16 TheEconomistJanuary 30th 2021
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n march1963 President John Kennedy
lamented his failure to negotiate a ban on
nuclear tests. “Personally,” he warned, “I
am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, un-
less we are successful, there may be ten nu-
clear powers instead of four—and by 1975,
15 or 20.”
Kennedy was wrong. While many coun-
tries explored the idea of nuclear weapons
from the 1950s to the 1990s, comparatively
few took the next step of actually trying to
develop the ability to build them (see chart
on following page). Of those few some
stopped because the country itself dis-
solved (Yugoslavia), some because of
changes to domestic politics (Brazil), some
because of pressure from allies (South Ko-
rea) and some through force of arms (Iraq).
The parties to the Nuclear Non-Prolifer-
ation Treaty (npt) now include 185 coun-
tries which have renounced the nuclear
path, as well as five nuclear-weapon states
that the treaty recognises as such—Ameri-
ca, Britain, China, France and Russia. Thefour nuclear states outside the treaty either
never signed it (India, Israel and Pakistan)
or withdrew from it (North Korea).
Nine nuclear-weapon states is a long
way from Kennedy’s nightmare. What is
more, recent years have seen increasing in-
terest in moving beyond the npt’s preser-
vation of the status quo and pushing for a
world in which nuclear weapons are illegit-
imate. This is the goal of the Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which
commits its parties to not making, using or
hosting nuclear weapons. Having been rat-
ified by 52 of its 86 signatories, it entered
into force on January 22nd.
But this “nuclear ban” is born as much
from frustration as from hope. The nptwas
a deal in which non-nuclear-weapon states
got both access to civilian nuclear technol-
ogy and a commitment that the nuclear-
weapon states would seek to negotiate dis-
armament. Though the American, Rus-
sian, French and British arsenals did
shrink after the end of the cold war, therehas been little progress since. Indeed there
has been some backsliding. America left
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002
and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty
(which Russia was breaking) in 2019.
The New start treaty, a ten-year-old
cap on American and Russian nuclear
forces to which Presidents Joe Biden and
Vladimir Putin agreed a five-year exten-
sion on January 26th, is now the only bilat-
eral arms-control agreement that binds the
two countries. A grim panoply of new
American and Russian weapons has been
announced in recent years, from American
miniature warheads to Russian underwa-
ter drones designed to drench coastal areas
in radioactive fallout. China, for its part,
has been upgrading its initially modest nu-
clear forces into considerably more than
the bare-bones deterrent they once were.
As major nuclear powers have added to
their nuclear capabilities some prolifera-
tors have paid little price for acquiring
them. Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova of the Vi-
enna Center for Disarmament and Non-
Proliferation points out that in the late
1990s America’s policy was to “cap, roll
back and eliminate” the embryonic Indian
and Pakistani arsenals through sanctions
and censure. But as it became clearer that
India would serve as a bulwark against Chi-
nese power, America bent its own rules to
allow civilian nuclear co-operation and
helped ease India into international re-Who’s next?
Nuclear proliferation is not fast. But it is still frighteningBriefing Nuclear proliferation