India, Pakistan, and North Korea have demonstrated nuclear weapons capability through testing, and Israel is generally acknowledged to have the capability as well. Clearly, nuclear weapons have not been confined to the P5 “official” nuclear weapons states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. In fact, the non-proliferation architecture has been reasonably successful. More recently, initiatives such as the IAEA Low Enriched Uranium Bank (with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) playing a catalytic role both conceptually and financially) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (which has yet to enter into force and is opposed by the nuclear-weapon states) demonstrate the continuing focus on Eisenhower’s vision. The Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), creation of an arms-control architecture between the United States and the Soviet Union (later Russia), establishment of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are some of the milestone achievements for operationalizing the Atoms for Peace vision. The irony of having U.S.-supplied weapons-useable material in HEU fuel sitting in Tehran even today is not lost on many participants in the non-proliferation dialogue.Įventually, the world saw the building of institutional structures to achieve the Atoms for Peace vision: reversal of nuclear stockpile build-up and the provision of nuclear technologies for energy, medical, and industrial uses. The following years and decades saw both the continued build-up of nuclear weapons arsenals, eventually reaching tens of thousands of weapons, and Western assistance to Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, and others in starting nuclear reactor programs, often with the supply of high-enriched uranium (HEU) for fuel.
The dual nature of nuclear fission-both risk and opportunity-was recognized almost immediately after the seminal physics discoveries of the late 1930s and was articulated as a matter of policy in Eisenhower’s consequential Atoms for Peace speech in 1953. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace,” United Nations General Assembly, December 8, 1953 The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.