Matt Yglesias writes: "If you want to halt nuclear proliferation, you need to follow the Non-Proliferation Treaty."I've heard this assertion many times, and it sounds like it makes sense, but I can't think of any logic or evidence to support it. Alternative approaches to proliferation policy haven't really been tried, so we don't know how well they'd work. Of course, it would be pretty foolish for me to say that alternatives might exist without actually proposing one, so here's one:
The Alternative: Controlled Proliferation
Since countries like the US and Russia and China and France are - let's face it - vanishingly unlikely to ever give up their nuclear weapons, this leads to a permanent state of unfairness, encouraging "rogue" states and middle-income regional powers to covertly develop their own weapons. Another problem is that, as fossil fuels run out, nuclear power will get more and more important - and, as we've seen, it's a short technological hop from electricity to bombs. Eventually, nonproliferation policy will require non-nuclear countries to wreck their economies, which of course they won't do.
So, a good idea might be to have the UN establish conditions under which the world will sanction a country to build and maintain a small number of nuclear weapons. Those conditions might include stability, functioning civil institutions, a reasonable amount of civil liberty, and participation in global institutions like the WTO. If such a system could be put in place, it would encourage countries to clean up their act and join a peaceful, liberal world order, and it would stave off the current, more dangerous form of covert proliferation. And under this system, the number and types of bombs (i.e. low-fallout) and weapons tests could be regulated, and agreements could be made to keep the weapons off of hair-trigger launch status.
Asking countries to give up nuclear weapons is like asking teenagers to give up sex. And as we all know, sex education beats abstinence education hands down.
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