Everybody is doing it - the trade in nuclear technology

  Once upon a time, being a member of the nuclear club was relatively exclusive - these days everyone is doing it. The new diplomatic tool de jour seems to be the provisioning of nuclear technology in exchange for for extended trade links. The US has used it as a tool to cement ties with India - France did too. Russia is in talks to provide nuclear technology to Libya and Venezuela. Argentina is in negotiations with Algeria to provide them with the ability to create a nuclear power plant. United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey are all planning new nuclear plants in the near future. In the world today, 56 countries operate civil research reactors, and 30 countries have some 435 commercial nuclear power reactors with a total installed capacity of over 370 000 MW. There are many benefits of a growth in a clean energy technology like nuclear - the danger is in the potential pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

Currently, only 8 countries are known to have nuclear weapons. The odds are that given the proliferation of nuclear technology, many more will be racing to join the nuclear weapon club. What is disturbing in all these new nuclear deals is that few or any of them have required the country receiving nuclear technology to sign the non-proliferation treaty. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is a treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, opened for signature on July 1, 1968. There are currently 189 countries party to the treaty, five of which have nuclear weapons: the US, UK, France, Russia and the China (the permanent members of the UN Security Council).

Only four recognized sovereign states are not parties to the treaty and all 4 have nuclear weapons: India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. India and Pakistan both possess and have openly tested nuclear bombs. Israel has had a policy of opacity (a policy of deliberate ambiguity) regarding its own nuclear weapon technology but it is well-known they have at least 200 nuclear warheads. North Korea acceded to the treaty, violated it, and later withdrew.

What is further misleading is the under-reported concept of nuclear weapon sharing which in reality gives a lot more countries access to nuclear weapon technology if war is ever declared. NATO has in place secret nuclear weapons sharing agreements whereby the US provided nuclear weapons to be deployed by, and stored in, other NATO states. Some argue this is an act of proliferation violating the articles of the treaty. A counter-argument is that the U.S. controls the weapons in storage within the NATO states, and that no transfer of the weapons or control over them was intended “unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which the treaty would no longer be controlling”, so there is no breach of the treaty. These agreements were disclosed to a few of the states, including the Soviet Union, negotiating the treaty, but most of the states that signed the treaty in 1968 would not have known about these agreements and interpretations at that time .

As of 2005, it is estimated that the US still provides about 180 tactical B61 nuclear bombs for use by Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey under these NATO agreements. Many states, and the Non-Aligned Movement, now argue this violates the treaty, and are applying diplomatic pressure to terminate these agreements. They point out that the pilots and other staff of the “non-nuclear” NATO states practice handling and delivering the U.S. nuclear bombs, and non-U.S. warplanes have been adapted to deliver U.S. nuclear bombs which must have involved the transfer of some technical nuclear weapons information. NATO believes its “nuclear forces continue to play an essential role in war prevention, but their role is now more fundamentally political”.  NATO officials also point out that no nuclear weapons have ever been given over to non-U.S. control by the United States, so therefore there cannot have been a violation of Article I (which prohibits transferring “nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices”) or Article II (which bars “receiv[ing] the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices”)

The nuclear club is getting a lot less exclusive and with such “sharing” agreements in place there are a lot more nuclear bombs out there than the offical numbers would lead you to believe. The proliferation of nuclear power deals needs to be very carefully monitored and the non-proliferation treaty conditions of supply need to be upheld. While the world focuses on Iran and Syria and their pursuit for nuclear equity, many other countries have or are developing the technology under the radar of world opinion or monitoring. This is a case where the world needs to be very careful, consistent and observant as more countries join the nuclear race.

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