David Walters, on the marxism list, gives a list of countries which have nuclear energy but no nuclear weapons:
> Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Japan, > S. Korea, Armenia, Spain, Czech republic, Romania, > Holland, Belgium The implied argument, if I get it right, is: if other countries build nuclear energy power plants, past evidence makes it unlikely that they will acquire nuclear weapons. This is in keeping with the generally held assumption that nuclear proliferation is contained. In order to show the flaws in this assumption, I am going to bring a few quotes from the first article linked on the Nonproliferation Policy Education Network's web site under the title: "IISS Chairman, Francois Heisbourg, explains why optimists on nuclear proliferation are dead wrong." http://www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1171&rt=&key=heisbourg&sec=article&author= This article concedes that in the past, nonproliferation kind of worked: > defense guarantees by the US weaned Germany, Italy, South > Korea, Taiwan and even neutral Sweden away from the > nuclear road, followed by the US-French-British assurances > to post-Soviet Ukraine. These past successes are misleading for the following reason: > We have simple bipolar (US-USSR/Russia or India/Pakistan) > and complex bipolar (US/France/UK/NATO-Soviet > Union/Russia) experience; we’ve had US-Soviet-Chinese or > Sino-Indian-Pakistani tripolarity; and we’ve had a number > of unipolar moments (one nuclear state vis à vis > non-nuclear antagonists). But we mercifully have not had > to deal with more complex strategic geometries –yet- in > the Middle East or East Asia. We only know what we know, > we don’t know what we don’t know. And the conditions have changed significantly: > Ongoing proliferation differs from that of the first > half-century of the nuclear era in three essential ways: > on the demand side, the set of putative nuclear actors is > largely focused in the most strategically stressed regions > of the world; on the supply side, the actual or potential > purveyors of proliferation are no longer principally the > first, industrialized, generation of nuclear powers; the > technology involved in proliferation is somewhat less > demanding than it was during the first nuclear age. Taken > together, these changes entail growing risks of nuclear > use. Just look at current issues: assume Iran will continue to be perceived as a nuclear power, or assume a civil war in Pakistan, or assume political instability in North Korea. This may lead other states in the area to become nuclear powers (not to speak of non-state actors): > Such a nuclear arc-of-crisis from the Mediterranean to the > Sea of Japan, would presumably imply the breakdown of the > NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty) regime, or at least its > reversion to the sort of status it had during the > Seventies, when many of its currently significant members > had not yet joined, unloosening both the demand and > supply sides of proliferation. In other words, we cannot be complacent about nuclear proliferation just because after Hiroshima and Nagasaki no other nuclear weapons have been detonated. The past is not a good indicator of the future. Nuclear proliferation is a smoldering fire, presently contained, which has a good likelihood to become a rapid conflagration. And if mass-produced nuclear power plants become available which are cheap enough to be affordable for the poorer and more unstable states, this will make this likelihood even higher. Hans _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
