Stratfor: Changing Views of Nuclear Proliferation

GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

12.19.2006

Changing Views of Nuclear Proliferation

By Rodger Baker

The six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program have restarted in Beijing, with Pyongyang demanding acceptance as the world's latest nuclear power. This is clearly a nonstarter, given the number of times the U.S. chief negotiator to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has made clear that the United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear power.

Perhaps coincidentally, on the same day the six-party talks resumed, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act, the formalization of the March 2 handshake agreement between Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. With this deal, India gains access to nuclear technology from members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group despite its failure to accede to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The special dispensation for New Delhi effectively ends U.S. punishment of India following its 1998 nuclear tests, when India unilaterally declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

While there are innumerable differences between India and North Korea, including their relations with the United States and their international positions, the dichotomy in U.S. action raises a question: Is it a viable assumption that nuclear states will refrain from the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology or act to prevent the spread of such systems? This becomes an even more critical question amid Iran's very public efforts to pursue civilian nuclear technology (and only thinly veiled efforts to seek nuclear weapons), and as Japan more openly confronts its own prohibition on the development of a nuclear weapons capability.

The 1945 use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Hiroshima and Nagasaki began a new era in warfare -- one in which an entire enemy city could be destroyed by a single strike. This triggered a nuclear race among other major nations, with Russia testing its first nuclear weapon in 1949, followed by the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960 and China in 1964. Israel is believed to have gone nuclear only a few years later. In these early years of nuclear weapons development, the investment necessary to join the nuclear club -- measured not only in financial terms but also in resources and brain power -- was rather substantial, thus limiting the number of countries able to develop nuclear weapons.

By the 1960s, as the Cold War settled into a routine and nuclear weapons delivery systems shifted from land- and air-based to sea-based as well, completing the nuclear triad, the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) became well-established, in theory if not in name. The balance of nuclear power between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the building of frameworks to avoid any "accidental discharges" of nuclear weapons and to control the proliferation of such weapons (particularly following the Cuban missile crisis). As technology and resources became more readily available, more attention was paid to preventing additional countries from joining the nuclear club.

There was another spurt of nuclear activity in the 1970s by second-tier nations, including South Korea, South Africa and Iraq, as well as India and Pakistan. Seoul's program was stopped by U.S. threats to vacate the peninsula (and leave South Korea undefended against potential North Korean aggression). Baghdad's development program was cut short by an Israeli airstrike in 1981. South Africa ultimately developed and produced a few nuclear weapons (only to later disable them after the end of the apartheid era). India's nuclear program came to fruition in the 1970s, with Pakistan developing the capability to produce a weapon in the late 1980s.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union came a new international urgency to rein in the number of nuclear weapons on the planet and constrain the number of countries that possess such systems. The only former Soviet state "allowed" to keep nuclear weapons was Russia, which, incidentally, also retained MAD parity with the United States. As if to test this new push to reduce nuclear weapons access, North Korea accelerated its program in the late 1980s, creating at least a rudimentary device by the early 1990s. This sparked the first of a series of nuclear "crises" that served as bargaining chips for the regime on the international scene -- particularly in Pyongyang's relations with Washington.

As the first of these nuclear crises heated up, the United States, under then-President Bill Clinton, began preparing for a strike against North Korea -- potentially with nuclear weapons. Such was the intensity with which the United States opposed the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. While a negotiated settlement was eventually achieved (the so-called Agreed Framework), Washington made it very clear that it would never accept North Korea as a nuclear state and threatened, even if unofficially, a first-strike option to keep Pyongyang from crossing the nuclear Rubicon by testing a device.

This threat stood for more than a decade, and it served in part to constrain North Korea's actions. For Pyongyang, ambiguity in its nuclear capability meant it had room to negotiate. Confirmation of nuclear capability was a bridge too far -- something that would invite U.S. military action. North Korea wanted to be threatening enough to force negotiations, but not cross the line into being threatening enough to force military action. That line was always the testing of a weapon. In October 2006, however, that line was crossed -- and the result was a resounding nothingness, aside from sanctions on iPods and expensive liquor. Something apparently had changed.

North Korea looked to the examples of India and Pakistan when making its decision to test. When India and Pakistan carried out their nuclear tests in 1998, there was an international outcry as the two states broke into the nuclear club -- and a high level of concern that the already contentious relations between India and Pakistan could quickly degrade into a nuclear exchange. While the latter fear has not (yet) come true -- even as India and Pakistan engaged in the 1999 Kargil conflict -- what perhaps has been even more notable is the general acceptance of both India and Pakistan as nuclear states. Despite initial sanctions, strictures and demands for accession to international nuclear conventions, neither New Delhi nor Islamabad have been severely isolated or punished for breaking the taboo and testing weapons.

In part, this was because it was a known secret that India and Pakistan had developed nuclear devices and weapons even before the 1998 tests, which were more verifications than true breakthroughs in capability. But there were larger issues at play. A decade after the Cold War structures began crumbling, the United States had begun looking at India in a different light, no longer viewing it as a nonaligned nation leaning left but as a potential ally on the international arena, particularly amid growing concern over the rise of China. The United States decoupled its relations with Islamabad and New Delhi, making it clear during the Kargil crisis that there was no longer a zero-sum set of relationships.

The 9/11 attacks against the United States quickly altered Washington's slow movement away from Pakistan as well, making Islamabad's cooperation key to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. One of the first steps in this was to ensure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was secure. And this the United States did, though in a relatively low-key manner. With a handle on Pakistan's nuclear program and a need for Islamabad's continued acquiescence to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Washington was then more free to move forward with redefining its relations with India -- and accepting India's role as a nuclear-capable state. The verbal nuclear agreement between Bush and Singh in March 2006 demonstrated that a new line of thinking on U.S. nuclear policy had already taken hold.

