Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb

Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb –

Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb US News.com By Thomas Omestad January 15, 2009 The global financial order has been shaken. Could the global system to prevent nuclear proliferation be next?………………………Warns Joseph Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and president of the Ploughshares Fund, “We’re on the verge of a system collapse.” That view is not extreme. It has, instead, become alarmingly mainstream. In December, an interim report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States put it this way: “It appears that we are at a ‘tipping point’ in proliferation…………………………………..

In aiming for big changes in America’s nuclear posture and its approach to nonproliferation, Obama will almost certainly encounter resistance from parts of the national security establishment. One flash-point issue will be whether to replace many of America’s nuclear warheads with more modern variants—even as the overall number of such weapons comes down.

But Obama will also find surprising bipartisan support for making a historic policy shift that until recently would have been seen as little more than a liberal pipe dream: coming out in favor of the eventual abolition of all nuclear weapons………………………………Nonproliferation specialists are also concerned about the precedent set by the Bush administration’s pact with India for civilian nuclear cooperation. Approved by the Senate in October, the potentially lucrative arrangement overturned three decades of nonproliferation practice that barred nuclear trade with New Delhi because of its nuclear tests and refusal to join the NPT. Bush sought an exception for India, reflecting its emergence as a future democratic great power with friendly ties to the United States. He argued that bringing India’s civilian facilities under inspection would aid nonproliferation efforts. But critics believe the U.S. shift blew open a hole in the wall against proliferation, giving other countries reason to believe that they, too, can seek nuclear weapons and then win exceptions……………………Looming over all those problems is the risk of nuclear terrorism. Al Qaeda’s interest in procuring nuclear materials is long established. Reports of attempted thefts, missing nuclear materials, and unimpressive security around some atomic sites persist. The revelations of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan’s secret nuclear-supply network have deepened fears of weapons diversion………………………..The technology to produce nuclear fuel for power plants is essentially the same as that for fashioning weapons-grade material.

Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb – US News and World Report