nuclear-news

The future: non-proliferation or a cascade of nuclear weapons?

.………the next 12 months “could be pivotal” in determining whether the entire edifice of non-proliferation can be held together, or whether it will dissolve into “the nuclear cascade” in which nations around the world seek their own weapons of mass destruction, making the world a decidedly more dangerous place.

Will the edifice of non-proliferation hold.  The next 12 months could be pivotal in determining the answer. By HDS Greenway – GlobalPost : January 14, 2010

“……….The best that the West can hope for is to persuade Iran that it should refrain from taking the last step of weaponization — i.e. the “last wire” theory in which Iran retains the capability of going nuclear but doesn’t take the final step of completion.

That is essentially what Japan has done, although the Japanese don’t talk about it. But should North Korea move toward more nuclear weapons than it has already developed, Japan could have their own bomb in a matter of days.

An Iranian bomb, it is feared, could cause what Harvard’s Graham Allison calls a “nuclear cascade” with many countries in the Middle East scrambling for bombs. Allison, the Paul Revere of nuclear proliferation, warns in the current issue of “Foreign Affairs” that there may have been talks already between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan about the sale or transfer of an “Islamic Bomb.” “In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia secretly purchased from China 36 CSS-2 missiles, which have a range of 1,500 miles and no plausible military use other than to carry nuclear weapons,” according to Allison.

Allison identifies “seven story lines” that are “advancing along crooked paths, each undermining the existing nuclear order.” They are:

1. North Korea’s expanding weapons program
2. Iran’s “nuclear ambitions”
3. Pakistan’s increasing instability
4. Al Qaeda’s enduring remnant
5. Growing cynicism about the nonproliferation regime
6. Nuclear energy’s renaissance
7. New Lessons about the utility of nuclear weapons in international affairs

……….the next 12 months “could be pivotal” in determining whether the entire edifice of non-proliferation can be held together, or whether it will dissolve into “the nuclear cascade” in which nations around the world seek their own weapons of mass destruction, making the world a decidedly more dangerous place. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100110/nuclear-cascade?page=0,1

January 15, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons