Despite North Korea and Iran pushing ahead with their nuclear plans and Vladimir Putin having threatened to use Russia’s nuclear weapons, important red lines have not yet been crossed, said French nuclear expert Bruno Tertais in an interview with AFP.
“North Korea, China, India, and Pakistan remain determined to establish themselves as mature nuclear powers, and don’t care about entreaties to moderate, let alone disarm,” said Tertais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank.
Iran continues to enrich uranium, in violation of a near-defunct 2015 deal with Western powers. North Korea last year enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and has since fired several intercontinental ballistic missiles, in violation of UN resolutions.
On the Russian side the unraveling of the Cold War nuclear arms control architecture began with Washington’s 2001 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed in 1972, while last year Russia suspended its participation in New START, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Washington and Moscow.
“In terms of bilateral arms control, we’re coming to the end of a cycle,” Tertais said.
But he argued that this did not mean Russia and the USA were going to resume an arms race, even though both powers have been modernizing their arsenals.
The cornerstone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, is still in place, he pointed out, even though North Korea announced its unilateral withdrawal in 2003. Tertais added that nuclear proliferation has remained limited over the past 80 years, with only 9 states – the USA, Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea – possess nuclear weapons.
Additionally, taboos surrounding the testing and use of atomic weapons remain strong, as Tertais noted there had been no confirmed nuclear tests anywhere in the world for the past 5 years, adding that nuclear deterrence doctrine still holds, which is confirmed by what’s happening in Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin’s threats to use it has not been followed up, as the possibility of mutually assured destruction remains a major deterrent.
These assessments are both comforting and worrying at the same time, as the nuclear threat continues to exist and while humanity has managed to avoid a nuclear holocaust thus far, the international community has shown that it cannot do much, except remind those who have nukes of the catastrophic consequences should those weapons of mass destruction be used.
In a country that harbors no nuclear weapon ambitions, all we can do is to urge our leaders to continue to use diplomacy to help the international community exert pressure on the present and aspiring nuclear powers to curtail the proliferation of such destructive weapons before one crazy world leader gets to push the button that could end the world as we know it.*
