Brazilian government has recently announced that it has established a uranium enriching plant. Thus, in the international arena comes another member that can independently produce nuclear materials. Why is it so hard to stop nuclear proliferation?

Shen Dingli, professor and vice-director of international affairs institute in Fudan University gives his analysis. He says this development can easily remind people of Iranian uranium enrichment. But western countries have a different attitude towards this and didn't show any sign of opposition while to Iran, they asked the country to stop any activities related to uranium enrichment. Both countries claimed to use nuclear energy peacefully.

Obviously, this shows double standards. For some countries, the west doesn't care that much if they use nuclear energy; but for some others, the west will impose great pressure to force them to stop if they utilize nuclear energy because this energy can be transferred into military use, thus it is better to even stop civil use. And this is the US attitude towards North Korean and Iranian nuclear issue.��

Although the west doesn't like to see the nuclear proliferation, nuclear technology keeps proliferating. For example, either openly or suspiciously, Israel, India and Pakistan have all broken the prevention from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. But the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issue got stuck. If one calculates, all these crises took place over the past 8 years and mainly in Asia. It is even more obvious that there is civil nuclear proliferation, for example in Japan and South Korea, they have all started to use nuclear power. Indonesia has also started to research in nuclear technology.

Shen Dingli points out that it was due to the west who have transferred civil use nuclear facilities and technologies that countries like Israel and India have successfully completed their transfer of civil use nuclear energy into military use. Israel and India developed military use nuclear technology under the pretext of civil use. This means it is the western countries themselves have sown such a seed and later produced such a bitter result. But fundamentally speaking, it is the deterioration of the international and regional security situation that makes nuclear proliferation an option for those countries. Some western countries should take the responsibility for the deterioration of the security situation of those countries.

There are many reasons that nuclear proliferation cannot be stopped. But the main reason is that the nuclear weapon developers feel its security environment is deteriorating and have an expectation on the nuclear defense capability. When the international security environment can't provide enough secure confidence, the country intends to develop nuclear weapons for security reason once its industry develops to a certain level. Proliferation prevention is certainly conducive to the regional stability, but people should try to create a better environment which is conducive to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Professor Shen says international security is like a big building. And nuclear proliferation prevention is like a pole, its foundation is the fundamental system, standards and principles which concerns mankind's peace and security. Thus if the pole of proliferation prevention is solid, it will be good for the stability of the whole building or the international security. But if it lacks the basic guarantee for world peace, the foundation of proliferation prevention will be shaking. Therefore, nuclear proliferation prevention is an important part of the international security, but it is not the foremost or fundamental solution for the international security issue.

There are many good aspects in nuclear non-proliferation, but it benefits the countries who already have the nuclear weapons first. The proliferation prevention doesn't touch the fundamental system of the international security and doesn't help solve the issue of nuclear disarmament. Against such a background, professor Shen holds that partly emphasizing nuclear non-proliferation has weakened the focus of establishing a fair and reasonable international security order. Thus while the international community is concerning the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issue, they should also focus more on the universal security of the world in the long run.

By People's Daily Online