Nuclear weapons proliferation is not necessarily bad news

Amid the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, there is one notable casualty: the nuclear non-proliferation movement. Over the last few years, conflicts in both regions have been shaped by the fact that Russia and Israel possess nuclear weapons but their adversaries in the immediate neighbourhood do not. Russian President Vladimir Putin has used his country’s nuclear arsenal as a means to deter stronger Western support for Ukraine. On multiple occasions, Putin has threatened the United States and its Nato allies with a catastrophic war with Russia involving the use of “all the means” at Moscow’s disposal. These threats have encouraged many in Ukraine to wonder if Russia’s invasion could have been prevented if Ukraine had not given up its nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “Who gave up nuclear weapons?” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the European Council summit in Brussels last week. “Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Ukraine.” In the Middle East, the war in Gaza has rapidly expanded, prompting a US official to declare this week that the conflict has “escalated out of control”. Israel’s recent ground invasion of southern Lebanon has displaced about a fifth of that country’s population. These escalations may perhaps have been less feasible or likely if Israel faced credible threats of nuclear retaliation in the region. While Israel is widely known to possess nuclear weapons, none of its neighbours has a proven arsenal of their own. Contrast this with the situation in South Asia. For decades, India has had volatile border disputes with China and Pakistan. Those disputes resulted in a series of wars through the 20th century. That pattern changed at the turn of the millennium when India and Pakistan each tested and developed nuclear weapons. Since then, despite occasional skirmishes, crossfire and seemingly intractable hostility, none of those disputes has come close to a large-scale ground invasion by any party. From time to time, analysts in the West feared that nuclear weapons may be stolen by, or shared with, rogue actors or terrorists. This scepticism was especially applied to Pakistan, given its close ties with groups such as the Taliban. Yet this fear has never come to pass. That is in large part because no nuclear-armed regime would want to dilute its power by wilfully sharing nuclear arms technology with its proxies. Countries around the world have been watching and learning. In a world marred by geopolitical tensions and unstable power dynamics, governments increasingly recognise that nuclear weapons provide both security and impunity. In particular, countries in geopolitically volatile regions and faced with nuclear-armed adversaries are beginning to yearn for nuclear weapons. In an essay published last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba argued for “an Asian version of Nato, which must ensure deterrence against the nuclear alliance of China, Russia and North Korea”. In an apparent revision of Japan’s non-nuclear principles, Ishiba said that such an Asian Nato should consider the “introduction of nuclear weapons into the region”. Meanwhile, following Israel’s strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, Iranian officials are reportedly considering the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Such a programme may trigger a nuclear arms race in the region: last year, Saudi Arabia said it too would seek a nuclear weapons arsenal if Iran developed one. To be sure, the woes of the nuclear non-proliferation movement began long before these wars. After the second world war, the United States and Soviet Union helped to limit the spread of nuclear weapons through a series of treaties between themselves and by providing nuclear umbrellas to allies. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the balance of power was derailed, and countries that relied on the Soviets for support and protection began to explore other options. India conducted a series of nuclear tests in 1998, which attracted sanctions from the US and its allies. But the squeeze did not last. Only days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, then-US president George W. Bush lifted those sanctions in an effort to build a strategic partnership that culminated in a landmark nuclear deal. Washington’s embrace of India’s nuclear programme left a significant dent in the nuclear non-proliferation movement. But perhaps far more damaging was its withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018. By pulling out of that deal without clearly establishing that Iran had violated its commitments, the US undermined its ability to cut deals to deter other countries from pursuing nuclear weapons. Yet, the decline of non-proliferation need not necessarily be bad news. The lesson from the contrasting experiences of South Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe is that nuclear weapons can deter countries from escalating tensions into outright war. As Kenneth Waltz, a leading American political scientist, said in 2007, “it’s been proven without exception that whoever gets nuclear weapons behaves with caution and moderation”. The focus of international security policy should therefore be less on containing the development of nuclear weapons and more on maintaining a healthy balance of power between countries in conflict. In the Middle East, for instance, Washington’s partisan support for Israel has gone largely unbalanced, thereby driving ever-increasing impunity in Israeli foreign policy – often, even in direct contradiction to US foreign policy goals and proclamations. Global geopolitics would be far more stable if world powers found a way to balance each other’s influence in conflict-prone regions – with or without nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons proliferation is not necessarily bad news

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Nuclear arms on both sides of tensions can prevent escalations into outright war, as has been the case in South Asia

Nuclear arms on both sides of tensions can prevent escalations into outright war, as has been the case in South Asia