only to nuclear equipment, materials, and technology but also to dual-use commodities (those having nuclear as well as non-nuclear end uses). Pressures to enhance both elements of the regime in large part sprang from the revelations regarding Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons program that emerged during the inspections after the 1991 Gulf War. These inspections exposed weaknesses in the IAEA system as it had been implemented before and also highlighted gaps in Western nuclear export control systems.
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones
An additional regime component, regional nuclear-weapon-free zones, has also become more extensive geographically and has gained strength from wider adherence among the states concerned. These include the widely accepted nuclear-weapon-free-zone pacts in Latin America and the Caribbean (the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco) and the South Pacific (the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga), as well as more recently initiated nuclear-weapon-free-zone accords in Southeast Asia (opened for signature on December 15, 1995) and Africa (the Treaty of Pelindaba, opened for signature on April 11, 1996).
Comprehensive Test Ban.
A major new element was added in 1996 to reinforce the nuclear disarmament as well as non-proliferation objectives of the regime. This was the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) prohibiting all nuclear explosive testing, which opened for signature in September 1996. Although it is technically possible that an emerging nuclear power could develop an early-generation fission (atomic) weapon without conducting an explosive test, the comprehensive test ban will present such states with a barrier to developing more sophisticated nuclear weapons, especially far more powerful thermonuclear weapons. It also could retard emerging nuclear powers from developing fission warheads for missiles. It will also serve as a barrier to each of the five nuclear powers, as long as they comply with the CTBT, from developing or producing nuclear weapons of "new design."
Nuclear Arms Reduction Agreements and Measures
Finally, though they are separate from the non-proliferation regime, the adoption by the nuclear-weapon states of additional nuclear arms reduction agreements such as the pending START II and anticipated START III, the unilateral reductions of the nuclear arsenals of these states, and the continuing dismantlement of nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States all reinforce the norm of nuclear non-proliferation. These measures have been accompanied by positive and negative assurances, undertaken by the nuclear-weapon states, to strengthen international security and the nuclear non-proliferation regime by restricting the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states that adhere to non-proliferation norms and are parties to the regime.
Ad Hoc Constraints
The strength of the consensus underlying international efforts to contain nuclear proliferation is also reflected in the fact that many of the states on today’s proliferation watch list are under considerably greater constraints than they were as recently as five years ago.
Continuing Challenges
Leakage from the Former Soviet Union
The positive trends just outlined are predicated on an assumption that has underpinned the very concept of non-proliferation since the beginning of the nuclear age: namely, that a state seeking nuclear arms must produce the necessary weapons-usable nuclear material itself. This objective has usually taken any well-endowed state at least ten years to achieve through a dedicated program and has required the construction and operation of numerous, highly complex, and hard-to-disguise installations. The emergence of a black market putting such materials up for purchase would enable countries to sidestep the usual barriers and drastically alter this equation.
Today, Russia possesses the vast bulk of the Soviet Union’s weapons-grade materials—some 1,200 tons of weapons-grade uranium and 200 tons of plutonium, much of which is inadequately protected against theft or diversion. Only about 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium, or 5 kg of plutonium, is needed for a nuclear device. Wholesale smuggling of these materials could vastly increase the capabilities of today’s de facto nuclear powers and enable several aspiring nuclear states to emerge suddenly on the nuclear threshold—some perhaps within as little as a year’s time, depending on preexisting technical and financial capabilities.
According to former CIA Director John Deutch, a number of states have been interested in Russian weapons material. Testifying in March 1996, Deutch stated, "We believe that several nations at one time or another have explored the possibility of purchasing strategic nuclear materials as the simplest and quickest and cheapest way to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Prominent examples include Iran and Iraq and, to a lesser extent, North Korea and Libya." Iran is known to have inquired about the availability of nuclear material at one installation in Kazakhstan that at the time was holding considerable stocks of weapons-grade uranium. A black market in nuclear weapons material could undermine the global non-proliferation verification system of the IAEA. Indeed, it could destroy confidence in the traditional historical understanding of nuclear proliferation as a slow, potentially controllable process.
