More 'near-nuclear' states soon to come on-line
Pastor Dale Morgan
More 'near-nuclear' states soon to come on-line*
Even as N. Korea pledges to roll back its program, others may go nuclear
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
The Associated Press
updated 8:52 p.m. PT, Sat., June. 28, 2008
It may have rattled windows and raised dust, but the blast that toppled
a towering symbol of North Korea's atom-bomb project was a mere blip on
a world map where more and more states may "go nuclear" — or nearly so —
in the years to come.
At a recent meeting of members of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
the Ukrainian chairman sought to strike an upbeat note about the future,
highlighting the "public and political momentum towards a world free of
nuclear weapons."
Volodyrmyr Yelchenko was right: Statesmen as diverse as Henry Kissinger
and Mikhail Gorbachev have taken up the cause of "nuclear abolition."
And this year's U.S. presidential contenders both support a more
favorable American stance toward arms control.
But other forces are pushing back. Renewed interest in nuclear energy,
to stem global warming, is expected to give more states the
technological building blocks for a bomb. The continuing revelations
about the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan's network, which reportedly had
blueprints for a compact weapon, show that globalized nuclear smuggling
is growing more sophisticated and dangerous.
The perpetuation of the exclusive club of "accepted" nuclear powers —
from old hands America and Russia to newest members India and Pakistan —
may lead others, frustrated with such a two-tier world, to consider
challenging the doomsday cartel.
Even if North Korea follows through on Friday's destruction of the
cooling tower at its Yongbyon complex and fully dismantles its weapons
program, giving up its handful of bombs, it will still belong to another
club of nuclear-capable states.
Nuclear-capable states
Those are the 40-plus countries with the scientists, engineers and
infrastructure for building bombs — and in at least one other case, that
of South Africa, a history of having done so.
About a dozen are nuclear "rollback" states, ranging from Sweden and
Switzerland, which seriously researched the weapon option in the 1950s
and 1960s and then pulled back, to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which
desperately tried, and failed, to produce a bomb before the 1991 Gulf war.
Rebecca Hersman, a proliferation expert at Washington's National Defense
University, stresses that nuclear rollback is "a process, not an
outcome." Those who have been there before could go that way again.
"Success in the past by no means assures success in the future," Hersman
says. The dominoes could fall the other way.
Success in the future, the specialists say, depends heavily on success
in "rolling back" North Korea and Iran, which is accused by Washington
and others of clandestinely planning a bomb. Iran denies that, saying
its atomic program is aimed at using nuclear reactors to generate
electricity.
If North Korea balks at final disarmament, if Iran moves toward an
atomic arsenal despite international pressure, some of their neighbors
may reconsider the nuclear option.
Nations may reconsider nuclear option
South Korea, still technically at war with the north, had a secret
nuclear weapons program it abandoned in the 1970s, under U.S. pressure.
Hersman says its first-rate nuclear-power industry today puts Seoul in
an excellent position to quickly build a bomb if it feels threatened.
Across the Sea of Japan, in the only nation to have suffered atomic
bombings, the possibility of a made-in-Japan bomb was a taboo subject
for a half-century. In recent years, however, as the North Korean threat
loomed larger, Tokyo's leadership has spoken more openly of that option.
Its leading-edge nuclear establishment is well equipped for it.
Taiwan, another Asian "rollback" state, launched a secret weapons
program in the 1970s, as it watched U.S.-China relations thaw and feared
losing its American nuclear shield. By the late 1980s, under U.S.
pressure, it ended its flirtation with the ultimate weapon, but it's
believed capable of quickly reviving the program if tensions heighten
with nuclear-armed China.
In step with Iran's year-by-year advances in uranium enrichment, a
process key to both nuclear power and bomb-making, Saudi Arabia and
Tehran's other Arab rivals across the Persian Gulf have plunged into
planning for nuclear power, with French and U.S. help. The Arabs' Gulf
Cooperation Council has proposed its own regional uranium-enrichment
operation.
In Egypt, last January's announcement of plans for its first nuclear
power plant could signal something of a "bounceback" four decades after
nationalist President Gamal Abdel Nasser briefly explored the idea of
nuclear arms.
Those who monitor such developments don't predict rapidly falling
dominoes — an impending "breakout" of new weapons states. Robert J.
Einhorn, a former U.S. government arms-control specialist, notes that
over the past 40 years more nations abandoned weapons programs than
initiated them.
Instead, other countries may follow "rollback" state Brazil's example,
positioning themselves as compliant with the Nonproliferation Treaty's
ban on bombs, but equipping themselves with the power technology —
enrichment centrifuges — that enable them "to move rapidly to
weaponization if and when needed," as Einhorn says.
For some, near-nuclear may be near enough.