Ancient Secrets: Why Technological Containment Fails
The current strategy to contain the spread of nuclear weapons depends upon the technological infancy of the "bad guys." In essence, it is assumed that terrorist organisations or problematic states cannot, generally, manufacture nuclear weapons (or, at least, that these people do not have the capacity to design and assemble nuclear weapons in secret). Due to this assumption, nuclear arms control focuses on discouraging trade in nuclear weapons and keeping the number of sources of nuclear weapons small (in national terms, a single-digit number). By creating a cartel with a monopoly on nuclear weapons that refuses to sell, a consortium of countries prevents its weapons from being sold to primitive outsiders. However, using the technological advancement chasm to contain the spread of nuclear weapons is a flawed strategy based upon a faulty, overly-optimistic, overly-simplistic series of assumptions.
The first nuclear weapons were created in the 1940's. To understand why technological containment is impossible, one must consider what the world was like in the 1940's. Nuclear weapons were developed by smart people with sliderules in rooms with no computers and no air conditioning. Penicillin (refined into a useful pharmaceutical in 1940) had just been prescribed for the first time and the audio tape had was a recent innovation (1942). When the atomic bomb was first used in warfare, in 1945, Bing Crosby's 'Don't Fence Me In' was a #1 single in America and the first ballpoint pen went on sale in New York City for about thirteen dollars (over 160USD in adjusted dollars). In other words, the technology nuclear non-proliferation efforts try to contain is about as old as the ballpoint pen.
There are three reasons why depending upon the technological infancy of one's foes is a very poor containment strategy for nuclear weapons:
1) Dirty bombs (conventional explosive devices impregnated with nuclear material) allow nuclear contamination of city centres without special expertise or enriched materials. Radioactive contamination of water reservoirs or other key infrastructure can be achieved with two men and a rucksack of material.
2) Laser enrichment and other advanced methods (not requiring large and costly centrifuges) for enriching uranium mean the supplies needed to build nuclear weapons are becoming more readily-available. This will not only make it more likely small states or terrorist organisations could produce their own nuclear weapons, but makes it more likely the market price of nuclear weapons will fall to a figure within the budget of major terrorist organisations.
3) Perhaps most importantly, the idea that the "developed world" contains a predictable set of players and shares strategic interests is a faulty assumption. Those with access to the technology to build nuclear weapons are not a unified, Cold War-era group of allies, but rather individual actors with differing interests.
The adults agreeing to hide the toys has been a surprisingly successful interim solution, but it is not a viable long-term policy. Counting on the permanent technological incompetence of one's enemy is almost as dangerous as assuming his stupidity. In fact, it is simply another species of the same mistake.
