Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

Chapter 18. The Dialectics of <strong>Nuclear</strong> Disarmament and Nonproliferation357against Iran in the 1980s using chemical weapons and tactical missiles.Once the war ended, however, fears of the potential use of forceby the United States (especially upon the Republican administration’saccession to power in 2000) and by Israel (an undeclarednuclear power) took center stage, in addition to ambitions for a regionaland global status and overall prestige. The latter were connectedwith the creation of nuclear weapons in neighboring Indiaand Pakistan and Tehran’s ever more insistent assertion that it hadbecome the leader of the Islamic world following the defeat of theTaliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and in lightof the instability of the regimes in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.In this case, too, it would appear at first glance that the nucleardisarmament efforts pursued by the United States, Russia, and othergreat powers under Article VI of the NPT could hardly have beenexpected to have any influence over the suspicious aspects of theIranian nuclear program.Dialectical InterdependenceDeeper analysis, however, makes the conclusion unavoidable thatthere really has been and continues to be a positive link betweendisarmament and nonproliferation (although not a direct link, butone much more intricate and subtle).In the first place, this would derive from the general atmosphereof perceived international security under which a nation defines itsattitude toward nuclear weapons, no matter what the specific or individualfactors that might dictate such an attitude at any given time.It could hardly be considered random coincidence that serious nucleardisarmament negotiations and real nuclear weapons reduction(INF, START I, START II, the New START framework, the ABMTreaty, the CTBT, and the unilateral tactical nuclear forces cutbacksundertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia)have been paralleled by some 40 additional members that havejoined the NPT, including two nuclear powers (China and France).The Treaty was indefinitely extended in 1995, and in 1997 the AdditionalProtocol was developed. Four nations (Argentina, Brazil, Iraq,and South Africa) abandoned military nuclear programs and nuclearweapons or had them eliminated by force from outside, while threeother nations (Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine) that had been left