Nuclear proliferation is seen differently by those who feel safe and have nuclear weapons than by those who feel insecure and do not have them. The major nuclear powers and the countries that feel protected by the current non-proliferation regime are wary of some states attempting to abandon this joint security framework and others attempting to develop a nuclear capability outside of them. In his logic, the non-proliferation regime has worked reasonably well to prevent states from increasing their nuclear weapons arsenals (vertical proliferation) but has been powerless to prevent others from acceding to nuclear power status (horizontal proliferation).
On the one hand, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1995, now has 191 members who have agreed not to accede to them, if they do not have them (non-nuclear states), or not to facilitate their access to third parties in the case of having them (nuclear states). The former has recently been joined by the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in force since 2021, which extends the restrictions on the acquisition, development, testing, possession, use or threat of them, not counting the disarmament agreements between the US and Russia (SALT I and II, INF, START I and II, SORT and New START). On the other hand, states have built numerous multilateral organizations and agreements designed to prevent or hinder proliferation such as the Hague Ballistic Missile Proliferation Code (HCOC), the Australia Group, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the Global Action Against Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), the Proliferation Fight Initiative (PSI), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), or the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), among others . Those who are satisfied with the result of the proliferation regime highlight among its positive results the progressive increase in the number of states party to the NPT (from 60 to 191 at present) and the abandonment of programs associated with the proliferation of countries such as Yugoslavia, South Korea , Libya, Brazil, Iraq, South Africa and Syria, although Iran and Syria recovered their proliferation race later (the number of countries that have explored proliferation at some point in the past would reach thirty).1
But this positive balance of the non-proliferation regime has been deteriorating as the strategic environment has deteriorated, progress towards disarmament among the great nuclear powers has stagnated –or regressed– (the New START extended until 2025 is the only binding agreement in force) and that some states deliberately develop nuclear weapons programs without the aforementioned non-proliferation measures or the most aggressive counter-proliferation measures being able to prevent it. Countries like India, Pakistan and North Korea have joined the list of nuclear powers that included the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China and Israel in order of proliferation, and others like Iran are about to be. . However, the most dangerous thing for the control of proliferation is the consolidation of some principles that favor a new logic behind the proliferation that threatens to spread.
The first incentive for proliferation is the loss of confidence of some states regarding the security guarantees offered by the great powers. The sad fortune of Ukraine, invaded by the Russian Federation and which has lost much of its territory and has come close to losing its own sovereignty, serve as an example. In 1994, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States signed a memorandum on security guarantees with Ukraine in Budapest in which they undertook to guarantee its independence, sovereignty and borders and not to use force in exchange for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. of Ukrainian territory and its entry into the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At the end of the cold war, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear inventory in the world and returned more than 2,000 nuclear weapons to Russia. Twenty years later, the guarantors have not respected their commitments: Russia has invaded its borders in 2014 and 2022 without British and American guarantees being able to prevent it. The experience may lead Ukrainian officials to consider it a mistake to have relinquished its nuclear capability and entrusted its protection to the major nuclear powers. If available, the new pro-proliferation logic suggests that Ukraine could perhaps have deterred the Russian Federation from invading and occupying Ukrainian territory simply by activating its nuclear alert, just as Russia has done to coerce Ukraine and their potential NATO supporters. Ukraine is not an isolated case. Even some of the nuclear-capable former Soviet republics like Belarus or Kazakhstan, which gave up their nuclear weapons in the 1990s, could review their decision, not so much to defend themselves against Russia but to use those weapons as an instrument of exchange, just as Belarus has just done that has changed its Constitution in February 2022 to stop being a denuclearized country and admit Russian nuclear weapons on its territory.
Another significant case is that of Libya, which in 2003 agreed to interrupt its nuclear proliferation program in exchange for its re-entry into the international community. The agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom allowed the dismantling of Libyan facilities and programs, but not the promised economic and diplomatic revival. The disappointment of Libyan officials in the following years for the practical results was followed by a military campaign to depose the dictator Gaddafi in 2011 led by the same countries that had convinced them to give up nuclear weapons. Libya held NATO forces in check for many months despite the unevenness of forces, an unevenness that the availability of nuclear weapons could have compensated for. The lessons learned by all governments fearful of forced regime change is that, first, only nuclear weapons provide a real guarantee of deterrence against external change and, second, that access to nuclear country status provides greater respect and capacity for dialogue even with nuclear powers with greater capacity.
North Korea is an outstanding student of the new proliferation logic that has understood that its nuclear condition allows it to perpetuate the dominant dynasty in power, protect it from external threats and coerce South Korea and its allies with a military escalation. unacceptable for any kind of conventional response. For this, he develops a program that includes nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the last ones in March 2022, taking advantage of Ukraine's strategic distraction after five years of unilateral moratorium.
North Korea has been a master at extracting aid in exchange for denuclearization promises and reneging on them in exchange for new aid. Its nuclear status has earned it the respect of major nuclear and economic powers and has allowed it to become a star of nuclear diplomacy, as the meetings between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump showed, as well as setting the pace for the counter-proliferation agenda. of the United States in recent years. Proliferation pays off as it goes so there is no point in stopping it, and the level of ambition is raised to keep the nuclear race going. The resumption of missile launches of all ranges is now joined by the desire to increase the precision of its missiles, the number of its nuclear warheads and the development of tactical nuclear weapons.