Two key elements of U.S. nuclear policy became apparent under the post-9/11 Bush administration. First, Washington was shifting from the MAD concept to the very real possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons as practical military tools (e.g., for bunker-busting) and not just as symbols of deterrence or as weapons to destroy whole cities. The second was that Washington, while strongly opposed to proliferation, would use negotiations as a tactic to deal with existing nuclear states, and would seriously consider military operations for dealing with states attempting to develop nuclear weapons. The combination of minimal punishment for Pakistan, preferential treatment for India and the sense that proven nuclear capability would prevent pre-emptive U.S. strikes caused Pyongyang to significantly rethink its own nuclear negotiating strategy.

But Pyongyang was not alone in its decision-making process. Beijing also played a critical role, and Moscow a secondary one. Patrons from the Cold-War era, China and Russia are longtime allies of North Korea. Both states still wield a fair amount of influence on the country, and while they might not be fully able to shape North Korean behavior, they can dissuade Pyongyang from taking certain actions -- such as testing a nuclear device. North Korea's July missile tests, in the face of international warnings and U.S. threats to test anti-missile systems on any North Korean launch, were a probe by both North Korea and China to see the full extent of U.S. capability and willingness to follow through on its threats. The answer was that Washington, while willing to threaten, was apparently not willing to act.

The sanctions and strongly worded statements toward North Korea after the missile tests did little but embolden Pyongyang. And Beijing supported the course of action leading toward the nuclear test -- despite public protestations to the contrary. North Korea's entry into the nuclear club (whether officially accepted or not) has clearly become a de facto reality. China did not oppose the test in any meaningful way, and more likely gave tacit support. Surely Beijing could have put more pressure on North Korea if it had truly opposed the impending test. And the United States, by not reacting in any concrete way, has basically accepted the reality of a North Korean nuclear capability, six-party talks notwithstanding.

There has been a significant shift, then, in global nuclear posturing. North Korea has become a demonstrated nuclear state. While it might not have had the most successful of nuclear tests, there is little doubt that North Korea can explode a nuclear device -- even if delivery options remain limited. The impact of the test on North Korea has been a few condemnations, minimally enforced sanctions and the restart of a multistate dialogue on North Korean nuclear capabilities, which gives North Korea a place at the big boys' table. There is little that could encourage or force Pyongyang to give up the nuclear capability now that it has demonstrated it.

If India can be given access to nuclear technologies despite refusing to accede to international nuclear treaties, and if North Korea can carry out a nuclear test without any punitive response, what now prevents other states, such as Iran, from accelerating their nuclear programs? And has Washington in its deal with India, and Beijing and Moscow in their tacit approval of the North Korean nuclear test, shown that public opposition to the spread of nuclear weapons is more noise than substance?

This shift in the actions of the major nuclear powers has not gone unnoticed elsewhere. Germany has effectively said it expects that the world will soon have to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, and that sanctions, while necessary, will do little to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability. And Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in his "slip" on the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons, reminded the United States, Russia and China that Israel is not willing to accept a change in Iran's nuclear status, even if these three powers are resigned to (or are tacitly encouraging) a nuclear-armed Iran. Olmert was voicing the concern in Israel -- and elsewhere -- that the prohibition on the proliferation of nuclear weapons might be weakening, and that the law of nuclear deterrence may not hold if pre-emptive measures need to be taken.

This concern was also seen in outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Dec. 18 parting comments to Japan on the 50th anniversary of Tokyo's entrance into the United Nations. Annan urged Japan to stick to its non-nuclear stance, saying a country does not need nuclear weapons to achieve greatness. That Japan, the only nation to be on the receiving end of nuclear weapons, has allowed a public debate on developing nuclear weapons is perhaps the most striking example of the changing view of nuclear weapons acquisition. Tokyo wants its own nukes, even if it continues to profess a non-nuclear stance. And Japan has the capability and resources to produce nuclear weapons in short order, and the capability to deliver such weapons in a time of conflict.

And this brings us back to that post-Cold War shift in international relations. While the initial response was a rush to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons to new and "rogue" states, there was another shift taking place at the same time -- the tattering of the nuclear umbrella. Without the threat of global war from any regional conflict, the nuclear protection extended by the United States or the Soviets to their allies -- and to states within their respective spheres of influence -- was no longer a given. The major powers came to view such protection as more of a strategic cost-benefit analysis. Would Washington risk a nuclear exchange over the future of South Korea, for example, if it didn't necessarily impact the global balance with another superpower?

This concern already has been seen clearly in the realm of conventional weapons, with countries like South Korea and Japan pursuing significant arms purchases, technological advancements and military restructuring to take into account the change in the U.S. strategic outlook. It is no surprise, then, that this concern moves into the nuclear realm as well. North Korea certainly considered its loss of ensured military support from China and Russia in its decision to pursue a nuclear program. Japan, South Korea and others are undoubtedly considering similar paths, if only in hushed voices in dimly lit rooms. And former Soviet states, particularly those in Central Asia, could be looking at their own future security and balancing their own interests between three nuclear powers -- Russia, China and the United States.

Nuclear proliferation has long been an international concern -- at least publicly. The transfer of technology and nuclear materials, international safeguards and inspection protocols, social and moral concerns and retaliatory fears have all played a role in keeping the number of nuclear states at a minimum. But the fear of retaliation is beginning to fade at the same time North Korea shows that even the most isolated and technologically limited of states can develop such weapons systems. And once a nation crosses the nuclear threshold, giving up nuclear weapons must be an internal choice (as seen previously in South Africa). Forcing a country to give up such weapons is only possible if one is willing to risk a nuclear exchange.