The Nuclear Lesson
International events over the past few years have been tumultuous and instructive. But no lesson is more clear than the urgent necessity for middling powers to acquire nuclear weapons. Full Stop. In the cacophony of events, a singular imperative has been made very clear to non-nuclear nations. You need nukes.
The Ukraine
When the USSR broke apart, the freshly minted nation of Ukraine inherited an enormous nuclear arsenal. 176 advanced ICBM’s, each with multiple independent warheads, capable of hitting virtually any spot on the planet, a fleet of heavy nuclear bombers, and a cache of 1700 nuclear warheads, making the Ukraine the 3rd greatest nuclear power, after Russia and the United States. For a brief historical blink of an eye, Ukraine was capable of unilaterally starting WW3 and sending us all back to the stone age.
Sensible heads prevailed. After all, in the new era of good feelings, such a massive and expensive arsenal would not be necessary. It was the End of History after all. Ukraine surrendered its entire nuclear arsenal. In exchange the US, Russia, and the UK signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. Each signatory guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine. In essence they disarmed because they were convinced that they now lived in a good neighborhood.
Twenty years later Ukraine’s most relevant guarantor, Russia, had reneged and seized Crimea in a coup-de-main. Large portions of eastern Ukraine fall under de facto Russian control as well. In such a relatively short space of time the mood had reversed completely. Ukraine had no hope of defending itself, by conventional or any other means. Only the interference of a serious power, a nuclear power, could seriously check Russia. The hostility of these powers was the only real limit to what Russia could acquire, preventing a wholesale revanchist takeover of the country.
If they had kept their nukes, Crimea would have no doubt remained soundly Ukrainian.
North Korea and Iran
As recently as 10 years ago there was serious talk of bombing North Korea for their continued threatening gestures towards American allies South Korea and Japan. They were considered part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ and thus, presumably, a valid target for American adventurism. Our enthusiasm for toppling undesirable regimes, such as Iraq’s, must surely have frightened those of Iran and North Korea.
It should come as no surprise then that these two countries made bee-lines for nuclear weapons. While Iran’s seriousness may have been doubtful, we know with confidence that North Korea has produced some small number of nuclear weapons. While they may be relatively primitive, even a primitive nuclear weapon is still, well, a nuclear weapon.
Now that North Korea safely has nukes, they can rest assured that they will not be bombed anytime soon. All discussion of this seemed to magically die off when news of their atomic capabilities was announced. Although getting the bomb in the first place required going totally rogue against UN and international sanctions, now that the regime has gotten there, they probably feel pretty safe, at least against direct conflict from outside.
Israel
The Arab nations used to have the goal of wiping Israel off the map as a realistic aim. In several wars they tried and nearly succeeded. Destroying Israel was a plausible outcome each time. In 1973 they came very, very close. Too close. Israel sensibly got itself nukes and suddenly… poof, no more regional wars. Today ‘destroying Israel’ is no longer a realistic aim for its opponents; at most it is hyperbole designed for domestic political consumption (Iran for instance). Without nukes this would not have been possible. With purely conventional weapons Israel’s survival would probably not be sustainable over the long haul. There are 8 million Israelis and 82 million Egyptians. But once Israel got nukes its eradication became infinitely more difficult for its enemies.
Why It Used to be OK not to have Nukes
Medium-sized powers typically don’t have nukes. It’s not that they are that hard to produce. They’re not. Any modest power can acquire them, or even develop them in-house. The technology is not all that difficult. But for most countries, it was not necessary. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, most countries of geopolitical significance have been covered by someone else’s nuclear umbrella, whether that of the US or of the USSR.
Major nations that are quite powerful in their own right, like Germany, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and many others, felt no need for nukes. Many of them are NATO countries that get ‘nuke sharing’ with the US. But this program is mostly a facade. America owns the nukes.
Simply put, for the most part these countries just didn’t need nukes. America (or the USSR) would nuke on their behalf. For example, China has nukes but Japan doesn’t. If China ever nuked Japan, the US would nuke China. Everyone knows it. As an historical aside, in the 1950s, when the guarantee from the US was in doubt, the UK and France developed their own nuclear capability specifically because they did not trust the US to nuke on their behalf. More on this later.
So long as you had someone to cover your nuclear back, it was not necessary to have nukes, even if you were a decently respectable power yourself (Canada, Sweden, Egypt, etc).
What if the American Guarantee is in Doubt?
If the nuclear guarantee from the US ever comes into doubt, then all bets are off. It becomes logically imperative for individual nation-states to acquire nukes, even if they morally and culturally object to them (Japan, Germany). The US does not have to declare that it is abandoning its allies. Nothing that flagrant is necessary. Even a shadow of a doubt is enough. No leader can responsibly allow himself to be bullied by a nuclear neighbor.
Nukes Beget Nukes
In fact the propensity for nuclear proliferation is much worse than generally imagined. When the first neighbor in a region gets nukes, its neighbors will feel dramatically more impelled to get their own nukes. It can go like a chain reaction. If Iran ever got nukes, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would feel obliged to also get nukes. Right there the odds of a nuclear conflict would rise by an order of magnitude. The pathways to catastrophe explode exponentially.
American Withdrawal
American strategic withdrawal from world affairs is inevitable. The unipolar world is ending, even if we in the US are in denial about it. America’s waning influence will embolden regional powers to become… powerful. Countries too cowed by American might to try to become nuclear powers may dare to do so when the stick is distant and non-persuasive. This could easily trigger the game-theory-chain-reaction by which the iron laws of self-interest kick in, like an explosion of pent up energy. With the absence of the world hegemon in each nation’s local affairs, the temptation to become a nuclear power, and to try to assert one’s self forcefully in regional matters, will become inevitable.
History shows that nukes are actually a really smart asset to have on-hand. Countries with nukes don’t get bombed. Russia doesn’t occupy their territory. They don’t get driven to the sea. Countries without nukes are far more vulnerable. Getting nukes is an extremely smart move for a country in a bad neighborhood. This inexorable logic, alongside waning American influence, will drive the acquisition of nukes world-wide.
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