NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS
July 7,
2008: Over the last 63 years, ten
nations (United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, South Africa,
Pakistan, India, and North Korea) have developed nuclear weapons. South Africa
developed theirs in the 1970s and 80s, but dismantled the program in the early
1990s. They are the only nation, so far,
to develop nukes, then give them up.
Belarus,
Kazakhstan and Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union
dissolved in 1991 (and everyone agreed that whatever Soviet assets were on the
territory of the 14 new nations created from parts of the Soviet Union, were
the property of the new country.) Russia, with the financial and diplomatic
help of Western nations, bought the nukes from those three nations and
dismantled the weapons.
Argentina,
Brazil, Libya, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan all had nuclear
weapons development programs, but dismantled them, either voluntarily or
through various forms of persuasion.
Iran and
Syria currently have nuclear weapons development programs, but are under great
pressure to stop them. Some other industrialized nations (like Japan and
Taiwan) are believed to have plans to rapidly (in less than a year) develop
nuclear weapons. This would be done if they were threatened by a nearby nuclear
power (like China, or, for Japan, Russia as well).
North
Korea is also under a lot of pressure to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
Apparently, North Korea has only developed a crude bomb design, and needs lots
of money, and several years, to create a usable bomb (or warhead for one of its
ballistic missiles).