A number of confirmed episodes have already taken place in which very small quantities of weapons-usable nuclear material were stolen from Russian facilities and in some cases smuggled out of the country. None of the known episodes, however, has involved the quantity of material necessary to manufacture a nuclear explosive; nor has any involved successful delivery to a purchasor connected with a country of proliferation concern or with a terrorist organization. Moreover, the number of reported cases appears to be decreasing. It must be recognized, however, that other episodes may have taken place that have not come to the attention of law enforcement or intelligence officials.
With U.S. assistance, Russia and the other Soviet successor states are working to enhance security at the facilities where such material is processed and stored. Although significant security improvements are likely over the next two years, for now, especially in Russia, numerous facilities containing many tons of weapons-usable nuclear material remain highly vulnerable, as do key transportation links. Thus, whether a black market in such material will emerge or be suppressed is very much an open question—particularly given the social, political, and economic pressures on Russian society. It should be noted that security over nuclear weapons themselves is generally thought to be tighter, but even here, the picture is not altogether reassuring.
India and Pakistan
As mentioned at the outset and also discussed in detail in the chapters on India and Pakistan, the May 1998 nuclear explosive tests opened a Pandora’s box of pent-up nuclear competition on the Subcontinent, almost certainly precipitating a full-fledged nuclear arms and missile race. In India, where the pro-nuclear and Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had gained increasing influence and actually took power following the March 1998 elections, the preparations evidently had been made for conducting not just a second nuclear test, but a whole series of them, after a 24-year hiatus. The preparations for such an Indian test series would seem, in retrospect, to date back to December 1995, when international disclosure and diplomatic pressure seemed to have forced cancellation but probably should have been viewed as only temporarily holding them back.
Revelations in August 1996 that Pakistan was constructing a facility to manufacture nuclear-capable ballistic missiles (like the Chinese-origin M-11 and possibly M-9 systems), and 1997 reports that India had revived the nuclear-capable Agni medium-range missile program and intended to develop an intercontinental-range missile (ICBM) known as Surya, intensified the pressures on each capital to step up the missile-development and testing activities and perhaps strengthened those circles that advocated openly deploying nuclear deterrent systems.
Once India conducted its nuclear explosive tests, it was almost certain that Pakistan would reciprocate by conducting one or more nuclear detonations itself—as it did within two weeks of India’s tests in May. Pakistan may now also respond to the pressure of the Indian nuclear declarations and of sanctions by deploying the 30 Chinese-supplied M-11 missiles that Pakistan is believed to have in storage and by ending the informal freeze on the country's production of fissile material.
Apart from escalating the South Asian nuclear arms race, the Indian and Pakistani tests and each government’s assertion that it had become a "nuclear weapons power" signify the arrival on the world scene of two self-declared nuclear states and challenges the non-proliferation regime in profound ways. On the one hand, the regime has no legal space for recognition of additional nuclear-weapon states, and its subscribing members will have to arrive at a consensus on how to treat this new situation. On the other, India’s and Pakistan’s actions will, unless offset by countervailing measures, tend to undermine confidence that proliferation can be contained. Especially if they are rewarded, the South Asian nuclear actions will be seized upon by other aspiring proliferators as political cover for their own efforts to move up the nuclear weapons ladder.
Other Counter-Currents
Despite significant gains in strengthening the non-proliferation regime in the 1990s, serious weaknesses remain. While the countries of principal proliferation concern today—India, Israel, and Pakistan apart—are all parties to the NPT, their commitments to the pact are in question, raising doubts about the effectiveness of the Treaty. North Korea, for one, is not yet in compliance with the full-scope safeguards requirements of the Treaty, and Iran, though apparently meeting its safeguards obligations, is thought to be pursuing activities inconsistent with the Treaty’s prohibition against manufacturing nuclear weapons.
