FRANK BARNABY

The steady flow of authoritative information provided by SIPRI is an enormous asset to researchers, historians, journalists, commentators and all others interested in armaments and disarmament. The library of 36 SIPRI Yearbooks, in particular, is of considerable use to historians. I am mainly interested nowadays in nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism and continue to refer to the Yearbooks frequently. What do they tell us about the current state of the nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation?

The abject failure of the 2005 Non- Proliferation Treaty Review Conference underlines the parlous state of the international nonproliferation regime. We may be on the verge of a new round of proliferation in Asia and the Middle East. Many believe that the nonproliferation regime will not stop Japan, South Korea and maybe Taiwan from developing nuclear weapons if North Korea demonstrates that it has nuclear weapons by, for example, conducting a nuclear test. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons some argue that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and possibly Syria will follow suit. The SIPRI Yearbooks tell us that countries that have nuclear weapons find it difficult to give them up. Why? Officials and military people in the UK, for example, say that if the UK did not already have nuclear weapons it would not now acquire them. But having got them it is, they say, probably unwise to give them up because they cost little to maintain and they may be useful in the future in an uncertain world. You would probably find similar arguments being made in the other established nuclear weapon powers. Nevertheless, these powers do not modify their behaviour and the nuclear arms race goes on.

The only nation to have deployed nuclear weapons and then dismantled them is South Africa. This probably happened because the apartheid government of F. W. de Klerk did not want a black government to possess nuclear weapons when it came to power. Ukraine voluntarily sent its nuclear weapons back to Russia soon after the Soviet Union split up.

The importance attached to nuclear weapons by the countries
that have them is far from decreasing. In fact nuclear weapons
are now back on the international agenda in a big way-to an extent
reminiscent of the height of the cold war

It was widely thought that the nuclear arms race would end with the cold war at the end of 1989. But it was not to be. In 1998 both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, thereby joining the nuclear club. Israel has continued its nuclear weapon programme. The five established nuclear weapon powers-China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA, known as the P5-are continuing to improve the quality of their nuclear warheads. In 1995, North Korea announced that it has nuclear weapons, becoming the 9th nuclear weapon power. Many suspect that Iran has ambitions to acquire a nuclear weapon force and may become the 10th.

It is true, on the other hand, that a large number of nuclear weapons have been removed from the world's nuclear arsenals. The number of operational US nuclear weapons is now about 16 per cent of the peak number, in 1967; the number of nuclear weapons in the Russian nuclear arsenal is about 17 per cent of the peak number in Soviet times (1986); the number of British nuclear weapons is now less than half its 1969 peak; the number of French nuclear weapons is 65 per cent of its peak; and the number of Chinese nuclear weapons is at about 90 per cent of its peak.

The importance attached to nuclear weapons by the countries that have them is far from decreasing. In fact, nuclear weapons are now back on the international agenda in a big way-to an extent reminiscent of the height of the cold war. For example, the US Nuclear Policy Statement completed at the end of 2001 describes the role of US nuclear weapons well into the future, not as part of a nuclear deterrent policy but as part of the United States' war-fi ghting strategy.

In March 2002 the British Minister of Defence announced, for the first time, that British nuclear weapons could be used in a first strike and against countries that used biological or chemical weapons against British forces or targets in the UK. Both the US and British governments have now reneged on their security assurance guarantees not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them and are not allied to a nuclear-weapon power.

The political leaders of the United States believe that the possession of nuclear weapons enables them to pursue what they see as the USA's national interests. Although the Bush Administration has announced its willingness and intention to cut further the number of operational nuclear weapons it deploys, it is maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons in its core stocks and is planning the development of new strategic nuclear delivery systems-a new intercontinental ballistic missile to be deployed in 2020 and a new bomber to be operational in 2040.

Russia's political leaders, supported by the military and defence bureaucrats, believe that maintaining Russia's great power status depends mainly on keeping a strategic nuclear force and the continual modernization of this force. Russia is, therefore, as reluctant to give up its nuclear weapons as is the United States.

Russia is developing a new ICBM that can carry up to 10 warheads. It may also be working on a new manoeuvrable warhead for ICBMs. Britain and France believe that they will lose whatever remnants of their major power status that remain if they do not maintain and keep up to date their nuclear forces.

Britain will soon decide how to modernize its nuclear force, currently deployed on Trident nuclear submarines. If the Trident system is replaced, Britain is likely to maintain a nuclear force for the next 50 years. And France is developing a new nuclear-armed cruise missile for deployment with the French Air Force and Navy. China has new ICBMs and submarine launched ballistic missiles under development and some believe that China will deploy multiple, instead of single, warheads on them. China has had difficulty in developing an effective sea-based nuclear force.

Frank Barnaby fields questions at a SIPRI Yearbook press conference in the 1970

There are, then, no reasons to believe that any of the P5 powers plans to stop improving the quality of its nuclear weapons. There has been a change in the nature of the nuclear arms race. During the cold war it was mainly about numbers of nuclear weapons. Now it is about their quality-their size and weight, reliability and accuracy. We now have strong arguments in the USA in favour of the development of new types of low-yield nuclear weapons. The US nuclear weapon laboratories, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, defence intellectuals and hawks in the Bush Administration mainly make them.

The staffs at the laboratories feel threatened by the current restrictions on their nuclear weapon activities, particularly being unable to make nuclear tests. They are keen to generate a new mission, and the associated funding, to keep them in operation for the foreseeable future. Critics of any move towards the development and production of new mini-nukes argue that they would blur the distinction between modern conventional weapons and nuclear ones. Their deployment would, therefore, significantly increase the probability that nuclear weapons would be used.

With the end of the cold war, the risk of a major strategic nuclear world war has probably decreased, but the risk of a regional nuclear war has increased and is still increasing, as is the risk that terrorists will acquire nuclear explosives, perhaps the greatest nuclear danger we now face. The world is not a safer place.
It is crucially important that knowledge about nuclear and other armaments is made readily and widely available. SIPRI has been the main source of such information for the past 40 years. Hopefully, it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.