Nuclear “non-proliferation” – preventing the spread of nuclear weapons beyond states that already have them – has been held up as the rationale for the US-Israeli war on Iran.
In his statement announcing the start of the operation on February 28, Donald Trump said: “we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It’s a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
This highlights two lessons about the problems with non-proliferation logic as an approach to dealing with nuclear weapons. First, non-proliferation can be exploited to provide political cover for otherwise unpopular military aggression. And second, non-proliferation logic risks undermining itself by driving target states to acquire nuclear weapons.
