The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Proliferation

In a world where the use of nuclear weapons as weapons of mass destruction has gone from an omnipresent threat to an abstract concept of history books, it is necessary to rethink the US stance on nuclear weapons. Although the past seventy years have suggested to the world that openly possessing nuclear weapons has only helped in decreasing the likelihood of war through the process of deterrence, within the past 20 years the world’s dynamic has shifted in two directions. Today, while some countries are considering phasing out all things nuclear (Anderson), and while some are even appealing internationally for a global zero stance on nuclear weapons (Gavin, “Global Zero, History, and the ‘Nuclear Revolution”), there also now exist many radical

When dealing with most states, it is recommended that the United States should first seek political preemptive action; such as seen in stage one. Looking into the past, political preemption has been successful, perhaps most notably through the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was enacted to solve the anticipated problem of horizontal proliferation. While political preemptive maneuvers require compromises that might not be preferred (i.e. the U.S. needed to agree to disarm when signing the NPT), they ultimately typically help quell the concerns of foreign nations while preserving the dominance of the U.S. nuclear arsenals. While political preemption is ideal when reasonable compromise can be reached, preemption using physical force becomes necessary when dealing with unfriendly states. To start, the U.S. should continue to maintain a very active and thorough intelligence network in order to identify nations that are seeking to create a weapons program. If a nation is identified to be either designing the materials needed for the construction of a weapon, or designing weapons themselves, the United States should without hesitation use either sabotage or, if necessary, conventional forces to disable continued production. This is necessary, as it prevents unpredictable states from acquiring weapons, therefore strengthening both US and global

While deterrence theory suggests that an absolute weapons majority is unnecessary when the use of nuclear weapons is considered rationally, it must be considered that other nations will not always succeed in thinking rationally. Part of the reason horizontal proliferation has been less prominent throughout history than initial estimates thought has been due to promises from the United States to protect foreign allies (Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition”). A disarmament of the United States’ arsenal to the point where nuclear superiority is lost could lead to states who are currently under the US’s nuclear umbrella to fear that a weakened U.S. may fail to protect them. This may inversely affect stages one and two, as these states might clamor to defend themselves by developing their own weapons program. While already covered in stage two, it is necessary to repeat that during political preemptive action, the U.S. should almost never make compromises that eliminate its nuclear superiority. Furthermore, the U.S. should make efforts to demonstrate conventional superiority, to ease concerns foreign allies may have of a waning U.S. protective force. Proving that our conventional armed forces can take the place of waning nuclear forces would be essential to preventing nuclear proliferation in allied