Is the Spread of Nuclear Weapons Inevitable?

Event Details

George Perkovich, a scholar from the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, gives a lecture on nuclear proliferation and why he is optimistic that it can be contained. He argues that the state of international proliferation is not as bad as it has been in the past, as North Korea is the only hostile state believed to posses a nuclear weapon and Iran is the only hostile country with a current nuclear program. Contrarily, in to the 1980s numerous countries had nuclear program including Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Furthermore, he argues that President George W. Bush has created an atmosphere that he perceives as less favorable for nuclear proliferation as more countries are becoming involved to help solve the nuclear problem. Finally, he believes that it is feasible to create a strategy to prevent nuclear proliferation. The strategy he advocates is known as "Universal Compliance" which, unlike the Non-Proliferation Treaty, includes non-state actors and states not part of the non-proliferation treaty such as India, Pakistan, and Israel. This aspect will make the rules of non-proliferation universally applicable. Additionally, to ensure the adherence to new nuclear rules he contends that non-coercive methods must be implemented to overcome the contradictions in allowing certain states to posses nuclear weapons while denying others the right. Dr. Perkovich suggests incentives must be provided to prevent proliferation, nuclear material must be more carefully monitored by international standards, nuclear inspectors must be appointed for each country to report to the head of state, extraneous nuclear material must be retrieved, trafficking of material must be crackdown upon, a comprehensive test-ban treaty must be made by America and others, and new nuclear weapons must not be produced. He suggests that the Iranian nuclear problem is critical because it will set the tone of proliferation in the future. Perkovich argues that stronger more focused efforts must be applied to Iran to prevent this problem from realizing. During the questioning session issues of technological advancement, trustworthiness, energy dependency, nuclear warheads aimed at Russia and America, Serbian nuclear material, passing more restrictive treaties and nuclear warfare are discussed.