October 12, 2007

'Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East'

By NINA C. AYOUB

In March 1963, President John F. Kennedy made a prediction: 15 to 25 nuclear-armed nations by the 1970s. It never happened. Instead, the initial group of four — the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France — was slow to expand. It grew to five with China in 1964, six (unofficially) with Israel in the late 1960s, and then nine in recent years with open tests by India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

The question, writes Etel Solingen, is why? Why do some