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The trouble with Weiss's complaint lies in the assumption that only the U.S. can solve what is a global problem. Says David Fischer, a former assistant director-general of the I.A.E.A.: "The U.S. can no longer legislate the world nuclear industry. That may mean more nonnuclear diplomacy rather than nuclear denial."
Well before the incoming Reaganauts decried the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, West European critics maintained that the law constituted a sledgehammer approach. They resented U.S. efforts to force them down the same road. As Bertrand Goldschmidt, a French physicist and former chairman of the I.A.E.A., puts it, "Applying nonproliferation measures is a delicate matter. It's like using drugs in medicine. If you are too strict, you can push countries into autarky."
What solutions are available? An emerging school of thought views the open acknowledgment of new nuclear arsenals as not such a bad development, especially in the case of Israel. Officially, Jerusalem's long-standing position is that it will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons to the area. Shai Feldman, an expert on strategy at Tel Aviv University, argues differently. He contends that "you can only have a credible nuclear deterrent if the other side believes you have the capability and the will to employ nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. And the only way to have a credible doctrine is to have the public behind you." Accordingly, Feldman feels, Israel should "develop the means and then openly proclaim its willingness to use nuclear weapons."
Proposals like Feldman's seem to mistake the nature of superpower deterrence. The global nuclear balance is maintained not by the mere possession of atomic arsenals, but by weapons systems that are relatively secure from enemy attack. In the Middle East, or in any other Third World context, atomic weapons and their delivery vehicles would be cruder and more vulnerable. Hence there is a dangerous possibility that open proliferation could make the use of nuclear weapons more, rather than less, tempting.
Thus there is good reason to maintain whatever forms of pressure are available and effective against would-be nuclear powers. Even if all else fails, the U.S. and its allies should press insistently to prevent any of the phantoms from testing a nuclear device. That is more than a cosmetic strategy. As the case of India showed in 1974, the brandishing of the ability to explode an atomic device can frighten other countries, in this case Pakistan, into trying to match the effort. Just as bad, such a demonstration might encourage admiring imitators.