Missed opportunities: Washington politics and nuclear proliferation.

• Author: Wilson, Heather

IN HIS FIRST press conference after winning the election, Bill Clinton listed his top five foreign policy priorities. Third on his list, after cutting the defense budget and reducing nuclear arsenals, was "working hard to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." That President Clinton gave this task such salience reflected the increasing seriousness of the proliferation threat.

In recent months, the proliferation problem has become specific and acute. In early November, as North Korea made menacing noises about the possibility of UN sanctions, and increased its troops along the DMZ, President Clinton acknowledged that North Korea's likely development of nuclear weapons is a "grave issue" for the United States. At the same time, he admitted that there is "a lot of disagreement about what we should do" to stop them.

The determination of one of the world's least rational regimes to build nuclear weapons highlights the importance of developing an effective policy to control proliferation and to respond to proliferants when our efforts at control fail.

This same lesson should have been learned from the Gulf War. Through the mechanism of UN inspections, we discovered after the war that our intelligence about the Iraqi nuclear weapons program had woefully underestimated the progress the Iraqis had made. While the intelligence community spent months on lessons learned, the most important lesson didn't require much analysis: countries like Iraq can build nuclear weapons and we can't be confident we know about it. The cold reality of fighting a war against a regional power which was on the verge of having weapons of mass destruction revealed our vulnerabilities, even if we were fortunate enough to have escaped paying a huge price.

In the months following the Gulf War, the collapse of the Soviet Union reduced the danger of a global thermonuclear war almost to zero. But in an ironic twist of fate, its collapse also ushered in an era of disorder in which the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the expertise to build them has accelerated.

In response to this growing threat, the United States should by now have adopted a comprehensive non-proliferation program. Such a program would have focused, to begin with, on developing new defensive technologies and enhancing and integrating intelligence capabilities. This should have been coupled with an effective emergency assistance program to accelerate safe and secure dismantlement of the former Soviet arsenal and to ensure that former Soviet bomb builders do not ply their trade in hostile countries. An active regional strategy should have been combined with a strengthening of export controls to deter potential proliferants. Finally, single Washington agencies should have been empowered to coordinate and implement the different elements of the non-proliferation program, with specific policy guidance from the White House. None of this has happened.

The Gravity of the Threat

FOR A LONG time, the nuclear club was one of the world's most exclusive: the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France, and Britain were the only acknowledged members. Even before proliferation became a significant concern in the late 1980s, there was a handful of states which probably qualified for membership in this exclusive group, most notably India, Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan. But the neighborhood around the club is changing and more states are aspiring to membership. The spread of computers and advanced technology and the growth of scientifically trained elites is making it possible for less wealthy states to begin to develop and maintain a nuclear capability.(1)

While states engaged in nuclear weapons research may choose to terminate their programs before they actually develop weapons, Taiwan, Iran, Algeria, and Libya are conducting such research. Argentina and Brazil went beyond research and began to develop nuclear material production facilities before their widely praised decisions to refrain from further development. Iraq actually had succeeded in producing nuclear weapons material and North Korea not only has produced it, but is probably developing nuclear weapons in which to use it. Most of the countries which are developing nuclear weapons are also developing or already have ballistic missiles. Even when sounding rockets and space launch programs are excluded, most Middle Eastern countries, North and South Korea, India and Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina, Libya and Tunisia have or are developing ballistic missiles of varying ranges and payloads.

Germany, Japan, and Canada could almost certainly develop nuclear weapons in a fairly short period of time but have chosen not to do so. Japan's recent flirtation with the idea of developing it's own nuclear deterrent in response to the North Korean threat illustrates how proliferation can fuel regional arms races.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the aftershocks which continue to rock the successor Republics have increased the risk of proliferation. In a process that might be described as proliferation by disintegration, the Soviet Union went from a single unified military command structure with control over an arsenal of some 28,000 warheads, to a loosely affiliated Commonwealth which included four nuclear-armed Republics.(2)

It is difficult to describe the magnitude of the proliferation threat caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Potential proliferation threats used to be discussed in terms of grams of special nuclear material which might be in the wrong hands.

It takes only about 15 kilograms of highly enriched uranium or 6 kilograms of plutonium to make a nuclear weapon. Just as a result of the arms control agreements already signed, by the end of the decade between 300,000 and 500,000 kilograms of uranium and 60,000 kilograms of plutonium will have been released from the arsenal of the former Soviet Union.

Building a nuclear weapon is relatively easy compared to the difficulty of refining uranium and plutonium to the concentrations required to make a nuclear explosion. The breakdown of central control in the Soviet Union and the surfeit of weapons-grade nuclear material raise the prospect that countries determined to develop nuclear weapons will not have to make their own nuclear material; they'll just buy it.

There have been too many reports of attempts to sell or buy nuclear material from the former Soviet Republics to be complacent about the security of the former Soviet stockpile. Just based on its value for use as nuclear fuel, the uranium and plutonium in warheads from the former Soviet stockpile destined to be dismantled is worth an estimated $7 billion. In a country where inflation was 1000 percent in 1993, where the currency is worthless, scientists are going unpaid by the institutes which employ them, and selling state property for private gain is common, the temptation to sell "just a little bit" of this valuable material is very great indeed.(3)

Even if our diplomatic efforts to limit proliferation are reasonably successful, we must anticipate that, over the next ten years, more states will join the nuclear club. Some of them will have interests very different from our own.

Plane Tickets to Moscow

IN THE CLOSING months of 1991, the Bush administration and several members of Congress recognized that the failed August coup and the triumph of the reformers in Russia offered an opportunity to influence the future composition and posture of the nuclear forces in the former Soviet Union. Senators Nunn and Lugar sponsored the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991. Signed by the President in December of 1991, the Act allowed $400 million of reprogrammed Defense Department funds to be used to ensure the safety and security of weapons of the former Soviet Union, to accelerate dismantlement of those weapons, and to prevent proliferation. $800 million more was added in the FY93 and FY94 budgets for a total of $1.2 billion...