North Korea is also an example of how the will to proliferate prevails over international measures to prevent it. Despite the harshness of international sanctions and their limited economic resources, their leaders have carried out their nuclear programs and contributed to international proliferation in other countries, not only exporting their technology but also their mechanisms to circumvent international sanctions. Faced with this reality, there is little they can make statements like those of the European Union after the last ballistic tests in March, urging the North Korean government to return to the path of non-proliferation as a non-nuclear State and to submit to the norms of the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Cases like the North Korean one have helped to establish the conviction in the new logic of proliferation that the determination to achieve nuclear weapons prevails over internal obstacles and external pressures. If a State has that will and is willing to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve its nuclear status, it will do so sooner or later, and those who stand in its way will end up acquiescing to the new reality.
Iran is another of the nuclear powers in pectore that has taken the measure of the great powers that seek to prevent its nuclearization. Iran ratified its entry into the NPT in 1970, but being a regional power and facing powerful rivals such as the Arab countries or Israel, it has claimed and constitutionalized its nuclear sovereignty both in the civil sphere and outside it. It began to develop a clandestine program for military purposes that was discovered in 2002 and denounced by the IAEA in 2006. Since then, Iran has faced economic sanctions that have aggravated its economic and diplomatic isolation. Despite this, Iran maintained its programs, and its progress reinforced its negotiating position vis-à-vis the great nuclear powers: the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, accompanied by Germany and the European Union, to reach the 2015 to an agreement: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
In this agreement, the moderate Iranian government made important concessions in its nuclear ambition in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, but the Trump administration did not respect a commitment drawn up by the great powers and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. To the maintenance of unilateral sanctions was added open hostility towards those who tried to respect the terms of the agreement and its abandonment in 2018. As a result, Iran progressively failed to comply with some of its commitments to advance towards the nuclear threshold (the time necessary to have of enriched uranium sufficient for a nuclear weapon, to which another year or so must then be added to ensure its operation). Before the agreement, it was estimated that Iran would need a few months to reach that nuclear threshold, a time that was extended to a year thanks to the agreement and that was reduced to a scant month when it ceased to comply.2 At the same time, the moderate Iranian sectors learned what risky that it is to rely on the word of third parties.
Proliferation feeds on global rivalries, between great powers, and regional rivalries, between local powers. Iran not only aspires to access nuclear weapons to ensure its survival against the interference of extra-regional powers, but also to ensure its hegemony in the Middle East. And the same missiles whose long range is of concern outside that region demonstrated their capability when they attacked Saudi Arabia's energy infrastructure in 2019. Regional rivalry is also behind the proliferation of Pakistan, which accelerated its nuclear program when India conducted its first test in 1974. In 2022 it has 165 nuclear warheads and short- and medium-range missiles that are constantly improving. India has a similar nuclear arsenal, 160 nuclear warheads, and like Pakistan remains outside the non-proliferation regimes and is suspected of promoting nuclear proliferation within and outside the region.
Regional competition has always been an incentive for proliferation because non-nuclear states try to be so in order to preserve strategic balances and their own survival. Israel is well aware of the nuclear programs initiated by Arab countries to counter its nuclear capability and its own military and covert actions it has carried out against Iran and Syria to prevent it. The introduction of the nuclear weapon provides an intimidating capability that upsets the balance of conventional forces on the ground and can only be restored through proliferation. Iran's unavoidable access to nuclear weapons could fuel proliferation in countries like Saudi Arabia, which competes with Iran for regional hegemony, or in small Gulf countries whose sovereignty is threatened.
Credibility is another important factor in discouraging or encouraging proliferation. Until now, the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella has allowed its allies to shrug off proliferation, but as credibility deteriorates, questions arise as to whether to continue to rely on US nuclear deterrence or develop deterrence capabilities of its own. Looking at the strategic Asia-Pacific scenario, doubts about expanded deterrence have been heightened as China has developed capabilities to hinder and deny access to critical spaces in the Taiwan Straits or to disputed territories in the China Seas. Doubts about the security guarantee of the United States –despite the shift of its strategic priority from Europe to the Indo-Pacific– increased after North Korea's aforementioned accession to nuclear statehood. In the current circumstances, its traditional allies such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Australia may question the credibility of the US guarantee in a confrontation that moves from the geopolitical field to the war. Faced with the likelihood, more remote in the past than in the future, of an armed confrontation, South Korea may wish it had not withdrawn American tactical nuclear weapons from its territory in 1991 and Japan may reconsider its anti-nuclear stance, a review to be added to the list of taboos broken in Japanese society on security and defense for the next few years. Meanwhile, it already has nuclear-powered submarines and ballistic missiles that have overcome post-war prejudices.
On the contrary, the Russian invasion of Crimea and its threat to use – put on alert – nuclear weapons in the event of a military escalation has postponed the debate on the role of nuclear weapons in NATO's strategy. The apparent security situation in Europe since the cold war facilitated, first, the withdrawal of a large part of the nuclear weapons on European soil and, second, questioned their usefulness for deterrence. To the discomfort of some allies such as Germany for its maintenance and the attempts to raise a debate on the matter has been added in recent years the risk that some of the allied countries will ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which would put the allied nuclear deterrent upside down. The Russian belligerence has postponed this debate for now and, paradoxically, reinforced the value of nuclear deterrence in the immediate future of the Atlantic Alliance and legitimized the enormous investment effort involved in the modernization of nuclear weapons and systems.
Félix Arteaga is principal investigator at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor at the General Gutiérrez Mellado University Institute of the National Distance Education University (UNED)
