MOSCOW, RUSSIA - MAY 5: (RUSSIA OUT) Russian RS-24 Yars nuclear missile complex (NATO reporting ... More name: SS-29) arrives during the main rehearsals of the military parade, in the Red Square on May 5, 2024. More than 9,000 participants and 70 military vehicles and planes are expected to attend the Red Square Victory Day Parade, scheduled for May 9. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images) Getty Images The attacks by Israel and the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear program revitalize a question that has hung over the entire post-WWII era. Will diplomacy or military force ultimately prove more able to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons across the globe? Cases Where Military Action Have Stopped Proliferation At first, the record may appear mixed. Military force has shown success in certain cases. Aerial bombing by Israel, for instance, decidedly ended the weapons programs of Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. It can be argued that the U.S. nuclear “umbrella” protecting NATO countries and allies Japan and South Korea has been highly effective in keeping these states from building their own nukes. South Korea has a robust nuclear energy program but has not sought to build a weapon, despite its hostile northern neighbor having done so. More generally, some strategists maintain that the policy of “peace through strength,” by which the buildup of nuclear arms is thought to deter any attack, has been essential to preventing nuclear war by the threat of overwhelming retaliatory response. Decades of diplomacy, meanwhile, failed to stop either South Africa or North Korea from acquiring the bomb. That Pretoria gave up its weapons after the Cold War ended and the country abandoned Apartheid does not change this fact. Neither did negotiations of any kind bring an end to the nuclear black market run by the Pakistani engineer, Abdul Qadeer Khan, which operated from the mid-1980s until 2003. Khan’s network involved a number of middlemen and suppliers and sold technology, designs, and equipment to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and possibly other states as well. MORE FOR YOU Diplomacy Has Been More Successful Than War, But Has Its Limits Despite these exceptions, no better example exists for the role of diplomacy than the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Created in 1968 and ratified in 1970, the NPT now has 191 nations as members and stands as among the most successful international treaties in history. Only four countries have not signed on: India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Sudan. Only one state, North Korea, has ever withdrawn from it. Less well-known are two other pillars of the NPT: nuclear disarmament and ensuring access to peaceful nuclear technology. An example of the first was the 1994 Lisbon Protocol, by which Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan joined the NPT and gave up all nuclear weapons—a total of more than 6,000 warheads—remaining within their borders when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Regarding peaceful technology, in 1970, there were 82 civilian power reactors worldwide in 11 nations. Those numbers surged to 350 reactors in 26 countries by 1985 and are now around 440 in 31 nations, according to the World Nuclear Association. As the NPT watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency has had a role in the nuclear programs and related safeguards of all these nations, including India and Pakistan which are not NPT members. A key diplomatic achievement, on the other hand, resulted from the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1967, Latin American and Caribbean nations negotiated the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the first Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone, prohibiting the development, possession, testing, stationing, and transport of such weapons. Four other such zones now exist, for Oceania and the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, forming a central component of global non-proliferation efforts. Another turning point came with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 between President Roland Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This eliminated an entire class of weapons and put in place a verification regime that included actual on-site inspections with continuous monitoring by each side. US President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, stand in front of ... More the Hofdi House during their summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Saturday, October 11, 1986. (Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images) Getty Images The INF Treaty proved that arms reduction could be done on a large scale, and this was pursued again after the end of the Cold War. A series of new agreements, beginning with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, succeeded in ridding the world of more than 85% of all nuclear weapons by the 2000s. At their peak in 1986, these weapons numbered more than 70,000. Today, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates there are only about 12,200, with roughly 4,000 actually deployed. This defined a major accomplishment of nuclear diplomacy, elevated by the fact of four nations having given up nuclear weapons and only one, North Korea, acquiring them during this time. The Future of Nuclear Unfortunately, the New START Treaty, agreed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, has now been suspended by Russia. At present, there are no longer any active nuclear treaties between the two nations who hold 87% of all warheads. Plus, China is now on trend to increase its nuclear weapons total from around 300 in 2020 to 1,500 by 2035, equaling deployment levels of the U.S. and Russia. In the meantime, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and possibly Russia are all increasing their stockpiles. It seems more important than ever for world leaders to prioritize diplomacy aimed at nuclear arms control. This returns us to Iran. Non-partisan experts vary in their evaluations of the damage done to the country’s nuclear program by the war in June, yet most do not believe Iran’s large volume of highly enriched uranium, only slightly under weapons grade, was greatly reduced. There is also little evidence that Iranian capability or rationale for rebuilding its nuclear program has been eliminated. Having abandoned diplomacy for military force, Washington now faces the need to return to the negotiating table after breaking trust with Tehran. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev speaks at the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, ... More surrounded by dignitaries from the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and the United Nations. Bettmann Archive In 1963, John F. Kennedy feared that the world would witness a burst in the number of nuclear weapons states, to as many as 20 or more. The signs were certainly there for such an increase. But it never came. Diplomacy is the reason. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions