nuclear-news

Nuclear weapons proliferation really just keeps on going

 Nuclear proliferation has hardly slowed in the last decade. India,
Pakistan, China, and the United Kingdom have increased their nuclear
weapons stockpiles, while leaders in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and
Iran have all voiced an interest in militarizing their nuclear programs.

The United States, meanwhile, has been schizophrenic in its control of its
civilian nuclear exports. Washington has tightened restraints on exports to
the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Taiwan, China, and Russia and relaxed
conditions on nuclear transfers to Vietnam, India, and Saudi Arabia.

It has also articulated ambiguous security assurances to insecure states,
including Libya, Taiwan, and Ukraine, that gave up their nuclear weapons
programs or nuclear weapons based on their soil only later to be
overthrown, threatened with invasion, or invaded.

None of this has strengthened nuclear non-proliferation. Just the reverse. In a series of
firsts, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif; Saudi Arabia’s
crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, have all publicly threatened to leave the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

 American Bar Association 6th Jan 2023

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_national_security/publications/aba-standing-committee-on-law-and-national-security-60-th-anniversary-an-anthology/nuclear-non-proliferation-if-you-can-keep-it/

January 13, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war