Nuclear proliferation refers to the spread of nuclear weapons technology or knowledge about such technology to countries that do not already have nuclear weapons capability. Both nuclear and non-nuclear states have opposed proliferation because they fear it might destabilize international relations and increase the potential for nuclear war.
The United States emerged from World War II as the world’s only nuclear power, but the Soviet Union and Britain soon developed bombs of their own. Early attempts at nuclear non-proliferation policy focused on giving nonnuclear states access to the benefits of nuclear technology while making certain that they did not use that same technology for building atomic weapons. Of particular concern were the fissile materials plutonium and enriched uranium, created in nuclear-power production. These by-products could be used to make bombs. The first non-proliferation program was Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative, which created the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957 as an office of the United Nations. Ideally, the IAEA would collect and control fissile materials from nuclear states. It would also be responsible for making those materials available to developing countries for the purpose of peaceful energy production. Under Atoms for Peace, the IAEA was only moderately successful. It did make nuclear technology available to developing countries, but nuclear states refused to turn over their stockpiles of fissile material to the IAEA’s international control.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 made the IAEA more effective by giving it power to inspect civil nuclear facilities, such as power plants and research reactors, in order to ensure that no fissile material was being diverted into a weapons program. The IAEA system of nuclear safeguards relies on accountability for fissile materials, restrictions on access to nuclear facilities, and a system of surveillance, including on-site inspections. Parties to the NPT agree to keep detailed records of all fissile materials and any transactions involving those materials. In addition, they agree to submit to periodic inspections by IAEA personnel. All NPT non-nuclear members must agree to all of these safeguards. The five nuclear states and the non-NPT states of India, Pakistan, and Israel submit to more limited, site-specific inspections.
The NPT is limited, however, by the fact that not all states are signatories. Non-signatory states can choose to develop nuclear weapons programs without violating treaty obligations. India, Pakistan, and Israel are nuclear states that fall into this category. Although Israel will not officially claim that it possesses nuclear weapons, U. S. intelligence suggests that it does. India and Pakistan both conducted underground bomb tests in 1998. The international community is concerned about both India’s and Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons because long-standing tensions between the two heighten fears that they may use their bombs on each other. Moreover, recent evidence from IAEA inspections in Iran indicate Dr. Abdul Q. Khan, a Pakistani physicist, may have given nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.
Other states such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea have become proliferation concerns despite signing the NPT. Iraq began a weapons program in the 1970s. Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear power plant in 1981 because it feared Iraq was getting too close to building a bomb. Iraq built a new plant and continued its weapons program under the guise of civilian nuclear power production. The 1990 Persian Gulf War revealed the extent of Iraq’s weapons program and led to a reworking of IAEA inspections procedures that made them better able to detect clandestine programs. The United Nations ordered the IAEA to destroy or disable all of Iraq’s nuclear weapons capability. The IAEA had succeeded in its mission by 1998, when Iraq ceased to cooperate with the UN inspections. The United States cited concerns about Iraq rebuilding its nuclear weapons program as one reason for the second Iraq War, but no undeclared nuclear facilities were discovered.
Several countries, including the United States, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom have accused Iran, a member of the NPT, of operating a clandestine weapons program. The IAEA has conducted extensive inspections without finding evidence of fissile material being diverted for a weapons program. Moreover, the IAEA has not yet found conclusive evidence that Iran has been attempting to enrich uranium to weapons grade, although some circumstantial evidence indicates that they may be hiding an enrichment program. While Iranian trading partners in Europe, Japan, and Russia have pressured Iran to reveal any clandestine program, Iran maintains that it has a right to peaceful nuclear technology and that it is not building nuclear weapons.
North Korea also signed the NPT but withdrew in 2003. It conducted a nuclear test on October 9, 2006. North Korea joined the NPT in 1985 because the Soviets made it a condition of supplying them with a nuclear power station. The North Koreans did not fully comply with IAEA safeguards until 1992, probably because they were building a reprocessing plant that could extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel. When the IAEA inspected North Korea’s nuclear facilities, it found that the reprocessing plant had probably been used more often than North Korean officials had reported. This finding suggested that North Korea was stockpiling plutonium for weapons. The IAEA requested permission for special inspections of two unreported storage sites suspected of housing the missing plutonium, but North Korea refused access. It also threatened to withdraw from the NPT. The IAEA then reported the matter to the UN Security Council. Negotiations between the United
States and North Korea resulted in the U. S. providing $5 billion in energy assistance, including two light-water nuclear reactors that would be less suitable for producing plutonium. North Korea agreed not to withdraw from the NPT and to freeze its nuclear program. In 2003 North Korea withdrew from the NPT despite its agreement with the United States. After its withdrawal, North Korea agreed to multilateral talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. While participating in those negotiations, on January 10, 2005, North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons. In late 2005 it withdrew from the talks, and in early 2006 it conducted its first nuclear test.
