Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited

Abstract

Ariel Levite, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University from 2000 to 2002, explains why the “nightmare proliferation scenarios” of the 1960s, which predicted the emergence of dozens of nuclear weapons states, have failed to materialize. Instead many states have engaged in nuclear reversal, nuclear restraint, or “nuclear hedging.” Levite attributes this lack of global nuclear proliferation primarily to the creation by the United States of a political climate that encourages would-be proliferants to forgo nuclear weapons acquisition or restrain existing nuclear programs. Under certain circumstances, however, some of these states may decide to abandon restraint in favor of renewed nuclear weapons development.