In August 1945, a single State had two or three nuclear bombs. In August 2005, ten States stockpile over 11,000 nuclear weapons that they are ready to employ, for which they expend several tens of billions of dollars each year. About ten other States are busy struggling to enter this race for weapons of mass destruction, to say nothing about the political or religious groups that dream of getting their hands on a weapon of absolute terror, which would enable them to commit unstoppable blackmail. One must measure progress …

Pattern of Her Dress Burned Into a Woman's Flesh

The proliferation, it should be admitted, will continue as long as the bomb continues to look like a life insurance policy for regimes, or for people, which believe that their existence is threatened. Nuclear weapons offer, according to the French strategy, a dissuasion "for the weak from the strong." This trend is accelerating with the development of civilian nuclear programs, as the boundary between civilian and military atomic research is easy to cross and the methods of control are difficult to set in place.

The legal double-speak of the nuclear powers, first and foremost the United States, which modernizes, miniaturizes, even increases their nuclear arsenals while seeking to deprive States that they consider dangerous, saps the credibility of non-proliferation. Non-proliferation only has the potential to work if it goes hand in hand with the dismantling of nuclear arsenals. It is now, however, an even more pressing strategic objective than it was shortly after Hiroshima. Because the longer it lasts, the more likely the nuclear era is to pass from "Never again!" to "Sooner or later ..."