Whatever happens to the nuclear weapons in the disintegrating Soviet Union, the old nightmare of uncontrolled atomic proliferation is moving measurably closer to reality -- and it would not be dispelled even by an arrangement to destroy many of the Soviet nukes and keep the rest under responsible control. The Bomb may soon be brandished by a whole new class of countries -- Third World regimes far more radical and unpredictable than any of the eight present members of the nuclear club.
In fact, it is already possible to set up a crude, if debatable, timetable. North Korea might have deliverable nuclear weapons sometime in late 1993, in five years at the outside. Iran could have the Bomb in six or seven years, and possibly so could Algeria, according to pessimistic Middle East experts. Optimists think the latter two might require 10 years or never manage to develop nukes at all. But there is at least a possibility that all three will be nuclear-armed by the year 2000. Throw in the chances that Libya might be working on the Bomb -- and Western experts believe it is -- that China will continue its unrestrained sales of nuclear technology to the Middle East, and add to these cooperation among the nuclear wannabes, and the prospects get exceedingly scary.
To be sure, none of this is inevitable. It is conceivable that international pressure will cause some of the would-be nuclear powers to abandon their weapons programs, as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa appear to be doing. But that course is slow and uncertain: intelligence data on the suspects is inconclusive and open to sharp disagreement, not only about how far they are from developing usable weapons but even about how determinedly they are trying.
That consideration is not necessarily reassuring. In 1990 experts were sure that Iraq would need five to 10 more years to develop a nuclear arsenal. United Nations inspectors have since concluded that when the gulf war began last January, Saddam Hussein was as little as a year away from being able to deliver a crude nuclear bomb. U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) analysts think the war brought Saddam's program to a rude halt. But inspectors are not at all certain they have yet found all the equipment and material Iraq may have hidden away, and thus that they have eliminated the chance that Baghdad might resume a bomb-building program if it can ever get out from under intrusive international surveillance. Analysts are haunted by the thought that they might be just as badly misreading the data on other fledgling weapons programs. The U.S. is worried enough that in September it set up a special Nonproliferation Center at CIA headquarters, with 100 employees -- more than had been working on the issue throughout the government -- to coordinate and intensify collection and analysis of intelligence.
A rundown on what U.S. and allied intelligence sources already know or suspect: