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Kennedy hastens to add that "there are countries that have gone forward in ways that we don't like. We're very concerned." Indeed, a new generation of nuclear powers, and would-be powers, is maturing. Known among experts as the "phantom proliferators," these countries are contributing the most significant uncertainties about the future of nonproliferation. The phantoms are India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and, to a lesser degree, Argentina and Brazil.
All of them have mastered, or are well on their way to mastering, the skills to produce atomic explosives. Unlike such nations as West Germany and Japan, which have also conquered the technology, the phantoms have declined to forswear the right to build atomic weapons by signing the nonproliferation treaty. As a result, some of their most sensitive nuclear activities are taking place outside the scope of International Atomic Energy Agency inspection.
Some of the phantoms are widely assumed to have atom bombs already or to be close to that goal. The major example of that ambiguous status known as having "a bomb in the basement" is Israel. The Israelis probably developed an atomic weapon as early as 1968, in all likelihood using reprocessed plutonium from their top-secret, French-built research reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert. By 1973, Israel was believed to possess at least 13 nuclear weapons.
This month the well-regarded Aerospace Daily, a Washington-based industry newsletter, added new allegations about the Israeli nuclear
arsenal. The Daily claimed that Israel has an unspecified number of nuclear-tipped, mobile Jericho II intermediate-range ballistic missiles based in the Negev desert and on the Golan Heights. The Daily also said that Israel possesses nuclear artillery shells. If true, that would mean Israel's atomic capability has been drastically underestimated. Jerusalem had no comment on the newsletter's claims.
Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work on the site. In September 1979, a U.S. satellite detected an intense burst of light, similar to the flash created by a small nuclear explosion, over the South Atlantic. A special White House panel of investigators discounted the possibility of an atomic blast, but the U.S. intelligence community has never been totally convinced.
Brazil and Argentina are thought to be much further away from bomb-making capacity, but both countries show serious intentions of retaining at least the option for weapons development, even under their recently restored civilian governments. Both also seemingly intend to involve themselves as much as possible in peaceful nuclear commerce, thus extending an expanding web of nuclear relationships.