Nth Powers of the Future

Acceptance of the NPT by a majority of states after 1968 created an impression that the danger of further proliferation beyond the five nuclear weapon states (US, USSR, China, UK, and France) had been put to rest. India's "peaceful nuclear explosion" shattered this impression and pointed up the danger of proliferating nuclear options, if not nuclear weapons. The list of potential proliferators has changed from the 1950s to the 1970s and may continue to change in the 1980s. Israel and, by some views, India are on the list, but others like Japan, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, and Argentina are being added. This paper asserts that proliferation, while unstoppable, is slow, not because the NPT is necessarily working, but because the military and economic security perceptions of potential proliferators do not dictate a faster rate of proliferation. Yet the possible deterioration of the strategic environment in the 1980s may induce faster proliferation. The new stress may not be on the acquisition of nuclear arms but, because nuclear arms are becoming militarily less useful, it may be on develop ment of nuclear options coupled with a strategy of their non- use or nonconversion into weapons.