Developments in Iraq have highlighted the limits of the IAEA system. The defection of Iraqi General Hussein Kamal in August 1995 brought to light extensive new information unambiguously indicating that Iraq continued to conceal the full extent of its former nuclear program—despite the IAEA’s extraordinary investigatory powers in that country under Security Council Resolutions 687, 707, and 715. Moreover, IAEA analysts assume that, notwithstanding the Agency's efforts, Iraq has continued to pursue work on nuclear weapon designs and to fabricate or acquire abroad key non-nuclear components for nuclear arms. These developments inevitably raise questions about the Agency’s ability to detect clandestine activities using the more limited safeguards that it implements under the NPT—questions exacerbated by the hesitation of IAEA member states to endorse the complete set of new tools that the Agency has hoped to implement under its "93+2" program (see Appendix X on IAEA Safeguards). Late in 1997, efforts by the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) to uncover and eradicate Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons as well as nuclear and proscribed missile capabilities ran into intense resistance from Iraq and not only surfaced differences of approach between the United States and both Russia and France but also raised questions about whether Iraq’s compliance with special inspections can be enforced by diplomatic means alone.
China’s activities as a nuclear and missile supplier to Pakistan and Iran also have been special sources of concern in recent years. As a party to the NPT, China is required to ensure that exported nuclear equipment and materials are placed under IAEA inspection in the recipient state, but Beijing has not accepted all the additional Nuclear Suppliers Group restrictions. NSG guidelines prohibit nuclear sales to states such as Pakistan and India (which do not accept full-scope safeguards), and regulate transfers of nuclear technology and dual-use commodities potentially useful in nuclear weapon programs. In 1989, China contracted with Pakistan to provide a nuclear power plant—still under construction at Chasma—that would be placed under safeguards anyway. Of far greater concern was past Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s unsafeguarded program, specifically to the Kahuta enrichment plant connected with the country’s nuclear weapons program. There has also been some evidence of past assistance by China to Pakistan’s Khushab reactor, which appears to be designed as a plutonium-production reactor for the weapons program and thus would not be placed under safeguards. The United States was also concerned about China’s nuclear assistance to Iran, which, although under IAEA safeguards, could indirectly contribute to Iran’s apparent quest for nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, in 1996-97, China made significant progress in bringing its policies and practices into closer conformity with nuclear non-proliferation regime export control standards. In May 1996, after acknowledging that a Kahuta-related ring magnet transaction had gone forward, China pledged that it would "not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities." In 1997, China promulgated stringent nuclear export control regulations that correspond to the guidelines of the Zangger Committee, actually joined the Zangger Committee and provided more explicit non-proliferation assurances to the United States at an October summit in Washington, and dropped virtually all nuclear cooperation with Iran. Although China’s nuclear export policy actions in 1997 clearly represent a major step forward, the effectiveness of China’s commitments remains to be determined by monitoring of its actual behavior and the behavior of its many semi-autonomous trading firms.
The growing threat of nuclear terrorism may also become a more potent counter-current to the regime. Two episodes in the 1990s highlighted the continuing interest of highly capable non-state actors in nuclear mischief. One was the 1993 effort of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo—the cult responsible for releasing Sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system—to acquire uranium mining property in Australia as part of its overall program to develop weapons of mass destruction. A second episode was the placement of some 30 pounds of radioactive cesium in a Moscow park by Chechen rebels, accompanied by the threat that an explosive device containing more of that material had been placed elsewhere in the city. Although there was no risk of a nuclear detonation in either case, these episodes provide a taste of what the future may hold, particularly if weapons-usable nuclear materials begin to leak from the former Soviet Union.
Finally, the proliferation of other WMD—chemical and biological weapons—and of missile delivery systems for WMD has moved steadily ahead in the more hostile proliferant countries. Development or acquisition of these other deadly weapons often goes hand in hand with nuclear proliferation, or comes to the forefront where efforts to arrest nuclear acquisition may have had a measure of success.