The UN Security Council then voted unanimously to impose weapons and financial sanctions, demanded that North Korea eliminate all its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and called for a return to six-party talks. In December North Korea returned to the talks, quit, and came back again in February 2007. It agreed to dismantle its nuclear program but delayed implementation because it found that its funds in a Macau bank were still frozen by a U. S. investigation of the bank. When the funds became available, North Korea shut down its Yongbyon reactor in exchange for energy aid. By October 2007 a team of nuclear experts stated that they had made a good start on disabling the reactor, and North Korea had agreed to disclose the details of its nuclear program. However, after being subject to a United Nations resolution condemning its long-range missile tests in 2009, North Korea announced it was dropping out of the nuclear negotiations, expelled nuclear inspectors, and declared it would restart its nuclear facilities.
Recent fears regarding Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programs have renewed debate about what proliferation means for international relations. Some theorists, such as Kenneth Waltz, argue that nuclear weapons can actually increase international stability by making wars too costly. Other theorists such as Scott Sagan argue that state bureaucracies can make it difficult to implement the sorts of safety measures that can prevent unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon by rebels or terrorists, for example. As of 2006 the international community seems to agree more with Sagan’s position that nuclear proliferation is a serious threat to stability.
Further reading: Ian Bellany, Curbing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Manchester University Press, 2005); Nathan E. Busch, No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004); Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
—Amy Wallhermfechtel
Obama, Barack Hussein (1961- ) U. S. senator, 44th U. S. president
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama made history as the first American of African-American descent to be elected to the office of president of the United States. Obama had previously served as a U. S. senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned his Senate seat on November 16, 2008.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, to a Caucasian mother from Kansas and a black Kenyan father, both university students at the time. Obama’s father left the family and returned to Kenya when Barack was very young, and the family relocated to Indonesia after his mother remarried an Indonesian student. When he was 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, where he completed his secondary education and graduated from Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, in 1979.
Obama attended Occidental College, a small, private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California, for two years before he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He received a B. A. from Columbia in 1983 and went to work as a community organizer in Chicago, Illinois. He returned to school several years later, receiving a law degree from Harvard in 1991. Obama returned to Chicago, where he practiced as a civil rights lawyer and lectured in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. In October 1992 he married Michelle Robinson, another African-American lawyer, whom he had met while working for a Chicago firm during law school. They have two daughters.
Obama began his political career as a state senator in the Illinois General Assembly. Elected for the first time in 1997, he served in the Illinois Senate until his election to the U. S. Senate in 2004. In his candidacy for the U. S. Senate, he faced and defeated an outsider to Illinois politics, Alan Keyes, a prominent African-American conservative and former Republican presidential candidate, after
Republican Jack Ryan withdrew from the race as a result of a personal scandal. Obama was selected to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a sign that he was considered a rising star within the Democratic Party. He has authored several books, including a memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995).
U. S. Democratic presidential candidate Illinois senator Barack Obama speaks during a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 3, 2008. (Dunand/Getty Images)
Senator Obama compiled a liberal voting record while in the U. S. Senate and was rated by the National Journal the most liberal senator in 2007, based on his votes on key economic, social, and foreign policy issues. Obama successfully campaigned during the presidential election as a centrist, capturing the independent vote from his opponent, Senator John McCain, considered a moderate Republican. Although his opponents tried to bring character issues to the forefront by pointing to Obama’s lack of experience and questionable past associations, Obama deflected such criticisms, keeping the faltering economy as the central focus of the debate instead.
After reneging on his promise during the primaries to accept public financing for his campaign, Obama revolutionized campaign fund-raising, primarily through Internet donations. His $640 million in campaign funds more than doubled McCain’s fund-raising of $251 million and effectively rendered campaign finance reforms a dead issue.
With his election, Obama became the 44th president of the United States.
Further reading: Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York: Times
Books, 1995);-, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on
Reclaiming the American Dream (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006).
World History
