South Asia

All the world's nuclear-armed states (except for North Korea) have begun modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, leading many observers to predict that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race. While that outcome is not yet inevitable, it is likely, and if it happens, the new nuclear arms race will be different and more dangerous than the one we remember. More nuclear-armed countries in total, and three competing great powers rather than two, will make the competition more complex. Meanwhile, new non-nuclear weapon technologies — such as ballistic missile defense, anti-satellite weapons, and precision-strike missile technology — will make nuclear deterrence relationships that were once somewhat stable less so.

Many accounts suggest that the United States did little to prevent Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa from developing nuclear weapons. These accounts are flawed, however. The United States did attempt to stop all three countries from acquiring the bomb and, when those efforts failed, to halt additional proliferation measures such as further testing and weaponization.

When do states acquire nuclear weapons? History shows that only two types of states decide that the bomb is essential to their security: 1) very powerful states; and 2) weak states that lack ironclad security guarantees.

See a sampling of recent books from the Belfer Center

Farah Pandith, America’s first special representative to Muslim communities, joined the Belfer Center this fall as a Fisher Family Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project and as a senior fellow with the Middle East Initiative. Jairam Ramesh, a member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh, India, and a leader in international climate negotiations, joined the Belfer Center this fall as a 2014 Fisher Family Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project.

Policymakers have long focused on preventing nuclear weapons proliferation by controlling technology. Even developing countries, however, may now possess the technical ability to create nuclear weapons. The history of gas centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective. To reduce the demand for nuclear weapons, policymakers will have look toward the cultural, normative, and political organization of the world.

Olli Heinonen and Simon Henderson write that although Iran's nuclear potential will likely dominate talks between President Obama and King Abdullah on March 29, Riyadh's own nuclear plans should also be part of the discussion.

Many experts consider nuclear terrorism the single greatest threat to U.S. security. The fear that a state might transfer nuclear materials to terrorists was a core justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and, more recently, for a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. The logical basis for this concern is sound: if a state could orchestrate an anonymous nuclear terror attack, it could destroy an enemy yet avoid retaliation. But how likely is it that the perpetrators of nuclear terrorism could remain anonymous? Data culled from a decade of terrorist incidents reveal that attribution is very likely after high-casualty terror attacks. Attribution rates are even higher for attacks on the U.S. homeland or the territory of a major U.S. ally—97 percent for incidents in which ten or more people were killed. Moreover, tracing a terrorist group that used a nuclear weapon to its state sponsor would not be difficult, because few countries sponsor terror; few terror groups have multiple sponsors; and only one country that sponsors terrorism, Pakistan, has nuclear weapons or enough material to manufacture them. If leaders understand these facts, they will be as reluctant to give weapons to terrorists as they are to use them directly; both actions would invite devastating retaliation.

"Belfer Center Fellow Marisa Porges' career has already spanned the worlds of academia and policymaking, the government and the military. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Porges earned honors with a degree in geophysics and, during senior year, commanded her Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps unit. After graduation, she commissioned as a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and managed the weapons systems aboard EA-6B Prowlers, a carrier-based electronic warfare jet.... [now] as a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program, she now combines scholarship and practice."

More than 250 people joined experts from around the world in April for “Revolution & Reform: The Historic Transition in the Middle East,” a conference sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Dubai Initiative (DI). Leading scholars assessed the political, economic, and legal aspects of the turmoil engulfing the region this spring.