The Nuclear Santa

It's reassuring to know that Mr. Khan sits comfortably in Pakistan under a sufficiently luxurious "house arrest" while we spend great sums and risk many lives seeking to find a much less dangerous man: Osama bin Laden. Khan is a national hero in Pakistan, which is amazingly stupid of the Pakistanis given that he helped nuclearize one of Pakistan's natural enemies, Iran. But this ring of Khan illustrates the multiplication of proliferation risks engendered when primitive nations acquire WMD knowledge. Once such knowledge begins to spread among the primitives of the world it develops an internal logic which necessarily causes it to infect ever more nations (the domino theory of proliferation). By internal logic I mean that proliferation provides more sources from which to acquire atomic knowledge and thus a greater probability of successful acquisition. Also, the anarchical nature of international relations deters states from settling for an inadequate defense capability: when their neighbors go nuclear they are constrained to follow if possible. Thus, acquisition of the knowledge becomes easier and the incentive to avail oneself of it increases at the same time. Stacking the odds against oneself is the wrong way to gamble.  

 

But, even without Khan it was only a matter of time before the more ambitious nations found a path to this capability. Maybe they would have purchased it from a corrupt scientist or, for the more advanced states, at much greater expense of time and resources, they may have developed it internally with their own scientists and engineers. Despite all this, what should make the nuke threat manageable in the long run is that an effective nuclear strike force cannot be assembled in silence--the snoops will find you out before it's ready to use. Result: deterrence. This is not true of bioweapons. They can be created in secrecy and disseminated in such fashion as to obscure the culpable party. In other words, in the worst case scenario, their development cannot be stopped and their use cannot be deterred. Knowing what is likely to follow, I am content to see the nuclear age, with all its perils and stupidities, drag itself out as long as it likes.