Lessons of the Next Nuclear War

It doesn't take a superpower to pose a nuclear threat. A small, poor country with a few nuclear explosives and the means to deliver them could wreak terrible damage on the United States. Even if never used, a handful of nuclear weapons merely in the possession of an unfriendly country could change a regional balance of power against the United States. Thus, the major military danger now facing the United States in the post-Soviet world is not a particular country but rather a trend: nuclear proliferation.

Because they enhance national power, nuclear weapons are potentially attractive to a wide variety of countries. Yet relatively few have these weapons. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, and China -- all do. Several others either have or are very close to having operational nuclear weapons. The number, however, is far smaller than expected in the early stages of the nuclear age. In 1963 President John F. Kennedy predicted that 15 to 20 countries would have nuclear arms by 1975. Overall, Cold War efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons have been successful.

The international spotlight falls on that effort in April, when the fifth Nonproliferation Treaty review conference convenes at the United Nations to reconsider, revise, and extend the treaty. The NPT, which came into force in 1970, now has 168 adherents. The treaty is useful; its extension, highly desirable. The course of nuclear nonproliferation in the post?Cold War era, however, will depend less on what happens at the United Nations in 1995 than in Washington thereafter. The main obstacle to the spread of nuclear weapons is not the NPT but the United States, nor is nonproliferation a single issue: it is composed of three separate problems. Each is now more complicated and urgent than in the past because the end of the Cold War has either weakened or removed the principal restraints on both the demand for and the supply of nuclear weapons. Three different types of states are candidates for nuclear armaments, and three different American policies will be required to discourage or thwart their nuclear ambitions.