After the end of the Cold War, every indication suggested that the nuclear
weapon would soon cease to be a reason for being.
Indeed, this week, three major events are going along these lines: first,
the agreement recently signed in Prague between Russians and Americans
replaces START I, signed in 1991 in Moscow, which expired in December 2009,
will reduce nuclear warheads owned by each of the two superpowers from 2.200
to 1.550; furthermore, the number of vectors (intercontinental missiles
aboard submarines and bombers), deployed or not, will be reduced to 800
against 1.600 today.
Then, the United States have just solemnly prohibited themselves from using
the nuclear weapon against countries that do not have it or having signed
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, except Iran and North Korea. In other
words, a war against a non-nuclear country will stay conventional. It is a
radical change in the fact that it reduces the possibility of using the
nuclear weapon on battlefields, and thus makes its use less random.
Finally, President Obama has managed to gather 47 heads of states in
Washington and mobilize them against “nuclear terrorism.”
These are significant progress. But it is far from enough.
First, because, apart from the two superpowers, other countries authorized
by the treaties (France, Britain and China) or not (Israel, India, Pakistan)
each have more than 100 and some even more than 200 warheads. Secondly,
because other countries like Iran or North Korea almost openly suggest that
they do not refrain from having it. Then again because, while just 25 kg is
enough to make a nuclear bomb and a few grams of radioactive waste to
manufacture a dirty bomb, 1 587 tons of highly enriched uranium to develop a
bomb are stored in 40 countries, under conditions sometimes very risky,
without any serious international supervision in place.
Finally, because a new class of quasi-nuclear countries is now appearing:
those who come in the possession of nuclear weapons and remain at three or
six months from its possession. It is possible, according to the Treaties,
legally, to have separate parts of a weapon, its fuel and its launch
vehicle, without putting them together, or even recognize that one intends
to do it. The dissuasive effect is then identical. This is the case today in
Japan. This will soon be no doubt that of North Korea. Then Iran. And
probably later, many other countries, in search for supplies in the nuclear
supermarket which is now North Korea, under the watchful eye of China, and
impotent eye of the United States, who have asked too much economically from
the Chinese to put pressure on them.
How then to intervene to stop them? How to fight against this quasi
perfectly legal proliferation?
No treaty can prevent it. Only wisdom can achieve this from wise leaders and
quality governance. The only guarantee, fragile, of one and the other is the
establishment of democratic institutions, with the transparency and the
counterpowers that it implies. Democracy is the only guarantor of global
nuclear peace. We are from it.