What to me is the most dangerous aspect of nuclear proliferation is the use of the smaller nuclear states as cat's paws by the bigger ones. China uses North Korea in exactly this way against the USA, and has every interest in keeping North Korea a nuclear power hostile to the USA: Russia uses Iran in the same way, and the USA uses Israel in a similar fashion against the Arabs and Iran. It is all too easy for puppet nuclear states to be used to strike a first strike against a perceived enemy, while claiming that the principal power is blameless, and thus not having to be held responsible. China is playing this game exactly with North Korea--always stating for public consumption that North Korea must give up its nuclear arsenal and always finding ways of preventing this from happening. This will be how the next nuclear war starts, and there is no telling exactly which of the "big" powers will be the puppeteer behind the straw dog. China and Russia should realize that they are much closer to North Korea and Iran than the US is, and are thus susceptible to manipulation by those soon-to-be nuclear empowered states. The USA will have to accept responsibility if Israel decides to get froggy with the Islamic world. Everybody will have to decide if such a world as is coming is worth the risk to humanity. Governments themselves are increasingly becoming cabals of nuclear gangsters who hold their own populations hostage to the nukes which are controlled by the few. Who is saying anything about that? Not Kissinger, who is one of the nuclear gangsters.
Our Nuclear Nightmare
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I have long advocated negotiations with Iran on a broad front, including the geopolitical aspect. Too many treat this as a kind of psychological enterprise. In fact, it will be tested by concrete answers to four specific questions: (a) How close is Iran to a nuclear-weapons capability? (b) At what pace is its development program moving? (c) What balance of rewards and penalties will move Iran to abandon the program? (d) What do we do if, despite our best efforts, diplomacy fails?
A critical issue in nonproliferation strategy will be whether the international community can place the fuel cycle for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy under international control. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) capable of designing a system that places the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium and plutonium under international control and in locations that do not threaten nuclear proliferation?
Arresting and then reversing the proliferation of nuclear weapons places a special responsibility on the established nuclear powers. They share no more urgent common interest than preventing the emergence of more nuclear-armed states. The persistence of unresolved regional conflicts makes nuclear weapons a powerful lure in many parts of the world—to intimidate neighbors and to serve as a deterrent to the great powers who might otherwise intervene in a regional conflict. Established nuclear powers should strive to make a nuclear capability less enticing by devoting their diplomacy to diffusing these unresolved conflicts.
A new nuclear agenda requires coordinated efforts on several levels: first, the declaratory policy of the United States; second, the U.S.–Russian relationship; third, joint efforts with allies as well as other nonnuclear states relying on American deterrence; fourth, securing nuclear weapons and materials on a global basis; and, finally, reducing the role of nuclear weapons in the doctrines and operational planning of nuclear-weapons states.
The Obama administration has already signaled that a global nuclear agenda will be a high priority in preparation for the Review Conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty scheduled for the spring of 2010. A number of measures can be taken unilaterally or bilaterally with Russia to reduce the pre-emptive risk of certain alert measures and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.
For more than 30 years after the formation of the Western alliance, the Soviet threat was the motivating and unifying force in Western nuclear policy. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up, it is important to warn against the danger of basing policy on a self-fulfilling prophecy. Russia and the United States between them control about 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. They have it in their control to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons in their bilateral relationship. They have already done so for 15 years on such issues as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The immediate need is to start negotiations to extend the START I agreement, the sole document for the verification and monitoring of established ceilings on strategic weapons, which expires at the end of 2009. That should be the occasion to explore significant reductions from the 1,700 to 2,000 permitted under the Moscow Treaty of 2002. A general review of the strategic relationship should examine ways to enhance security at nuclear facilities in Russia and the United States.
A key issue has been missile defense—especially with respect to defenses deployed against threats from proliferating countries. The dialogue on this subject should be resumed at the point at which it was left by President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin in April 2008. The Russian proposal for a joint missile defense toward the Middle East, including radar sites in southern Russia, has always seemed to me a creative political and strategic answer to a common problem.
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