Aside from Israel, which is so public by now that it isn’t really “undeclared,” I doubt any others do. The transparency of info these days is too much to keep it secret.
I see this idea posted often (here and many other places). I believe it but I have to ask…how do we know this? Is there any proof or is it just what everyone thinks is true? Might be the most clever thing the Israelis ever did…no nukes (and associated costs/effort) but make everyone think they have them for deterrence. Best of both worlds for the Israelis.
The Apollo affair at NUMEC happened at a particular time (pre-Nuclear Regulatory Commission) when there was lax security controls on nuclear material contractors and the United States was producing weapon-grade material a record rates. Today, there are much tighter regulatory controls on nuclear materials, and while you might not have all the confidence in the world about the ability of the NRC to oversee and impose those regulations, the reality is that we are producing a tiny fraction of new fissile nuclear material—almost none of it “weapons grade”—and only a very modest amount of reprocessing of existing materials recycled from decommissioned nuclear weapons in just a handful of facilities.
It is certainly possible that a bad actor could purchase or heist material from a less restrictive state like Pakistan or North Korea but that doesn’t seem to be happening (likely because their costs are so high that no small state could afford it) and even though the international nuclear security and surveillance regime has been pretty gutted in the last few years it would be surprising to have no indication of such activities going on at the scale required for a nation to build a viable nuclear arsenal.
Aging of the fissile material isn’t really at issue; correctly produced 235U and 239Pu will be viable for many decades, maybe centuries, but the tritium (3H) required for compact boosted fission weapons suitable for ballistic or cruise missile delivery has to be regularly produced and separated. Separating tritium isn’t difficult but producing it requires thermal neutron bombardment of 6Li which generally requires having an operating nuclear reactor. (There are other means of generating thermal neutrons but not at a rate high enough for effective tritium breeding on an industrial scale.)
Proof:
“Israel lets Mordechai Vanunu discuss its nuclear program on primetime”
Who the Mordechai Vanunu? I’m glad you asked:
Stranger
So…if nuclear weapons degrade AND a country needs a massive and very expensive refining ability to make new nuclear material how does Israel keep current when it is suggested no one else could possibly do that and hide it?
Israel spends an enormous amount of money on its nuclear establishment and considers it a cornerstone of their ability to resist any kind of pan-Arab incursion. And except for tritium (which Israel can and does produce) the fissile material in nuclear weapons does not degrade in human timescales. There is really no question that Israel has advanced nuclear weapons and has tacitly indicated that they will use even if they do not openly admit to it. This has been known for several decades. Are you not aware of this?
Stranger
Just trying to align the dots of having to have massive refining ability that can’t be hidden with a nuclear power that doesn’t seem to have a refining ability. Nuclear power plants are not enough.
Having a single nuclear weapon is not viable for deterrence; a state needs to have a significant arsenal and a robust delivery system, both to pose a broad existential threat to an opposing state and to be able to exercise retaliatory capability. Pakistan doesn’t have that many weapons to begin with and the blowback of having another state use one of their weapons for terrorism or first strike almost certainly outweighs any price some bad actor might we billing to pay for one. But they are certainly most willing to export nuclear weapon expertise.
Not “refining”; enrichment via isotope separation, a capability confirmed by Mordechai Vanunu and since tacitly advertised by Israel even while the official position about their nuclear arsenal is “No comment”. Please go back and read the links I provided above.
Stranger
How is Israel hiding this then? ISTM this is the giveaway. You can’t hide such a large, power hungry site that requires very specialized equipment that very few companies in the whole world make.
Iran tried to hide their enrichment facility. We found it and attacked it (successfully) with cyberwarfare.
To be clear, I believe Israel has nukes. I am unclear how they are the only one who can hide it and make it only speculation that they have them? Why can no one else do the same?
ETA: And how is weapons grade fuel in a “stash” fundamentally different than an assembled weapon? Why would a stash be difficult where having a built weapon isn’t?
They are not “hiding” their nuclear facilities. Obfuscation perhaps.
Yes, it’s an open secret. But nobody knows exactly what they have, and that works to their advantage. Any country that might nuke Israel, or other wise do them great harm doesn’t know what Israel can use pre-emptively or in retaliation. Any country with minimal nuclear capability will not want to reveal everything they have. I’m sure even the countries in who participate in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty are all hiding something.
And let’s not forget that dirty bombs can be just as effective as real nukes.
Not really; the scale and range of radiological “dirty bombs” and the inability to effectively counterstrike or destroy critical infrastructure limits them to being a terror weapon that is just marginally more effective than chemical warfare. Nuclear fission and fusion weapons and the means to delivery them at international—and particularly intercontinental—range poses an existential threat to entire nations and potentially even industrial society at large.
