NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: Status & Security

TWENTY years ago last week, when the world's first nuclear explosion seared the pre-dawn sky over New Mexico, one awed spectator felt that he was witnessing "what the first man would have seen at that moment in creation when God said, 'Let there be light.' " To another observer, Harvard Chemistry Professor George Kistiakowsky, the blast suggested the last impression of "the last man in the last millisecond of the earth's existence." In reality, of course, the road from Alamogordo has led neither to Eden nor to Armageddon but to atomic stalemate, to a world in which the superpowers between them have ten tons of nuclear destruction for every human being on earth.

In the third nuclear decade, the world faces a new kind of threat. Even as the likelihood of all-out war between the U.S. and Russia recedes, the danger now and for years to come is not only that Communist China will develop and deploy an atomic arsenal, but that a succession of smaller nations will be under increasing and perhaps irresistible pressure to join the nuclear arms race. Britain's Disarmament Minister, Lord Chalfont, described this prospect last week as "the principal and most urgent problem facing us today." Chalfont thus echoed his opposite number, William C. Foster, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, who writes in the current Foreign Affairs that the spread of nuclear weapons is "likely to be at least as significant" as any change in relations between the superpowers.

Some 16 non-nuclear states already have the industrial and technological resources for nuclear weaponry. India, which has good reason to fear China's intentions, could produce an atomic bomb in 18 months. Experts predict that Israel may follow India into the nuclear club. Next may come Japan, which could manufacture nuclear weapons in two years or so, well before the early 1970s, when Red China is expected to have intermediate-range missiles for its warheads. The race could then return to Europe, where the whole process of proliferation started, and continue on to South Africa and South America.

It is ultimately conceivable, as Robert Kennedy speculated in a recent speech, that "nuclear weapons might be used between Greeks and Turks over Cyprus, between Arabs and Israelis over the Gaza Strip, between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch." Defense experts such as Alastair Buchan, director of Britain's respected Institute of Strategic Studies, take a more sober view of the possibilities of proliferation but foresee, nonetheless, that the number of nuclear powers may well grow from five to 15 in the next 20 years.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

The likelihood of atomic weapons actually being used could increase even faster than the number of states possessing them. For one thing, smaller nations--even France--have little or no knowledge of the immensely costly and complicated fail-safe system developed by the major powers to guard against inadvertent or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. As atomic armaments become more and more commonplace, there will be an ever-increasing danger of Dr. Strangelove situations, in which individual officials or irresponsible regimes might use the bomb against hostile neighbors. In local arms races between small states, both sides will have a continuing incentive to strike first. "In a world of many nuclear powers," adds William Foster, "there may well be some who, unlike the U.S. and the Soviet Union, have relatively little to lose if nuclear weapons are used."

The most serious threat is that full-scale war could intentionally be triggered by what strategists call "catalytic" or "secondary trigger" attack, a nuclear strike launched by a smaller power in order to force a bigger one to come to its defense. The French have raised the possibility of this stratagem as a justification for their force de frappe. A fanciful but entirely feasible variant of this nuclear ploy is the subject of a new novel, Commander-1, in which Red China smuggles a few primitive but potent bombs into New York, Moscow and other points, and detonates them with radio signals; the U.S. and Russia, each assuming that the other is responsible, destroy each other in massive retaliatory attacks.

The U.S., which has unsuccessfully offered countless proposals for complete international control of nuclear armaments since the 1946 Baruch Plan, has long accepted the probability that more and more nations will inevitably learn the secrets of atomic energy. A major aim of the 1963 test ban treaty was to make it difficult for them to perfect nuclear weapons without incurring international opprobrium. Under the Atoms for Peace program, intended to dissuade such countries from using their new knowledge for military purposes, the U.S. since 1955 has supplied technological assistance, reactors and uranium to some 35 nations, from Turkey to Thailand, under strict guarantees that they will be used for peaceful ends.

As nations throughout the world learn to harness the atom for peaceful projects, however, more and more of them master the techniques of nuclear weaponry. For many, two decades after the first mushroom cloud, the bomb no longer seems an instrument of fate; it has become a status symbol. Says Washington's John J. McCloy, who has been intimately involved in U.S. defense and disarmament policy for 25 years: "Too many countries are simply trying to keep up with the Joneses. They want these weapons not only for defense, but as much for prestige."

