What are, from this perspective, the most serious challenges the inter-national nuclear order is currently facing and which need to be addressed?
1. The main risk results from Iran’s nuclear programme. If Iran were successful in breaking the rules despite all international efforts and sanctions, and if it were able to establish itself as the key challenger to the international order and to the alleged hegemony of the West, then the nuclear order might fall apart, at least in the Middle East,
with repercussions extending far beyond the region. Whether or not the international order will falter depends on how successfully the US is able to build on the November 2013 preliminary agreement with Tehran and compel Iran to disband its nuclear weapons pro-gram- and how determined the US (as the prime guardian of the nuclear order) is perceived to be by medium-sized powers in the Middle East, and possibly elsewhere.16 The Iranian nuclear weap-ons programme is extremely dangerous, since it might result in a nuclear war.
2. North Korea is a similar case, although here, the extreme isolation of the regime is quite tangible and North Korea will not have the potential to challenge the international nuclear order in the same fundamental way as Iran. However, North Korea is situated in quite a volatile region. Hence, the nuisance potential of that state is enor-mous and could lead South Korea and Japan to envisage their own nuclear weapons options, depending on how strong and reliable the US guarantee is judged by them. The North Korean nuclear weapons programme might unsettle regional balances and prompt further proliferation.17
3. Over the last few years, modern technology in Iran and in North Korea has had an impact: Iran was able to master enrichment tech-nology, although the source of the technology is unknown, whereas North Korea has made sudden progress in missile technology, with dubious origins. Are the roots to be found in Pakistan, one of the most dangerous sources of nuclear weapons technology and mate-rial in the past?18 Or are other states implicated? It is imperative to
16 See: Joachim Krause and Charles King Mallory, IV, “Strategic Implications of the Iranian Nuclear Pro-gramme,” in Iran’s Nuclear Programme, edited by Joachim Krause, London, Routledge, 2012, pp. 11-33.
17 See: International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korean Security Challenges: A Net Assessment, London, IISS, 2011; Thomas Plant and Ben Rhode, “China, North Korea and the Spread of Nuclear Weap-ons,” Survival, Vol. 55, no. 2, April-May 2013, pp. 61-80.
18 See: Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him, New York, Twelfe 2007.
identify these sources and to contain or neutralize them.
4. It is equally imperative to restrict access to other potential sources of nuclear weapon materials or sensitive technologies not yet under international control (in particular enrichment facilities, reprocess-ing facilities, heavy water moderated reactors usreprocess-ing natural uranium, and research reactors using highly enriched uranium or heavy water).
The global nuclear strategic balance remains of paramount importance.
First, cooperation among the nuclear weapon states is essential for the func-tioning of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Second, most governments of NNWS like Brazil will take a critical look at the nature of the global nu-clear strategic relationship between the US and Russia, as well as between both those countries and China during the coming decades. For the time being, the strategic nuclear balance between the US and Russia is the most relevant issue. In the long run, the strategic relationship between Washing-ton and Beijing will become increasingly significant.
As to US-Russian strategic competition, it is bizarre that, more than twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the US are still trapped in a nuclear strategic stand-off, although the competition is no longer an arms race. Despite a remarkable reduction of more than 70% in their total strategic nuclear arsenals since 1990, the nuclear strategic stand-off still exists, with more than two thousand nuclear weapons aimed at each other ‒ some on hair-trigger alert or on short notice systems.
There are at least three different interpretations as to the causes and likely implications of the continuing strategic armaments competition:
1. The alarmist interpretation is that this stand-off is a dangerous relic of the Cold War and results in the risk of nuclear war (due to tech-nical failure). The exponents of this view complain that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) appears to codify the
ex-isting balance of terror, and that the nuclear stand-off cannot easily be defused because both sides hold to the notion of Mutually As-sured Destruction (MAD) as a means of ensuring strategic stability.
The MAD hypothesis suggests that the more nuclear weapons are available on both sides, the better the stability. Alternative modes of strategic stability have not been devised so far.19 If this is true, why does no one in high-profile positions in the US and in Russia – except the traditional arms control advocates – seem to care about these dangers?
2. There is a relaxed interpretation according to which the continua-tion of the nuclear stand-off might not be dangerous, because stra-tegic competition is over and neither side is actually planning to attack the other with strategic nuclear weapons.20 If this is true, why did the arms reduction process actually go no further than the levels established by New START?
3. The third interpretation claims that MAD has already been sur-passed by US primacy and that the nuclear strategic balance is not in a state of equilibrium. Due to massive improvements in missile targeting accuracy, conventional precision strike, anti-submarine warfare, ballistic missile and air defence, intelligence and recon-naissance, as well as in cyber warfare, the US may already be in a position of strategic superiority (or primacy) vis-à-vis Russia. In theory, the US could already destroy the nuclear arsenals of Russia, China and others. Hence, the traditional equation of MAD might
19 See, for instance: Rose Gottemoeller, Russian-American Security Relations after Georgia, Washington, DC:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008, Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin, (eds.), Beyond Nuclear Deterrence, Transforming the U.S.-Russian Equation, Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006, International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (IC-NND), Eliminating Nuclear Threats. A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Canberra, Foreign Ministry, 2009, pp. 26-28.
20 Stephen J. Cimbala, “Russian-U.S. Nuclear Force Reductions and Nuclear Proliferation,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 27, no. 5, 2008, pp. 431-450.
no longer be applicable.21 If this is true, why have China and Russia not hastened to seek a Global Zero treaty with the US?
Our intention is not to find an answer to these questions immediately, but it is obvious that the continuing armaments competition between the US and Russia is an irritant for the international nuclear order and that this problem has to be addressed somehow in the not too distant future. The same applies to the US-Chinese nuclear strategic balance. Will this balance remain as asymmetrical as it is? Or will China seek to catch up, turning strategic competition into a three-man race? How will the US react to this, and what will Russia do? These are all pertinent questions which need to be addressed.
If there were a renewed bilateral or even trilateral nuclear strategic arma-ments competition (with far-reaching consequences for the security of oth-ers including Brazil), it might have negative consequences on the political cohesion in the broad coalition that keeps the international nuclear order together. Some will seek new guarantees against nuclear threats; others may look for their own nuclear weapons. In any case, the cards will, once again, be shuffled. The international nuclear order will have to be stabilized and finalized (if it ever is) differently. Alternatively, if the three big powers can agree on a policy of minimal deterrence, the overall stability of the inter-national nuclear order might be boosted, thus opening the road towards Global Zero.