18 BriefingNuclear proliferation The EconomistJanuary 30th 2021
2 tarian leaders seem more inclined toward
the bomb, [and] their hold on power can in
some ways make it easier for them to carry
out their plans.” The study notes that Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s increasingly au-
tocratic president, has begun to talk like a
case in point. In September 2019 he com-
plained to members of his ruling akparty
that “some countries have missiles with
nuclear warheads...But [we are told] we
can’t have them. This, I cannot accept.”
Sinan Ülgen, a former diplomat who
leads edam, an Istanbul-based think-tank,
doubts that Mr Erdogan would act on this
rhetoric. “At first the public may like the
idea of having nuclear weapons,” he says.
“But the cost for an open economy like Tur-
key would be too big and long-term. No
government can sustain it under condi-
tions of democratic elections.”
Not all leaders in the region toil under
such constraints. “In discussions in Saudi
Arabia, there’s a lot more willingness to
talk openly about the possibility of prolif-
eration,” says Gregory Gause of Texas a&m
University. The obvious cause is Iran’s nuc-
lear programme. The jcpoa, a deal struck in
2015 between Iran, the five nuclear powers
recognised by the npt, Germany and the
eu, saw Iran agree to reduce its uranium
stocks and enrichment capability and to
have them stringently monitored by the In-
ternational Atomic Energy Agency (iaea),
the npt’s watchdog, in return for relief
from sanctions. But after Mr Trump pulled
America out of the deal in 2018 Iran ceased
respecting its constraints. On January 4th
it started enriching uranium to 20% puri-
ty—nine-tenths of the way to weapons-
grade—and nine days later began work on
uranium metals, which can be used to
fashion the core of a bomb.
Mr Biden says he will rejoin the jcpoa,
in which case Iran has said it will return to
compliance. Israel and Iran’s Arab rivals
oppose such a revival, just as they opposed
the deal in the first place. They see it as le-
gitimising Iran’s nuclear infrastructure
while placing only temporary limits on
what it can do with it. In 2018 Muhammad
bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince,
told cbs, an American broadcaster, that the
kingdom “does not want to acquire any nu-
clear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran de-
veloped a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit
as soon as possible”. Mr Fitzpatrick reck-
ons that “Saudi Arabia is the proliferation
concern number one around the world.”
Despite its announced intention of
building 16 nuclear-power stations, Saudi
Arabia’s nuclear technology remains far
behind that of Japan or South Korea. That
need not, in itself, thwart any nuclear am-
bitions it has or develops. In the past, West-
ern intelligence officials were concerned
that Pakistan—which is thought to have
had its bomb programme financed by Sau-
di Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s—mightsupply a complete nuclear device or know-
how to the kingdom.
Alternatively, Saudi Arabia could rely
on less-direct outside help. In a forthcom-
ing paper, Nicholas Miller of Dartmouth
College and Tristan Volpe of the Naval Post-
graduate School describe the growth of an
“autocratic nuclear marketplace”. The
“gold standard” for deals in which coun-
tries buy civilian nuclear-power plants has
been that their enriched fuel has to be im-
ported and the used fuel sent out of the
country for disposal, thus providing no do-
mestic route to fissile material. Russia and
China do not always abide by this standard;
and the authors point out that 19 of the 33
reactors exported since 2000 came from
those two countries. Last year the Wall
Street Journalreported that China was help-
ing Saudi Arabia build a facility for process-
ing uranium ore. That is not the same as en-
riching it. But it worries Western officials.
China has also armed the kingdom with
ballistic missiles. In 2019 researchers at
miisdiscovered that a suspected rocket-
engine plant south-west of Riyadh bore a
resemblance to a Chinese-built facility.
This does not necessarily mean it wants
nuclear weapons; their perceived utility as
conventional weapons is seeing ever more
countries build up ballistic-missile forces.
But an already established missile capabil-
ity is definitely a useful thing for a poten-
tial proliferator to have.
Wider-spread ballistic-missile capabil-
ities and laxer deals on nuclear fuel are not
the only current developments that could
be of help to proliferators. America’s Na-
tional Nuclear Security Administration
warns that technological advances like 3d
printing and powerful computer-aided de-
sign “may create new and worrisome path-
ways to nuclear weapons”.
But proliferators face new challenges,
too. “The world’s capability to know whatsomebody is doing is much greater than it
was at the time that Saddam Hussein was
pursuing weapons and that gives a lot more
time to react,” says Tom Countryman,
America’s under-secretary of state for non-
proliferation from 2011 to 2017. Non-gov-
ernmental organisations regularly unearth
and publicise secret facilities using “open”
sources—most notably images taken by
satellites like those which researchers at
miisused to spot North Korea’s looming
missile test and Saudi Arabia’s rocket plant.
The iaeahas honed its remote monitor-
ing capabilities in Iran in recent years, us-
ing tamper-proof cameras and radiation
detectors that send back a steady stream of
data. And Mr Volpe points out that ever
more manufacturing technology is likely
to be monitored from afar by its creators.
Such capabilities could be used for more
than scheduling maintenance. He envis-
ages an “Internet of Nuclear Things” in
which suppliers can scrutinise the tasks
for which the machines they sell are used.
This all offers hope that the covert pur-
suit of nuclear weapons has become hard-
er. But what of overt pursuit? For a country
to leave the nptwould undoubtedly pro-
voke a crisis. But India’s experience shows
that a country with real heft can weather
such disapproval. As Ms Mukhatzhanova
puts it, “Countries that are important, eco-
nomically and politically, might count on
being accepted into the system if they
break out.” To try to cut a frankly proliferat-
ing South Korea out of the world economy
in order to bring it back into the nptstable
would be a huge undertaking.No way back
Most nuclear-curious states, Iran included,
are more interested in hedging than in ac-
tually building a weapons programme. Yet
hedging by several rivals at once produces a
situation where cascading proliferation
becomes all too easy to imagine. An Israeli
military strike on Iran, for instance, might
persuade it of the need for a nuclear deter-
rent, thus triggering a response by Saudi
Arabia which might in turn strengthen am-
bition in Ankara—or Cairo.
Once the world would have hoped that
American diplomacy, engagement and
suasion would have kept such risks in
check, and over the coming few years they
might. But America’s centrality is on the
wane. As Mr Gause points out, “A pervasive
sense...that the United States is leaving the
region” underpins Saudi discussion of pro-
liferation. The risks entailed in offering a
nuclear umbrella are clearly increasing.
And although Mr Biden has always been a
staunch advocate of arms control, the same
was not true of his predecessor, and may
well not be true of his successor. Prolifera-
tion has not proceeded anything like as fast
as once was feared. But it has not stopped,
and it could well accelerate. 7