The Cost of Membership

Nuclear one-upmanship will inevitably become even more fashionable over the next decade as the cost of such weapons is brought down closer to that of conventional armaments. Even today, any industrial society can develop a "nominal," 20-kiloton bomb (the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima) within five to seven years at a cost of only $100 million.

Fortunately, no small nation can enter the race unless it has a highly developed electronics and metallurgical base as well as a solid corps of expert physicists, technicians and weapons engineers. To produce four or five Hiroshima-type bombs a year, it needs a big 70-megawatt reactor and, to keep it going at full blast, 100 tons of uranium ore (which is now in oversupply throughout the world and may in time be available on the open market). This would assure the aspiring nuclear power a yearly output of some 20 kilograms of plutonium, the raw material for bombs, which reactors produce automatically as a byproduct of peaceful operation. The final bridge between a nation's peaceful and military programs is a chemical or gaseous diffusion plant (construction time: two years) to turn the raw plutonium into weapons-grade material.

Not every nation capable of building the bomb wants to. Each potential nuclear power faces a different set of circumstances and national attitudes, which may change rapidly if and when any other state decides to join the race. The nations with the greatest existing nuclear capability, and how they may act:

P: CANADA, which has been capable of producing nuclear weapons since 1957, is the nation least likely to do so since 1) its security is inseparably enmeshed with that of the U.S., and 2) its foreign policy is keyed to the role of mediator between big and small powers.

P: INDIA, whose aversion to the bomb is far more deep-rooted than Canada's, has nonetheless raced to complete its own atomic facilities--and has a more advanced nuclear technology than China, despite the substantial Soviet assistance that Peking received in the 1950s. India refines its own reactor fuel from vast reserves of thorium in Kerala, Madras and Bihar, thus is not subject to international controls over its allotment. It is also the first non-nuclear power to have a diffusion plant actually producing weapons-grade fissionable material, at Trombay, near Bombay. The government of Lal Bahadur Shastri has made clear that it intends to retain an option on the bomb, and has indicated that it will not sign any non-proliferation treaty unless Red China, among other nations, agrees to scrap its atomic armory. India's security and prestige have been badly dented by the Chinese invasion in 1962 and Peking's recent tests; build-the-bomb sentiment is rising. New Delhi will probably reach its agonizing decision within the next few months.

P: JAPAN, with bitter memories of Hiroshima, is emotionally even more reluctant than India to make the bomb. Militarily and politically, however, it has the same incentive: fear of Red China, which has already threatened the Japanese with a nuclear "holocaust" in the event of an atomic war. Since Japan has to import reactor fuels under strict controls, it is not at present likely to become a nuclear power. However, if Peking grows ever more menacing and New Delhi opts for the bomb, Japan might try to obtain its uranium from India.

P: ISRAEL, by contrast, depends for its very survival on military supremacy over its Arab neighbors, probably intends to go nuclear as soon as possible. France provided Israel with a modified EL3 reactor, supplies uranium--probably without controls--under a secret agreement reached in 1957. The Israelis are getting enough plutonium to enable them to produce a modest bomb a year within five years at their Dimona plant, near Beersheba on the road to Sodom, and are apparently working at top speed to develop independent supplies of reactor fuel and plutonium.

P: SWEDEN, which has no overriding moral or political compunctions about nuclear weapons, is advancing swiftly toward the bomb-making stage. Like India, it is producing its own reactor fuels and could soon have a separation plant to supply weapons-grade plutonium. Neutrality has been Sweden's way of life for 150 years, and it is interested in atomic bombs solely for tactical use in the event of invasion. Its political parties are hotly divided on whether to go ahead.

P: WEST GERMANY has the potential to build nuclear weapons in from two to three years and craves the security they could give. But Bonn is bound by treaty not to build bombs on German soil (though it is under no legal constraint not to buy or build them elsewhere), and because of its vulnerable position has no urgent desire for its own atomic armory. The risks are too great: the U.S. might withdraw its umbrella of protection; the Soviets might launch an attack. Nor could it build weapons secretly, for the country is overrun with foreign troops and officials, and its industrial capacity is under constant surveillance by the Western European Union. Washington's efforts to build a multi-lateral force (MLF)--an internationally manned, missile-firing surface fleet under NATO command--are aimed primarily at meeting Germany's demands for a greater share in nuclear decisionmaking; despite heavy fire from Russia and France, the MLF proposal is still afloat.

