Nuclear Proliferation

International spread of nuclear technology. The term nuclear proliferation may refer to nuclear energy, but it is more often used in reference to nuclear weapons.

In 1945, the United States was the only country that possessed nuclear weapons technology. Despite extensive efforts to protect the nuclear secret, the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949. Over the next decade, the pace of nuclear weapons development would accelerate dramatically. By 1955, both nations had developed powerful thermonuclear weapons and were designing more-sophisticated systems to deliver them.

By the late 1950s, other nations had caught up to the United States and Soviet Union in nuclear technology. France and Great Britain both exploded thermonuclear devices in the 1950s; China followed in 1968. Fears about the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons led to the creation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. The purpose of the treaty was to limit the possession of nuclear weapons to the five countries that possessed them at the time: the United States, Great Britain, the People's Republic of China (PRC), France, and the Soviet Union. The treaty was subsequently signed by the vast majority of the world's nations. However, since that time a number of other countries have acquired nuclear weapons, and others are close to doing so.

India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa refused to sign the treaty. All four countries have admitted to (or have been suspected of) possessing nuclear weapons. South Africa did finally sign the treaty in the 1990s after dismantling its nuclear weapons program. North Korea was an original signatory to the treaty, but revoked its signature after a conflict with nuclear inspectors over the question of secret nuclear facilities. Iran is also believed to be in the process of developing nuclear weapons capability.

Throughout the Cold War, the problem of nuclear weapons was framed by the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Proliferation at this time was mainly concerned with slowing and eventually stopping vertical proliferation—the growth of the nuclear arsenals of the world's two superpowers. The spread of nuclear technology to China (1968) and India (1974), and the suspicion that Israel possessed nuclear weapons made horizontal proliferation to formerly nonnuclear states a pressing issue.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a new set of proliferation concerns that centered around the fate of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. Although thousands of weapons that had been placed in former Soviet Republics such as Belarus and the Ukraine were destroyed, the entire Soviet arsenal never has been comprehensively accounted for. Investigators in the former Soviet Union uncovered several cases of cash-strapped scientists trying to sell nuclear technology to foreign nations.

In 1990, the possibility of increased special inspections and expansion of routine safeguards under the NPT was proposed. The necessity of increased vigilance was more apparent in the wake of the Gulf War of 1991, when inspections in Iraq revealed an extensive secret program to develop nuclear weapons. Iraq had been attempting to acquire nuclear weapons since the 1960s, and Israeli bombers destroyed a production plant in 1981.

...