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How the world learnt to love the bomb
Nuclear proliferation could be the way of the future.
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North Korea. whose leader Kim Jong Un is seen here inspecting a strategic cruise missile test launch, is a member of a growing nuclear club.
PHOTO : AFP
Janan Ganesh
Britain’s Liberal Democrats, who are as innocuous as their name suggests, now want the nation to build a nuclear deterrent that is less reliant on the US. Not even the parties of the right have so hawkish a line. If you grew up in Britain, the effect is that of spotting the local librarian at a cage fight.
The Lib Dems are at least in line with the times. France, whose force de frappe is truly sovereign, said in March that it would increase its stockpile of warheads. In Poland, a rare point of agreement between the Prime Minister and the President is their openness to going nuclear. In South Korea, public support for a deterrent has gone up to 70 per cent in recent years. Saudi Arabia, which has said it would get one if Iran did, might not wait for such a cue now that it and other Gulf states are under conventional attack from that quarter anyway.
