‘Undeterrables’ May Soon Have Nuclear Arms

After decades of clandestine effort to develop nuclear weapons, a handful of nations with disturbing histories of aggressive behavior--the “undeterrables,” as some have called them--are nearing technological payoff time, American analysts warn.

News that Iran has obtained a device from China for producing fissionable material was only the latest alarm bell: While fewer nations are still anxious to get nuclear arms, the would-be troublemakers are moving dangerously closer to owning the weapons--for blackmail purposes, if not for actual use.

While the end of the Cold War has all but eliminated the specter of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear Armageddon and even cast doubt on the military usefulness of nuclear weapons, the urgency in preventing their spread to these determined states is “as great as ever,” according to Ronald F. Lehman, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“In a few trouble spots, like the Korean Peninsula, the Mideast and South Asia, time is running out,” he said.

North Korea is considered most dangerous, now that Iraq’s nuclear capability is being rooted out by U.S.-backed teams of U.N. inspectors. Ironically, North Korea’s push for atomic weapons may have been intensified by the end of the Cold War, American analysts say, and by the fact that the Soviet Union and China have withdrawn their nuclear umbrellas.

Whatever the reason, the Kim Il Sung regime is believed to be nearly capable of making atomic bombs.

Few developments would be more destabilizing for the region and the world. South Korea would immediately seek its own nuclear weapons, U.S. officials say, and Japan--bound to the United States by defense treaty--might do the same. China and the Soviet Union could not fail to react to such a nuclear time bomb on their borders.

Similarly, the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan could turn their squabble over Kashmir into a nuclear catastrophe for South Asia.

And Iranian militants have proclaimed that they want to pick up the torch from Iraq for a Muslim atomic bomb, ostensibly to counter Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which is believed to consist of assembly-ready components for 100 or more weapons. Tehran is also believed to be concerned about obtaining nuclear weapons to balance a resurrected Iraq somewhere down the road.

U.S. officials fear that the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union will mean the sudden emergence of several new nuclear nations whose leaders will be totally untutored in the dangers of nuclear conflict. Equally frightening is the risk that some of Moscow’s 15,000 small nuclear bombs and shells will leak into the Mideast’s arms bazaars from the 200-odd depots in which they are stored.

At the very least, Soviet export controls over nuclear materials will become less strict in the future, said Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr., director of the Arms Control Assn. And Soviet bomb scientists could hire out to other governments much as German rocketeers sold their missile know-how abroad after the Nazis were defeated in World War II.

Keeny wonders if Iraq’s nuclear program had the benefit of “foreign advisers” of some kind.

Thirty years after the start of the international atoms-for-peace effort, “basic nuclear technology is more accessible today, and the undertaking to make bombs is not so large as before,” said Keeny, a former senior U.S. official. “So there remains a major problem with countries that have the money and motivation, that are uniquely able to and have reason to pursue nuclear weapons development.”

These almost-nuclear nations have been after the bomb for several decades, according to Janne Nolan of the Brookings Institution in Washington, “and their investments are just beginning to pay off now.”

The startling discoveries about the scope, equipment and innovation in Iraq’s nuclear program “was proof that there has been a steady transferal of weapons technology around the world,” she said, including nuclear, missile and even high-performance conventional weaponry.

“Iraq was a wake-up call for us,” she said, “telling us there are highly motivated countries out there that still seek these weapons, and while you can’t generalize, you have to think that some of them are non-deterrable forces.”

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has warned against the danger of forces “undeterrable by the threat of retaliation, like Saddam Hussein.”

The Iraqi leader was apparently unfazed by the arrayed nuclear and conventional power of the United States and its coalition allies, continuing his occupation of Kuwait until driven out and launching missiles with conventional warheads against Saudi Arabia and Israel.

While most of these potential nuclear powers are located far from American shores, the United States has a big stake in preventing their spread, most U.S. experts believe. Projection of the United States’ power around the globe to further its national security interests and protect friends would be more difficult if some of the present “have-not” nations had nuclear weapons.

“If Iraq had the bomb, the Gulf War would probably have been different,” said Leonard Spector of the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace. “Would the Democrats in Congress have voted for the war if the nuclear danger was there?” he asked, recalling that the Senate vote authorizing force was a close 52 to 47.

The United States and its allies in the anti-proliferation effort have limited power to prevent a country with enough determination and resources from finding the talent and equipment--most of it not banned from international trade--to make a bomb. At most, it can deny such outlaws the political and financial benefits of full participation in the industrial world.

The picture is not totally negative, however. In fact, the political and financial leverage of the world’s industrial giants has persuaded several nuclear-capable states to forgo weapons development in expectation of greater benefits to their broader national interest:

* South Africa, much as it did with racial apartheid, has decided to scrap nuclear weapons. It is believed to have had parts for a dozen or so weapons for about 10 years, but now it is opening up all its facilities to international inspection.

* Brazil and Argentina, the two giants of South America, have also decided to forgo nuclear weapons and to undertake a program of confidence-building measures, including inspecting each other’s nuclear facilities and exchanging military experts to watch troop maneuvers, in an effort to defuse their longstanding hostility.

* France and China this year finally agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, so that all of the declared nuclear powers today are committed to the cause.

One of the main hopes of restraining North Korea now is the combined and coordinated weight of Beijing and Moscow, as well as Japan and the United States.

The Iraq experience has also persuaded many leaders of the world community to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to make greater use of its powers to implement the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At present, the agency inspects only nuclear facilities that treaty signatory countries declare open to inspection.

In the future, it will conduct “challenge inspections” of suspected facilities. While the host country can deny access, the denial will clearly suggest that it has something to hide.

But the Iraq experience has also raised doubts about the basic value of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty itself. Iraq was a signatory, and even allowed inspectors to visit, yet it was capable of proceeding toward nuclear weapons. Considerable efforts are being made to get North Korea, another signatory, to allow inspections as provided by the treaty, but their value will be dubious.

Nonetheless, few calls are heard to scrap the document.

On balance, most experts consider it useful despite its shortcomings. And recently one important source of tension among the signatories has abated--the fact that Washington and Moscow were pressuring others to shun nuclear weapons even as they maintained huge arsenals of their own.

India and Mexico have been leaders in the fight to require the five nuclear powers to undertake more disarmament measures, but the recent strategic-arms agreement and the U.S.-Soviet decisions to withdraw and eliminate most tactical nuclear weapons have muted their complaints.