While bashing Iran over non-exiting nuclear weapons, the "Western" nuclear powers are starting a new nuclear arms race.
Today’s Sunday Times reveals:
BRITAIN has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the Americans, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The government has been pushing ahead with the programme while claiming that no decision has been made on a successor to Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent. Work on a new weapon by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire has been under way since Tony Blair was re-elected last May, and is now said to be ahead of similar US research.
Before, French President Chirac had French nukes reconfigured to:
launch a nuclear strike against any country that sponsors a terrorist attack against French interests.
The U.S., like the U.K is working on Reliable Replacement Warheads, which are new designed nuclear weapons, not refurbishments of really unreliable weapons. Will the old ones really get dismantled if these new ones come into service. The U.S. nuke lobby is planing a Modern Pit Facility able to produce as many new nuclear bomb kernels as at the high of the Cold War. Is that refurbishment?
By delivering know-how and nuclear fuel to India for civilian purpose, the U.S. will free Indian nuclear production capacity for military purpose. This will likely trigger a new arms race between India and Pakistan and also concerns the Chinese.
Japan has five tons of plutonium ready and could be a nuclear power in less than a year. As North Korea might have some nukes, a justification to build a Japanese nuclear force is easily available, though looking at some history one has to ask who is more right to fear whom.
All of the above will lower the threshold for others to join the "nuclear club". What is open here is the rational behind all these acts. I personally can understand North Korea and I could understand the rational of Iran, if it would decide to get nukes. As Iraq shows, both "axis-of-evil" countries are under threat.
But why are the U.K., France, the U.S. and India interested in more or better nukes at all? Sure a lot of companies will make a lot of money from the new weapons. But what is the real strategic rational?
Is there one?