Looking to the Future
Taking the brighter and darker trends together, the future priorities for non-proliferation will be threefold: repairing, sustaining, and broadening. These are overlapping, not mutually exclusive requirements. But the repairing category always tends to be the most urgent—frequently the result of a crisis that causes attrition or threatens a regime rupture. The Soviet collapse, the Gulf War aftermath, and the North Korean crisis fell in that category in the early 1990s, and the 1998 South Asian nuclear weaponization will take center field for a time.
Repairing and limiting further damage from South Asia means depriving India and Pakistan of symbolic, political, and material gains from their nuclear tests and declarations—to minimize the incentives for other proliferant states to follow suit. This task calls for close cooperation among the members of the non-proliferation regime, big and small powers alike. It does not mean cutting off India and Pakistan from normal diplomatic and trade relations, although the sanctions in law that were known beforehand and that automatically curtail taxpayer-funded "assistance" and "credit" programs to weaponizing countries are a legitimate response that need not be regretted. Concessions should be made, if at all, only for tangible, measurable, and binding non-proliferation and international security gains.
The two regional security priorities that come up first—inhibiting the nuclear and missile arms races, and reducing the risk of an India-Pakistan nuclear war—cannot be promoted successfully without recognizing that the genuine needs of the two rivals (including those that are asymmetrical) must be recognized and balanced.
After reciprocal nuclear testing series were completed, the prime ministers of both India and Pakistan stopped short of ordering deployment of nuclear weapons and called for discussion of a testing moratorium. Diplomatic assistance in codifying this is warranted, but a mechanism worth considering is a U.N.–mandated special commission of representatives of seven countries, two nominated by India, two by Pakistan, and three by the Secretary-General in consultation with the permanent members of the Security Council. Such a commission, chaired by the Secretary-General or his designee, would start a diplomatic process that could dovetail international interests with those of the two South Asian states directly concerned by developing a binding constraint on nuclear testing (and possibly on nuclear weapons deployment) that would reflect, and be sensitive to, the realities of both the Subcontinent and neighboring regions. Should the commission find a solution acceptable to both sides that can be harmonized with the rights and obligations of parities to the CTBT, it could be a bridge to both countries adhering to the CTBT after all.
Sustaining the non-proliferation regime is a more familiar but still vital task of providing adequate support both for: (1) the relevant international law and institutions—such as the five-year reviews of the NPT, the replenishment of the IAEA, and the bolstering of the IAEA nuclear safeguards system—and (2) the consolidation of international cooperation in managing national nuclear export control functions, monitoring of dangerous trade, and reducing regional tensions and conflicts that create political or insecurity motives for proliferation. Preventing the development of a nuclear materials black market from the unsecured fissile material in the former Soviet Union has been a key recent priority on which progress has been made, although much remains to be done on this task. Ensuring that the U.N.–mandated monitoring of nuclear activities in Iraq continues and managing the Agreed Framework steps related to North Korea are other ongoing tasks indispensable to sustaining the regime. Successful efforts to scale back strategic and tactical nuclear weapons through negotiations between the nuclear weapons states, the creation of security assurances for non-nuclear weapon states, the institutionalization of confidence-building measures through nuclear weapon-free zones, and implementing the comprehensive nuclear test ban are also highly important elements of a strategy to sustain and strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
With only a very small number of states not accepting the NPT or equivalent IAEA controls on their nuclear activities, broadening the regime is in one sense a nearly accomplished fact. The unavoidable challenge for the future is inter-relating controls on nuclear weapons and materials with those on chemical and biological weapons and on delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. While the magnitude of the nuclear dangers outweighs those from other forms of WMD, the very success of blocking the spread of nuclear weapons tends to give greater impetus to proliferation of the chemical and biological capabilities. The legal instruments for preventing the spread of chemical and biological weapons, and to check missile proliferation, are for the most part more recent in origin and have further to go before implementation than nuclear instruments such as the NPT and IAEA safeguards. But the related threats, security objectives and controls (e.g., procedures for monitoring and compliance) for chemical and biological threats have parallels with nuclear threats that encourage authorities to draw them together in security strategies. If we continue to make progress with non-proliferation, we are likely to see broader non-proliferation and security frameworks in the future.
Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998
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