A Peace Beyond Control — The Age of Proliferation and Terror

In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved, and the Cold War that had long divided the world in two came to an end. The ‘balance of terror,’ in which the United States and the Soviet Union faced each other with mutual annihilation as their collateral, finally began to ease. The number of nuclear warheads was reduced by treaty, and people felt they had moved a little further from the nightmare of nuclear war. Yet power itself had not disappeared. If anything, the end of the Cold War blurred the outline of the nuclear fire and turned it into something harder to see. After the standoff between two giants collapsed, the story of the nuclear age entered a smaller, more scattered, more elusive time.

A threat grown hard to see — the post-Cold War era

During the Cold War, the nuclear threat had an easily grasped shape. Two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, faced each other holding vast nuclear arsenals. Frightening as it was, who held how many weapons, and where, was roughly visible. But once the Cold War ended, this very structure began to unravel. Might nuclear material and technology, slipping free of superpower control, flow into unexpected places? Such new anxieties began to spread quietly across the world.

The nature of the threat changed too. Alongside the vast, head-on danger of all-out nuclear war between states, smaller and less visible risks came into awareness. Might new states emerge seeking to acquire nuclear weapons? Might technology and material, now more loosely guarded, move secretly across borders? Might nuclear weapons even fall into the hands of groups that are not states at all? Such questions could not be captured by the simple bipolar structure of the Cold War.

For this reason, the post-Cold War debate over nuclear weapons came to revolve around the word ‘proliferation.’ It was not only the balance among states already holding large arsenals, but the very increase in the number of actors newly obtaining nuclear weapons, that came to be seen as threatening world stability. In this chapter we trace the events that symbolize this era, within the bounds of public fact and reporting, without one-sidedly condemning any particular country.

Two focal points — North Korea and Iran

In the post-Cold War debate over proliferation, North Korea and Iran have long been the focal points. The circumstances of the two differ greatly, but both are deeply bound up with the international framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and with the security outlook of the various states that sustain it.

As for North Korea, tensions over nuclear development surfaced repeatedly from the 1990s onward. In 1993 a withdrawal from the NPT was announced once, and through subsequent diplomacy the situation is said to have been calmed for a time. In 2003, however, a withdrawal was reportedly declared again, and in 2006 the country announced it had conducted its first underground nuclear test. Several further nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches were reported thereafter, and each time sanctions were debated in the UN Security Council. At the same time, efforts to seek a solution through dialogue have also continued, such as the multilateral consultations known as the Six-Party Talks and the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit in 2018. North Korea, for its part, is reported to have explained such nuclear development as a deterrent to protect its own security, and with the gap in positions among the parties remaining wide, the debate continues to this day.

The Iranian nuclear question is somewhat different in character. Iran has consistently maintained, it is said, that its nuclear development serves peaceful purposes such as power generation and medicine. Against this, some countries, chiefly in the West, have expressed concern that activities such as uranium enrichment could lead to weapons development. After long negotiations, in 2015 an agreement (the JCPOA) was announced between Iran and major powers, easing economic sanctions in return for limits on nuclear development. In 2018, however, the United States declared its withdrawal from this agreement, and the framework was greatly shaken. Evaluations diverge over which side’s claim is sound, and this series takes no position. What is certain is the fact that one country’s choices over nuclear weapons have long been discussed as a source of instability for an entire region.

Black markets and terror — fire that crosses beyond the state

Post-Cold War proliferation had another dark side, separate from the will of states: the existence of a ‘black market’ in which nuclear technology and components were traded unofficially across borders.

The case widely reported as its symbol concerned a scientist said to have led Pakistan’s nuclear development. In 2004 this scientist was reported to have admitted supplying the design and technology for the centrifuges used in uranium enrichment to several countries. The then director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was also reported to have pointed out that, through such a hidden network, many companies and intermediaries around the world had been involved in the illicit trade of nuclear-related technology. Even without a state acting directly, the most dangerous technology could spread quietly through a chain of individuals and firms — a fact that vividly showed the world the blind spots within the non-proliferation framework.

And there was another concern that came to be sharply felt: the fear of nuclear terror. As the Cold War ended and the management of the vast nuclear material the former Soviet Union had held was called into question, anxiety grew over what would happen if such material fell into the hands of a group that was not even a state. Even short of a completed nuclear bomb — even in the form of a so-called ‘dirty bomb,’ which scatters radioactive material with ordinary explosives — the terror it could bring to society is beyond measure. States have pressed ahead with efforts to tighten control over nuclear material, but the very possibility that power might leak from states to smaller, less visible actors is said to remain not entirely dispelled even today.

The end of the Cold War did, to be sure, push away the vast nightmare of nuclear war. But that did not mean the nuclear threat had vanished. Power had not been reduced; it had scattered. The fire once held in the hands of two giants now drifts, hard to see, toward several states and at times even beyond the outline of the state itself. How, then, is humanity to live with this fire it took into its own hands more than half a century ago? Next time, the final chapter. Between the dream of a world without nuclear weapons and the reality of deterrence, we look at the choice in which we are made to stand.