How to slow the spread of the bomb

"Why should others not wish to emulate them?" he said at last week's conference, held by the UN Association of the US.

In this context, the US offer to sit down and talk directly with Iran - if it suspends nuclear enrichment activities - is a positive development, say arms control advocates. So far, Iranian officials have rejected the notion of preconditions, but not that of the talks themselves.

At the Conference on Disarmament, in Geneva, US officials have also offered a draft of a treaty that would ban all future production of fissile material for bombs.

And administration officials reject the notion that the US nuclear weapons stockpile sets a bad example for others. They say they've lived up to the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the big-weapons states to move toward nuclear disarmament.

By 2012, the US arsenal of deployed nukes will be 80 percent smaller than it was 1990, according to Andrew Semmel, deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear non-proliferation.

"The US nuclear stockpile continues to dwindle," said Semmel at the UN Association event.

But critics point out that many of those weapons are simply being withdrawn from service, not disassembled and destroyed.

To help address the current proliferation crisis, the US should reconsider its rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, say arms control advocates. It should continue efforts to stop the spread of fissile material and recognize that legitimate security concerns drive some nations toward reliance on nukes.

Some are urging Congress to reject the new US nuclear deal with India. Under this pact, signed March 2 by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India would receive US expertise and fuel for civilian nuclear power plants. In return, India would separate its military and civilian nuclear infrastructures, and agree to some international inspections.

The inspections would be a first for India, which is not a signatory of the NPT. But critics claim the deal would simply free up more of India's domestic fissile material production for weapons use, allowing it to built its arsenal faster.

"The benefits are vastly overstated and its damage to the world proliferation regime high," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Of course, there is also this difficult question: What do we do if we fail? It's possible that nothing the world can do will dissuade North Korea or Iran from decisions to pursue nuclear weapons.

There's the option of military action, of course. But that would be extremely risky, and even if successful might only delay proliferation, not stop it.

Schelling believes it is important to try and reach officials or experts in these nations and discuss nuclear stewardship. Over decades, the Soviet Union and the US developed a mutual view on the nature of nuclear deterrence that made the cold war standoff stable, though still frightening.

Defense intellectuals from India and Pakistan have been coming to meetings in the West for years, and have a very good idea of what nuclear weapons are and are not good for, said Schelling at the Council on Foreign Relations meeting.

But representatives of Iran and North Korea haven't. They haven't heard lengthy discussions about the importance of nuclear chains of command, for example.

"I think if you get people thinking about these issues, then they're going to begin to think more carefully about, 'What are these weapons good for?'" said Schelling.

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