How Israel's Iran strikes might supercharge the global nuclear arms race
South Korea was always told it did not need its own weapons because it was protected by Washington's 'nuclear umbrella.' Now — after Trump openly suggested that it might have to pay billions of dollars for U.S. military support — South Koreans increasingly want their own warheads, with a poll by Gallup Korea last year putting support at 72.8%.
There's a smaller but growing debate in Germany, which signed a treaty upon unification in 1990 saying it was never allowed to own nuclear weapons. The pollster Civey found in March that 38% back the idea.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in March that the 'profound change of American geopolitics' means his country must assess nuclear options. And even Japan — where such a measure is taboo after the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of War War II — a once verboten debate has stirred discussion of the issue.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an ex-commanding officer of the U.K.'s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, believes Israel had no choice but to attack Iran, given it believed it was about to produce a bomb. He also thinks nuclear weapons have historically contributed to global peace.
Nevertheless, the global current picture worries him gravely.
'As long as there is parity and equilibrium between the superpowers, then it will carry on being the guarantor of peace,' he said of nuclear weapons. 'However, all this proliferation is creating a non-equilibrium.'
While the weapons programs of Washington and even Moscow may be 'robust enough to make sure a misjudgment, an accident or a misinterpretation doesn't lead to somebody firing off a weapon,' he said, 'I would not be so confident with some of the others: Iran, potentially Pakistan and particularly North Korea.'
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