Chapter 2: Developing a Monitoring Strategy

The New Challenge

The breakup of the Soviet Union and the discovery of Iraq's advanced nuclear weapons development program dramatically changed the calculus of U.S. national security. For decades, the United States' first priority was to contain aggressive Soviet power, a task which required a credible deterrent. Today, the spread of nuclear weapons is a more ominous problem. As a result, concern over U.S./Soviet competition on the development of new generations of nuclear weapons (often referred to as "vertical proliferation") has become secondary to concerns over the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states ("horizontal proliferation").

The map on the following page illustrates the task that faces proliferation monitoring.3 While the list of existing or emerging nuclear nations is not long, the geographic area they cover is large. The emphasis for a non-proliferation regime, therefore, is on greatly expanded global coverage. While certain areas can be identified as especially interesting today - including the Middle East, Pakistan, and North Korea - in the future there are likely to be additional areas of concern.

Remote areas, such as the vast ocean regions in the southern hemisphere, also will need to be monitored in the event that a country attempts to test outside its own geographical borders. From the proliferator's perspective, such tests, even if detected, would have the advantage of being difficult to attribute to a specific nation. From the monitoring perspective, however, oceans have the advantage of allowing for unrestricted access to search for radioactive materials produced by an explosion or other evidence of a test.

The New Monitoring Task - existing or emerging nuclear nations

Declared / de Jure de Facto / Potential
United States Israel Algeria
United Kingdom India Syria
France Pakistan Brazil
China S. Africa Argentina
Russia N. Korea Taiwan
Ukraine Iraq
Belarus Iran
Kazakhstan Libya

Nuclear Testing and Nonproliferation

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