US-Saudi deal prompts fears of a global nuclear arms race

By MARK LANDLER

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower went to the United Nations in 1953 to offer countries nuclear technology and know-how in return for a promise to use them peacefully, the policy went by a memorable shorthand, “Atoms for Peace.” Seven decades later, it could go by a less idealistic name: nuclear hedging.

President Donald Trump’s civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, announced this week, reflects a volatile world in which America’s allies are seeking nuclear capabilities to hedge against predatory neighbors, harmful energy disruptions and the shrinking security umbrella of the United States. It also reflects a White House, hungry for lucrative deals for American companies, that is willing to loosen nonproliferation standards for a favored partner in a dangerous region.

Saudi Arabia’s deal could eventually allow it to enrich fuel for nuclear reactors and limit the sites that international inspectors could visit to ensure its peaceful intent. Both of those concessions, unheard-of in recent U.S. civil nuclear agreements, will feed fears that the Saudis could pivot to a nuclear weapons program.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi leader, has made no secret of that possibility. If Iran obtains a nuclear bomb, he has warned, the Saudis will follow suit.

Trump sought to allay such concerns Thursday, declaring that the agreement was limited to civil uses of nuclear technology. But given the checkered history of such deals, and the lack of specifics about this one, his comments were unlikely to quell concerns about a new global arms race.

“We’re back in an era of nuclear hedging,” said Vipin Narang, a professor of nuclear security and political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You’ve got a lot of nervous countries facing a deteriorating security situation who are unsure they can rely on their formal or informal protectors.”

“We’re going to see a cascade of states looking for the capacity to pursue a military program” that could yield a weapon, said Narang, who worked on nuclear policy in the Pentagon during the Biden administration.

Gary Samore, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who advised on arms control negotiations in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said those countries were sometimes referred to as “friendly proliferators.”

Not all, or even any, of them will ultimately pursue a bomb, the experts said. The last country to enter the club of nuclear-armed states was North Korea in 2006. But it does suggest a risky new period, in which the global nuclear market could become more freewheeling and less rulebound. Nuclear buyers, rattled by the shift in the global posture of the United States, are likely to make greater demands, while rival sellers, like Russia and China, could seize on the Saudi precedent to grant them.

“It’s very connected to the damage Trump has done to credibility of the U.S. as a guarantor of security,” Samore said.

In countries such as Germany and Poland, South Korea and Japan, governments without nuclear weapons are debating the need to pursue them. South Korea, menaced by the nuclear-armed North, has initiated a plan to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, with the support of the United States.

The Japanese defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, said this week that his country needed to confront the role of nuclear weapons in its defense, despite a long-standing aversion rooted in the wartime destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, has said his country should pursue a nuclear program, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany has joined a high-level nuclear steering group with France and other European countries.

France, which along with Britain is one of Western Europe’s two nuclear powers, has vowed to expand its arsenal and offer a form of extended deterrence to its neighbors to compensate for Trump’s pulling back. In a show of cooperation, Paris recently sent a nuclear-capable fighter plane to a German air base.

“The next half-century will be an age of nuclear weapons,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in March. He was announcing the shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine to one of “forward deterrence” — the use of France’s nuclear weapons to prevent attacks on territories beyond its own borders.

During that speech, Macron spoke of a world filled with nuclear flash points: India, Pakistan, North Korea and China. But experts said France’s offer of deterrence to European neighbors could mitigate the interest of allies in acquiring nuclear capabilities. While a French nuclear umbrella would not be a replacement for the one provided by the United States, it could still act as a deterrent.

“The best nonproliferation tool the U.S. ever had is its military alliances,” said Matthew Fuhrmann, a professor of security studies at the University of Texas. “If the U.S. did not extend nuclear protection to as many countries as it did, we’d be in a world with more nuclear weapons states.”

France’s stepped-up role, he said, would reduce the risk of other European countries seeking a weapon. “But I don’t think it lowers their desire to hedge,” he added, noting that merely having a civil nuclear program gives countries leverage with nuclear powers like the United States.

In striking a deal with the United States, Saudi Arabia is following in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates, which signed a civil nuclear agreement with the Obama administration in 2009. That deal did not allow the UAE to enrich nuclear fuel, cutting off its pathway to producing a weapon, and provided for stringent inspections. Experts labeled it the “gold standard” for nonproliferation.

In addition to easing those restrictions, Trump initially dropped a condition pressed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, that Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel. On Thursday, Trump reversed course and said that he was, in fact, making that a requirement of the deal. The Saudi government did not immediately comment but has repeatedly made clear that it would not recognize Israel without also establishing a pathway toward a Palestinian state.

The deal’s original concessions, analysts said, reflected Trump’s recognition that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran had destabilized Saudi Arabia and the entire region.

Conceding benefits to Saudi Arabia will probably not put the government in Riyadh on the pathway to a bomb anytime soon, the experts said. The kingdom is starting from scratch in the nuclear race, and it would take years to develop a homegrown capacity to manufacture weapons-grade uranium.

But other countries, with more advanced capabilities, may demand the same terms. They might succeed if the United States no longer holds the line on giving nonnuclear states sensitive enrichment technology.

“To me, the danger of this deal is the precedent,” Samore said. “What’s to stop Russia from making a deal like this?”