{"id":22093,"date":"2022-01-12T23:01:32","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T17:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=22093"},"modified":"2022-01-12T23:01:38","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T17:16:38","slug":"a-look-at-how-countries-go-nuclear-and-why-some-do-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/a-look-at-how-countries-go-nuclear-and-why-some-do-not\/","title":{"rendered":"A look at how countries go nuclear \u2014 and why some do not"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Political scientist Vipin Narang\u2019s new book, \u201cSeeking the Bomb,\u201d makes sense of the complex history of nuclear weapons programs.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Peter Dizikes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In 1993, South Africa announced to a largely surprised world that it had built nuclear weapons in the 1980s, before dismantling its arsenal. For the first time, a country outside of the elite world powers had obtained nuclear capabilities while keeping matters a secret from almost everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this day, South Africa remains the only country to have pulled off that exact trick. Other countries have gone nuclear in other ways. A half-dozen countries with more economic and political clout than South Africa have built weapons on their own timetables. Three other countries \u2014 Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea \u2014 have developed nuclear weapons while being supported by larger allies. And many wealthy countries, including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, have chosen not to pursue weapons programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing these different paths to proliferation is an essential part of arms control: Grasping how one country is pursuing nuclear weapons can help other countries constrain that pursuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s meaningful variation in how states have thought about pursuing nuclear weapons,\u201d says says Vipin Narang, an MIT political scientist and expert on nuclear strategy. \u201cIt changes how we think about stopping them. It changes how we think about managing them. It\u2019s an important question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narang believes that too often, we imagine that all countries pursue nuclear weapons the way the U.S. and Soviet Union did during and after World War II \u2014 a swift race culminating in the rapid buildup of arsenals, leaving little room for intervention. But that paradigm applies to almost no other country.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe think of proliferators as a stylized Manhattan Project,\u201d says Narang, the Frank Stanton professor of Nucear Security and Political Science at MIT. \u201cBut the U.S. and the Soviet Union are really the only ones who had Manhattan projects, and the rest of the nuclear weapons powers look different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narang has detailed these differences in a new book, \u201cSeeking the Bomb<\/a>,\u201d published today by Princeton University Press. In it, he develops a comprehensive typology of nuclear programs around the world; examines why countries take different routes to nuclear development; and outlines the policy implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a growing likelihood that the United States will have to confront proliferation attempts from not just foes but friends and frenemies as well,\u201d Narang writes in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sprinters and hedgers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent decades, scholarship has usually focused on why countries acquire nuclear weapons \u2014 with the leading answers being security, prestige, and domestic political dynamics. But Narang\u2019s book centers the question of how, not why, countries seek to become nuclear-equipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one had asked how states pursue nuclear weapons, and examined the different ways they have to deal with nonproliferation [agreements], their own resource constraints, domestic politics, and states trying to stop them,\u201d Narang says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least 29 countries have made efforts to become nuclear; 19 have specifically tried to develop nuclear bombs, and 10 have succeeded. Narang\u2019s book puts all of them into four categories: countries he labels \u201csprinters,\u201d \u201chedgers,\u201d those benefitting from \u201csheltered pursuit,\u201d and \u201chiders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201csprinters,\u201d the simplest category to understand, consist of the U.S., Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, China, and India \u2014 big countries that could develop nuclear weapons independently, and did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are \u201chedgers,\u201d the countries that have potential to develop nuclear weapons but hold off doing so, because of geopolitical considerations or a lack of domestic political support. Germany, Japan, and South Korea are U.S. allies who are not eager to make themselves targets for nuclear-armed states, and instead work with the U.S. on defense matters. Should U.S. support waver, those countries might be more likely to pursue their own programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeeking the Bomb\u201d actually details three subcategories of hedging. Japan and Germany are \u201cinsurance hedgers,\u201d wary of American abandonment. \u201cHard hedgers,\u201d such as Sweden or Switzerland, are not as close to the U.S. but still decided not to pursue weapons acquisition. And \u201ctechnical hedgers,\u201d including Argentina and Brazil, have technological pieces in place for nuclear program but have not weaponized those capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHedging is very prominent across countries, including Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran,\u201d Narang says. \u201cIt\u2019s a really meaningful category that is written out of the proliferation literature because we all focus on