Nuclear Issues

Fifty-plus countries are attending the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit this week in Washington, DC. Notably missing from the guest list is Iran, whose recent negotiation and implementation of a landmark nuclear deal with the P5+1 led some experts to call for more engagement and cooperation in nuclear security.

With the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) now over, policymakers are thinking about next steps to address nuclear security. The NSS process has progressed since its first installment in 2010; yet, the Middle East, a key region where nuclear security is of tremendous importance, remains underrepresented.

Since 2007, international media have reported the violent deaths of four scientists and engineers connected with Iran’s nuclear program and an attempt on the life of a fifth. The news reports on such killings are murky, incomplete, and, in some instances, likely inaccurate...

"Our crystal ball is not clear enough to predict with confidence whether the global nuclear future will be characterized by peace and prosperity or by conflict and destruction. But we do believe that the choices made in the coming few years will be crucial in determining whether the world can have more nuclear power without more nuclear weapons dangers in the future."

"...[A] primary goal in the next decades must be to remove this risk of near global self-destruction by drastically reducing nuclear forces to a level where this outcome is not possible, but where a deterrent value is preserved — in other words, to a level of minimum deterrence. This conception was widely discussed in the early years of the nuclear era, but it drowned in the Cold War flood of weaponry. No matter how remote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now — despite its being so vivid only a few decades ago — the elimination of this risk, for this century and centuries to come, must be a primary driver for radical reductions in nuclear weapons."

Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) special issue of Dædalus have one simple and clear answer to these questions: It depends.

The current global nuclear order is extremely fragile, and the three most urgent challenges to it are North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. If North Korea and Iran become established nuclear weapons states over the next several years, the nonproliferation regime will have been hollowed out. If Pakistan were to lose control of even one nuclear weapon that was ultimately used by terrorists, that would change the world. It would transform life in cities, shrink what are now regarded as essential civil liberties, and alter conceptions of a viable nuclear order.

"...[S]ituated in what it sees as a hostile neighborhood, it is hardly surprising that the Iranian government views an independent nuclear fuel cycle as interchangeable with deterrence, rather than as a bid for building a nuclear arsenal. While building a nuclear arsenal would be a costly endeavor, risking international isolation and assuring Iran's 'pariah status,' acquiring civilian nuclear capability would afford Iran the security and psychological edge it has long sought, and at a lower cost."

A universal Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), which would ban the production of fissile material (separated plutonium, highly enriched uranium (HEU), and uranium-233) for nuclear weapons, has long been seen as a key building block in nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.