Although it had started before the end of the Cold War, the second nuclear age—proliferation of nuclear weapons among lesser powers and for reasons other than the American-Soviet rivalry—really began with the end of the Cold War.
After the collapse of Eastern Military High Command and the disintegration of Pakistan as a result of 1971 Winter war, Bhutto of Pakistan launched and embarked the scientific research on nuclear weapons. This programme was delegated to Munir Ahmad Khan, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Salam who later go on to win the Nobel Prize. India's first atomic-test explosion was in 1974 with Smiling Buddha, which it described as a "peaceful nuclear explosion." The Indian test caused Pakistan to spurred its programme, and with Dr. A. Q. Khan, the ISI conduct successful espionage operations in the Netherlands, while also developing the programme ingeniously on the other side. India tested fission and perhaps fusion devices in 1998 (See Shakti), and Pakistan successfully tested fission devices that same year (See Chagai-I), raising concerns that they would use nuclear weapons on each other. All of the former Soviet bloc countries with nuclear weapons (Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) returned their warheads to Russia by 1996.
In January 2004, metallurgist and top weapon scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to having been a part of an international proliferation network of materials, knowledge, and machines from Pakistan to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
South Africa also had an active program to develop uranium-based nuclear weapons, but dismantled its nuclear weapon program in the 1990s. Experts do not believe it actually tested such a weapon, though it later claimed it constructed several crude devices that it eventually dismantled. In the late 1970s American spy satellites detected a "brief, intense, double flash of light near the southern tip of Africa." Known as the Vela Incident, it was speculated to have been a South African or possibly Israeli nuclear weapons test, though some feel that it may have been caused by natural events or a detector malfunction.
Israel is widely believed to possess an arsenal of potentially up to several hundred nuclear warheads, but this has never been officially confirmed or denied (though the existence of their Dimona nuclear facility was confirmed by Mordechai Vanunu in 1986).
North Korea announced in 2003 that it also had several nuclear explosives though it has not been confirmed and the validity of this has been a subject of scrutiny amongst weapons experts. The first detonation of a nuclear weapon by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was the 2006 North Korean nuclear test, conducted on October 9, 2006. On May 25, 2009 North Korea continued nuclear testing, violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718.
In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on August 9, 2005. The full text of the fatwa was released in an official statement at the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Despite this, however, there is mounting concern in many nations about Iran's refusal to halt its nuclear power program, which many (including some members of the US government) fear is a cover for weapons development. (See Iran and weapons of mass destruction.)
- See also: Argentinian nuclear weapons program
- See also: Brazilian nuclear weapons program
- See also: Swedish nuclear weapon program
Read more about this topic: History Of Nuclear Weapons
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