Stranger
The unaddressed question here is not whether a country has nuclear weapons, but what happens next?
For the history of the Cold War, nukes were ticking time bombs. They itched at the trigger fingers of the generals, the ultimate weapons rotting away decade after decade without being used. Accidents, misunderstandings, false signals constantly making them suspicious that the other side had already started a war.
I think - a hopeful think - that every country which possesses a working bomb understands that no scenario ever stops with a limited win: the bombs keep rolling out, possibly from unexpected places. This is almost certainly the only reason why a third bomb has never been dropped outside a test.
And this is also why countries that could feasibly manufacture nukes decide not to do so. Every additional nuclear power upsets the strategic - and terror - balance a bit farther. They cannot be simple deterrence without an particular enemy to deter. The Netherlands has none; if the American umbrella isn’t sufficient their one extra bomb will do nothing good.
Every American president has found that maintaining a nuclear arsenal constrains their actions. The sane ones have been trying to get rid of as many as possible since the end of the Cold War. Trump, when he heard that we used to have 30,000 weapons and now had 2,000, angrily asked why he couldn’t have 30,000. Keep that in the back of your mind for the next four years.
And if you want to stop sleeping now, just read Fred Kaplan’s The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Totally America-centric but all governments and all militaries must go through the same dance.
The threat isn’t that a rational actor will elect to use nuclear weapons in a ‘first use’ scenario or would intentionally provoke another into doing so; it is that either you have an irrational leader with no real restraint, or a ‘fog of war’ incident where a ‘rational’ actor perceives an active threat when it doesn’t actually exist, either by error or manipulation of data. As long as nuclear weapons exist that will be a threat (and has come perilously close to occurring on several occasions, some virtually unknown to the general public), and it isn’t as if all of the good intentions and rational arguments for disarmament are going to make those arsenals and stockpiles go away in the foreseeable future.
Stranger
Obviously not the same actual destructive power as nukes, but just as effective as an unknown small number of nukes in affecting policy decisions. Even the actual fission weapons small countries are attempting to build include the fear that they won’t go bang as intended but still disperse radioactive material over a populous area.
No, they aren’t, as evidenced by the fact even nations with very limited resources such as Pakistan and North Korea eschew them, instead spending orders of magnitude more money to build actual nuclear detonation weapons. If radiological weapons were “just as good” for deterrence purposes, these nations would build and deploy them instead of going to extraordinary lengths to build fissile weapons.
Stranger
Yeah. The furor over “dirty bombs” is a matter of political propaganda and popular ignorance, not actual military capability. It would likely work real well as a terrorist weapon for the same reason; public perception would ignore the reality. But not against anyone willing to just ignore pop culture and approach them realistically.
This becomes a highly significant geopolitical strategy for the tier 2/3 nations when you fold in considerations relating to the US’s perception of it’s self interests as illustrated by the different approach to Iraq and North Korea
True.
This leads to an interesting disturbing dynamic as the Chinese build up their deliverable arsenal from “trivially few” to “rather a lot actually”.
In some ways the Chinese are much more aligned with Russia than with the US. Yet in other ways their interests lie more with the US than with Russia. The Chinese may not acknowledge this latter bit publicly, but they do know and act on it.
In any 3-cornered scenario it is impossible for each actor to match the other two taken as separate actors. Each actor will always feel (and be) outnumbered / outmatched by the rest. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking wrestling or nukes. If the three-some can settle into an inseparable team versus one solo then, and only then can the situation become stable. At least until the alliance breaks down.
One-on-one deterrence theory is a very well-developed science. Shame that each of US, Russia, and China have developed it into very different forms.
Nobody has a good handle on 3-way deterrence theory. And there are good game-theoretic reasons to suggest there cannot be a stable equilibrium.
This is probably paywalled but is a good intro into the issues:
Even the “one-on-one” deterrence theories are pretty suspect and largely based on spurious reasoning and post hoc rationales, but as you note multiple opponent ‘games’ are inherently unstable, prone to misinterpretation and brinksmanship.
Stranger
In the early days of the US amassing nuclear weapons, the war plans called for strikes on Chinese military bases pro forma, even if they were in no way involved in the Russian provocation. To the military, commies were always part of the enemy. The operations plans didn’t remove non-involved Chinese bases until 1983, ten years after Kissinger blew his stack, reminding the Chiefs that Nixon had just “opened” China.
If that relieves you in any way, the Chinese were put back in 1998.
The Chinese consider Russia a burden, much like they do North Korea. I am unconvinced that they see the world as anything other than a two-way tussle for dominance. Gaming scenarios need to account for Russian assistance or interference, but superpower status does not.
I wrote this before reading your linked article, but that’s just the same old story of more nukes, more nukes, more nukes.