Do we oppose proliferation of nuclear weapons because of the rogue quality of the two regimes furthest advanced on the road towards acquiring nuclear weapons — Iran and North Korea? Or is our opposition generic — does it extend even to fully democratic countries? How far are we prepared to go in resisting proliferation? And is it possible for one country alone, no matter how powerful, to become the sole custodian of the task of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons? And, if not alone, with what combination of powers should the United States act?
Iran brings home the complexity of these issues with particular urgency. North Korea is an isolated country that makes no significant contribution to the economy of any other; it is, if anything, a drain on any associate seeking to sustain its fragile and oppressive economy. North Korea’s neighbours — with the possible exception of South Korea — agree that a nuclear North Korea presents a major, and perhaps unacceptable, security risk. By contrast, Iran is a large oil producer, with a growing, diverse and capable population and a serious industrial potential. By 2050, its population is projected to exceed that of Russia.
Several major states have an interest in good relations with Iran for economic reasons; some are afraid of its terrorist potential and demonstrated ruthlessness. Its immediate neighbourhood contains some countries that welcome the enhanced risk a nuclear Iran poses for other countries, especially for the US.
Optimism for progress on eliminating the military nuclear capacity of North Korea can be based on possible pressures of neighbouring countries on which it depends economically. The case of Iran is more complex. As the tangled issue moves to the centre of international diplomacy, it is important to clarify the strategy on which policy is to be based.
During the Cold War, all of the principals who might have to decide on the issue of nuclear war faced the awful dilemma that such a decision could involve tens of millions of casualties and yet that a demonstrated willingness to run this risk — at least up to a point — was necessary if the world was not to be turned over to ruthless totalitarians.
All Cold War administrations navigated between these shoals. Deterrence worked because there were only two major players in the world. Each made comparable assessments of the perils to them of the use of nuclear weapons. But as nuclear weapons spread into more and more hands, the calculus of deterrence grows increasingly ephemeral and deterrence less and less reliable. It becomes ever more difficult to decide who is deterring whom and by what calculations.
Even if it is assumed that aspirant nuclear countries make the same calculus of survival as the established ones with respect to initiating hostilities — an extremely dubious judgment — new nuclear weapons establishments may be used as a shield to deter resistance, especially by the US, to terrorist assaults on the international order. Finally, the experience with the ‘private’ proliferation network of friendly Pakistan with North Korea, Libya and Iran demonstrates the vast consequences to the international order of the spread of nuclear weapons even when the proliferating country does not meet the formal criteria of a rogue state.
For all these reasons, it is the fact, not the provenance, of further proliferation that needs to be resisted. The ‘loathsomeness’ of a regime that undertakes proliferation compounds the problem and provides a sense of urgency, but in this analysis, it is not the decisive factor. We should oppose nuclear proliferation even to a democratic Iran.
This reality is often obscured by two essentially peripheral considerations: Proliferating countries invariably present their efforts as goals to which they have every right to aspire, such as participation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy or enhancing electricity generation. In Iran’s case, this is clearly a pretext. For a major oil producer like Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources. What Iran really seeks is a shield to discourage intervention by outsiders in its ideologically based foreign policy. This is the main reason why it will be difficult to fashion a package of material incentives to spur denuclearisation of Iran. For most foreseeable incentives, in one way or another, increase Iran’s dependence on the states against which the proliferation is really directed and probably increase Iran’s capacity to threaten them by other means.
At the same time, several European allies treat Iran’s nuclear ambitions as at least partially, perhaps largely, defensive. In their view, they spring from Iran’s geographic position, wedged as it is between nuclear neighbours or near-neighbours — India, Pakistan, Russia and Israel. They believe that Iran’s nuclear impulse can be softened, perhaps even ended, by conciliatory diplomacy. Many of them see in talks with Iran a replay of the issue that they believe underlay the debate over Iraq: the European approach to international relations via law and multilateral institutions vs. the American propensity for pressure.
In fact, the conflict between conciliation and pressure is as unreal as it is standard. Diplomacy is about demonstrating to the other side both the consequences of its actions and the benefits of the alternatives. No matter how elegantly phrased, diplomacy by its very nature implies an element of and a capacity for pressure. One reason why European negotiators have made the limited progress they have on the nuclear issue with Ira
