I spoke here in Oslo yesterday on a panel on “How to Achieve Nuclear Disarmament: Europe’s Role in Safeguarding the Future” at the Nobel Institute. The main speaker was Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Policy and Research Coordinator of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Prize in 2017. She spoke mainly in favor of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I demurred:
I can applaud the treaty banning nuclear weapons as morally and legally correct, without however thinking any of today’s nine nuclear states are likely to join it.
Nuclear weapons exist because the states possessing them think they are necessary for national security, or regime preservation.
Getting them to give up their weapons will require convincing them they would be more secure without them.
That is possible. I was involved as an US diplomat in the 1980s in getting Brazil and Argentina to talk about a mutual standdown implemented in the 1990s.
South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons when the end of apartheid reduced its concerns about its neighbors.
Much of Europe and Asia have preferred to live under an American nuclear umbrella rather than incur the expense and risks of developing their own nukes.
The US and the Soviet Union were able to negotiate serious limits on the numbers of nuclear weapons that I still hope they will renew or even lower.
The Americans at least have wanted to reduce their numbers in storage for a long time. Babysitting them is expensive.
Diplomacy, however, gets far more difficult when three or more countries are involved, especially when they are in close proximity.
Pakistan and India are a good example. Pakistan has only India’s nukes to worry about, but India worries more about China’s than Pakistan’s. And China worries about the US more than about India.
So the kind of bilateral standdown negotiated between Buenos Aires and Brasilia has not proven possible for New Delhi and Islamabad.
China’s rapid nuclear buildup also complicates the US-Russia equation, as the nuclear balance is harder to equilibrate with three to tango than two.
Israel isn’t giving up its nukes, and most Arab countries, while complaining about them, have not insisted the Israelis get rid of them.
I conclude then that there is little prospect that any of today’s nuclear powers will join the nuclear ban.
That said, my biggest concern today is about nuclear proliferation, not nuclear reductions.
Those of us involved in preventing proliferation in the 1970s and 1980s were remarkably successful measured against the expectations of that era.
The only new nuclear powers since then are Pakistan and North Korea, not the dozen or more we anticipated.
But for several reasons that success looks to be at risk.
The science and technology required to build nuclear weapons is much more widely accessible than it was 40 years ago.
The basic data needed are widely available, and centrifuges have made enrichment easier than gaseous diffusion and other methods.
President Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the American nuclear umbrella would be used in defense of its allies, especially in East Asia.
South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan all have the capability to build a nuclear weapon—or maybe more than a few nuclear weapons—within weeks.
South Korea is actively debating the nuclear option.
While Japan has a strong cultural inhibition about nuclear weapons, it will get harder to remain non-nuclear if Seoul moves ahead.
Taiwan’s incentives to build nuclear weapons increase with every Chinese rehearsal of invasion plans.
The Middle East is not much better than East Asia.
While Israel has seriously damaged Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the 12-day war gave Tehran a strong incentive to end the Israeli regional monopoly.
It is hard to picture Turkey and Saudi Arabia standing idly by if that happens.
Both President Erdogan and Mohmmed bin Salman have said they will match Iran’s capabilities.
The Saudis have already reached an agreement that in principle puts Pakistani nuclear weapons at the Kingdom’s disposal.
Can Egypt’s President Sissi remain restrained if Turkey and Saudi Arabia gain nuclear protection?
Let me finish in Europe.
If any portion of Ukraine remains independent and sovereign after the current war, it will want nuclear weapons, which everyone in Kyiv thinks would have prevented the full-scale invasion in 2022.
The only way of preventing Ukraine from getting its own is NATO membership, which comes with an ironclad commitment to remain non-nuclear.
That is what we made Germany promise. The same will be true for Ukraine.
It may sound heretical, but when it comes to Europe’s role in safeguarding the future, getting Ukraine into NATO would be a major contribution to nonproliferation. One a more reasonable Russia would be wise to welcome!