states that get the bomb, and not the ones that don\u2019t know if they want it yet. They put the pieces in place to exercise the option quickly if they decide to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, countries undertaking \u201csheltered pursuit\u201d use their alliances with superpowers to develop nuclear weapons. Israel, for one, could finish building nuclear weapons in the 1960s partly because of tacit support from the U.S. By 2006, North Korea had built its own weapons with the partial support of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNorth Korea wouldn\u2019t have been able to get nuclear weapons without China giving it shelter,\u201d Narang observes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hide and seek<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very few countries find themselves in the situation where a powerful ally will tacitly endorse their nuclear program, however. And if a country wants nuclear weapons but cannot get help from a superpower, it is most likely to work in secret. These are the \u201chiders,\u201d in Narang\u2019s typology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have shelter, then your only option is to hide,\u201d Narang says. \u201cAnd hiding is a very risky strategy, as most get caught along the way \u2014 Libya, Iraq, Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, for instance, Israeli jets bombed a North Korea-designed nuclear reactor built in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad had been pushing a nuclear program forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one thought Assad would try to hide a North Korean nuclear reactor above ground,\u201d Narang says. \u201cHe came within weeks of the finish line.\u201d Moreover, Narang adds of such leaders, \u201cOften times the calculation is they\u2019ll lose the program but not the regime,\u201d Narang says. \u201cAssad lost the reactor, but he\u2019s still in power.\u201d In other cases, such as Iraq and Libya, U.S. military action drove nuclear-minded leaders from power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, the case of South Africa indicates it is at least possible to push a covert nuclear program all the way through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSouth Africa is every hider\u2019s inspiration,\u201d Narang says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the U.S. had suspected South Africa was engaged in a nuclear program, and then-South Africa President Pik Botha had told U.S. leaders in 1981 that the country had expanding nuclear \u201ccapacities.\u201d But the U.S. had little concrete information about what was really happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSouth Africa\u2019s really the only hider that got out of the barn,\u201d Narang says. \u201cNeither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union wanted South Africa to get nuclear weapons, but because it was in the Southern Hemisphere, we didn\u2019t have good eyes on the program, and [the country] was very good at hiding and obfuscating what its enrichment and plant capabilities were.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So on the one hand, the South African case remains an anomaly. Still, \u201chiders\u201d can be very dangerous to global stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s most likely they create the risk of a crisis when they\u2019re discovered and the great powers seek to end the program,\u201d Narang says. \u201cAnd if they succeed, precisely the states you least want to have nuclear weapons, have nuclear weapons. Either way a hider is disruptive. \u2026 It either ends poorly for them, or it ends poorly for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future: Nuclear arms management<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeeking the Bomb\u201d includes a model Narang built incorporating certain factors \u2014 technical capabilities, domestic politics, strategic considerations \u2014 that should lead countries into one category of weapons development or another. Narang found the model correctly predicts over 85 percent of the historical cases correctly. That could help policy experts and other analysts assess future nuclear threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there are two categories that are going to be particularly prominent in coming decades,\u201d Narang says. \u201cIn the Middle East, you\u2019re going to have a contagion of hedgers.\u201d At the same time, he says, \u201cHiders are getting smarter. \u2026 I don\u2019t take it for granted that we\u2019ll be able to stop all hiders indefinitely. These hedgers and hiders are going to be the most prominent categories in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both \u201chedgers\u201d and some \u201chiders\u201d can be dealt with diplomatically, Narang observes, through means such as the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] that limited Iran\u2019s nuclear program but has now been dropped by the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe JCPOA is rare because there are very few instruments and vehicles that have pushed states back from hiding to hard hedging,\u201d Narang says. \u201cFor it to be torpedoed over domestic politics is just a tragedy. There\u2019s no guarantee we\u2019re going to get back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Narang emphasizes the fraught nature of today\u2019s nuclear landscape. After a few decades trending toward disarmament, nuclear stockpiles are growing, and nuclear proliferation is less a problem that can be ended than an issue that needs astute management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody wants a solution to the nuclear problem,\u201d Narang says. \u201cI think my conclusion, while pessimistic, is realistic. While nuclear technology exists, nuclear weapons are unlikely to go away. It\u2019s not a problem to be solved, it\u2019s a problem to be managed. I think for the next several decades we\u2019ll be dealing with these problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Provided by MITNews office)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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