More ‘near-nuclear’ states may loom

Nations may reconsider nuclear option
South Korea, still technically at war with the north, had a secret nuclear weapons program it abandoned in the 1970s, under U.S. pressure. Hersman says its first-rate nuclear-power industry today puts Seoul in an excellent position to quickly build a bomb if it feels threatened.

Across the Sea of Japan, in the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings, the possibility of a made-in-Japan bomb was a taboo subject for a half-century. In recent years, however, as the North Korean threat loomed larger, Tokyo's leadership has spoken more openly of that option. Its leading-edge nuclear establishment is well equipped for it.

Taiwan, another Asian "rollback" state, launched a secret weapons program in the 1970s, as it watched U.S.-China relations thaw and feared losing its American nuclear shield. By the late 1980s, under U.S. pressure, it ended its flirtation with the ultimate weapon, but it's believed capable of quickly reviving the program if tensions heighten with nuclear-armed China.

In step with Iran's year-by-year advances in uranium enrichment, a process key to both nuclear power and bomb-making, Saudi Arabia and Tehran's other Arab rivals across the Persian Gulf have plunged into planning for nuclear power, with French and U.S. help. The Arabs' Gulf Cooperation Council has proposed its own regional uranium-enrichment operation.

In Egypt, last January's announcement of plans for its first nuclear power plant could signal something of a "bounceback" four decades after nationalist President Gamal Abdel Nasser briefly explored the idea of nuclear arms.

Those who monitor such developments don't predict rapidly falling dominoes — an impending "breakout" of new weapons states. Robert J. Einhorn, a former U.S. government arms-control specialist, notes that over the past 40 years more nations abandoned weapons programs than initiated them.

Instead, other countries may follow "rollback" state Brazil's example, positioning themselves as compliant with the Nonproliferation Treaty's ban on bombs, but equipping themselves with the power technology — enrichment centrifuges — that enable them "to move rapidly to weaponization if and when needed," as Einhorn says.

For some, near-nuclear may be near enough.

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