A Question of Stamina

On the basis of technical ability, Italy could join the nuclear club in from two to three years; Switzerland, Belgium and The Netherlands in five. Egypt and Pakistan often are mentioned as potential nuclear powers, but Western officials say that neither is capable of producing a bomb within the foreseeable future--though the governments of both countries would be under powerful pressure to get started if Israel and India developed atomic weapons. Despite President Sukarno's boasts that Indonesia will be the fourth nuclear power in Asia, atomic experts point out that his small, 250-kilowatt research reactor yields barely enough plutonium to build a bomb in 100 years--assuming that Sukarno could ever muster the facilities. The only other nations now thought capable of joining the club are Spain, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Since Peking is the motive force behind the chain reaction, there is a hard-line argument that the U.S. should simply destroy Peking's nuclear capability at its nerve center, an eight-acre diffusion plant near Lanchow (present capacity: one bomb a month). The U.S., of course, would thus risk Soviet retaliation; besides, Peking would rebuild its facilities. The wisest objection, perhaps, is that the U.S. would thereby shatter the ultimate hope of stability in Asia--the possibility that China's attitude toward the rest of the world will mellow in a generation or so.

Is the U.S. right in opposing proliferation under all circumstances and in every area? No, say some strategists. France's Pierre Gallois, a retired air force general and the nation's leading nuclear strategist, reasons that the U.S. faces the prospect of keeping troops stationed indefinitely on the Chinese periphery unless it chooses to give selective nuclear aid to Asians. "Either you help these nations to have a small capability themselves," he says, "or you have to be present with boys from America. Do you have the stamina to accept this?" Gallois goes so far as to question the moral right of any country with nuclear weapons to try to stop another country from acquiring them. "What right have you to say, 'I may protect myself but I deny that right to you?'" he asks. "And if you do have the right to do so, do you have the means to prevent it? The Russians were not able to prevent China from becoming a nuclear power. The U.S. was not able to prevent France."

A Series of Initiatives

Disarmament Director Foster maintains that the Gallois case for limited proliferation is "based on two premises that are both implausible and inconsistent": first, that proliferation could in fact be selectively controlled; and second, that the U.S. could avoid involving itself in a nuclear conflict. While Washington might adopt a hands-off attitude toward limited nuclear wars, Foster believes, it could do so only "at a price that would prove unacceptable in the long run. That price would be a renunciation of our commitments and involvement all over the world--an attempt to return to isolationism at a time when the world is shrinking so rapidly as to make any such policy at best wishful thinking and quite possibly a blueprint for disaster."

The Administration is officially committed to an anti-proliferation treaty that would ban all sales of delivery systems, strictly control the use of uranium and reactors, and pledge all non-nuclear powers to abstain from nuclear weaponry. Last November, President Johnson appointed a committee under Roswell L. Gilpatric, former Under Secretary of Defense, to devise a wider range of measures to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons. Its conclusions, completed in January, have never been made public, reportedly because they warn that if the U.S. and Russia were to cooperate closely in a non-proliferation program, the Western alliance would be seriously weakened by what NATO nations would regard as a softening of our commitment to Western Europe. The Gilpatric report also emphasizes a more serious obstacle: Soviet insistence that the U.S. must first withdraw entirely from South Viet Nam--a condition that is clearly unacceptable to the Johnson Administration.

To the surprise of Western capitals, Moscow last week agreed to attend the 18-nation conference on disarmament that will reconvene in Geneva July 27. Under the circumstances, however, the outlook for an effective anti-proliferation treaty seems dim. Nearly all the nations capable of making the bomb have already signified that they will not be parties to any such agreement, since it would not be binding on Peking, the pivot of proliferation. As a result, influential voices in the Administration now argue that Washington can best avert a nuclear stampede by a vigorous new series of strategic initiatives, ranging from an Asian multilateral force to worldwide collective-security guarantees under which the U.S. would retaliate against any atomic aggressor. It will be immensely difficult to head off a race in which the stakes have risen so high. Yet the U.S. has no logical choice but to pursue this objective by all possible means. This side of chaos, the nations concerned may yet realize that this is the only logical course for them as well.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.