Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2008

Nuclear Weapon Proliferation

Topic Host: Shannon Stowell May 28, 2008 "A growing number of diplomats and policy analysts now express satisfaction that earlier predictions of a widely nuclearized world have been proved wrong, but it is largely just the timing that was off. Non-proliferation functionaries would earnestly disagree with such a gloomy assessment, as they must because of the business they are in. It is natural that they cite their successes, and necessary that they struggle on. But despite the occasional collapse of nuclear-weapons programs, and the inconveniencing of programs in place,... over the years few can have harbored illusions about the trend. Proliferation is a ratcheting affair that moves in fits and starts, and often slips backwards, but gradually and incrementally progresses. Diplomatic efforts to suppress it are weakened by national jealousies, UN-style dithering, higher geopolitical priorities, the sheer volume of international trade, and, at the most fundamental level, the inability