Nuclear Age

After the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991, the formerly antagonistic relationship between Moscow and Washington ceased to exist. The U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff, which had dominated strategic thinking in the nuclear age, was no longer relevant. Instead, thinking about the nuclear age shifted mainly to issues of nuclear proliferation and efforts to prevent (or dissuade) non-nuclear weapons states from acquiring nuclear arms. Although the United States and post-Soviet Russia continued to possess large numbers of nuclear-armed ICBMs that were maintained at full alert, fears of a large-scale nuclear war all but disappeared. Instead, strategic analysts worried about the possibility of nuclear terrorism and nuclear weapons programs under way in so-called rogue states like North Korea, Libya, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Some analysts, such as Kenneth Waltz and Shai Feldman, had long argued that nuclear proliferation should be welcomed rather than discouraged. Waltz maintained that nuclear weapons would enable relatively weak states to deter stronger and more aggressive neighbors from attacking them, in much the same way that the United States and the Soviet Union had relied on mutual deterrence to ensure peace between them. The "optimists" about nuclear proliferation (a label that was later attached to Waltz and others who shared his views) were never particularly numerous, however. In the post–Cold War world, the "pessimists" like Scott Sagan were far more common. In an illuminating exchange with Waltz, Sagan pointed to a number of dangers regarding potential accidents and unauthorized uses of nuclear weapons that would make nuclear war more likely, not less likely, in a proliferated world. Sagan and others also contended that nuclear proliferation would increase the risk that weapons might be diverted to terrorists.

Analysts who wanted to prevent nuclear proliferation differed in their views of how to achieve that goal. Some argued that unless the security concerns of proliferating states were allayed (or at least greatly mitigated), those states would be unlikely to forswear nuclear weapons. They cited the case of India and Pakistan, both of which openly acquired nuclear weapons in 1998 (though India had tested a nuclear bomb as far back as 1974), as an example of the pressures on states to build nuclear weapons in order to deter hostile neighbors. Analysts who subscribed to this view maintained that the best way to prevent nuclear proliferation was to address the underlying security concerns of potentially vulnerable states through international mediation. Other analysts wanted a more active policy to discourage nuclear proliferation. They advocated a "counterproliferation" strategy that would deal with regional security concerns but would also include a variety of sanctions against states that continued to pursue nuclear weapons programs. These sanctions would range from diplomatic pressure to condemnations by the UN Security Council to economic penalties and ultimately to military action. Scholars who believed that military action might, in the end, be desirable argued that Israel's successful raid in 1981 against Iraq's Osiraq nuclear plant underscored the importance of not ruling out the military option. Had Israeli jets not bombed the facility, Iraq most likely would have been able to build a nuclear weapon by the late 1980s, well before its program came under aggressive international scrutiny.

The prospect of nuclear terrorism was the other major issue of concern to specialists on nuclear weapons in the post–Cold War world. Contrary to popular wisdom, the threat of nuclear terrorism was not at all new. Concerns about the possibility that a nuclear bomb would be smuggled into a U.S. port had arisen as far back as the mid-1950s. Analysts such as Schelling, Brian Jenkins, and Paul Leventhal had written books and articles about the risk and implications of nuclear terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. For the most part, however, the question of nuclear terrorism during the Cold War was generally overshadowed by the U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff. Only in the post–Cold War world, when the U.S.-Soviet confrontation no longer dominated strategic thinking, did analysts devote much greater attention to the terrorist threat. This focus intensified, for understandable reasons, after the large-scale terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Although experts on nuclear proliferation generally agreed that few if any terrorist groups had the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon on their own, they warned that a weapon (or at least crucial components, including fissile material) might be furtively supplied to a terrorist group by a state like North Korea or by a group of rogue scientists. The nuclear-supply trail involving the nuclear weapons programs of both Pakistan and North Korea that came to light in 2004 reinforced these concerns. Most analysts believed that such channels could be closed through concerted international action, but they held out little hope that the risk could ever be fully eliminated. Thus, even after the Cold War ended, the perils of nuclear weapons continued to dominate thinking about the nuclear age.