Atomic Proliferation

Report Outline
Threat of a Rapid Atomic Escalation
Twenty Years of Nuclear Weaponry
Current Efforts to Halt Proliferation

Threat of a Rapid Atomic Escalation

Communist China's second detonation of a nuclear device, May 14, gave added urgency to the unsolved problem of preventing the spread of atomic and hydrogen weapons of war. The specter of nuclear proliferation was a central concern of the 114 countries represented at recent deliberations of the United Nations Disarmament Commission in New York. It is generally assumed that widespread distribution of nuclear arms among the nations of the world would increase dangerously the possibility of nuclear war.

When the nuclear club was limited to the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, the world achieved an uneasy ability to live with the bomb. The three atomic powers showed increasing awareness of the horrors of nuclear warfare and increasing recognition of their obligation to act with special restraint in situations of grave crisis. But the rapid development and dissemination of nuclear technology, as well as a reduction in the cost of producing atomic bombs, substantially enlarged the number of countries capable of manufacturing nuclear weapons and put a new face on the question of averting the tragedy of nuclear war.

Countries Capable of Producing Nuclear Bombs

Because numerous countries now have the technological and economic capacity to undertake nuclear weapons programs, there has arisen what is called, in the terminology of the nuclear age, the “Nth country problem.” As the National Planning Association's Committee on Security Through Arms Control observed some years ago in a discussion of nuclear proliferation: