NUCLEAR WEAPONSStopping the Bomb

By Leda Zimmerman

“The question behind my doctoral research is simple,” says Kunal Singh, an MIT political science graduate student in his final year of studies. “When one country learns that another country is trying to make a nuclear weapon, what options does it have to stop the other country from achieving that goal?” While the query may be straightforward, answers are anything but, especially at a moment when some nations appear increasingly tempted by the nuclear option.

From the Middle East to India and Pakistan, and from the Korean peninsula to Taiwan, Singh has been developing a typology of counterproliferation strategies based on historical cases and to some degree on emergent events. His aim is to clarify what states can do “to stop the bomb before it is made.” Singh’s interviews with top security officials and military personnel involved in designing and executing these strategies have illuminated tense episodes in the past 75 years or so when states have jockeyed to enter the elite atomic club. His insights might upend some of the binary thinking that dominates the field of nuclear security.

“Ultimately, I’d like my work to help decision-makers predict counterproliferation strategy, and draw lessons from it on how to shield their own citizens and economies from the impact of these strategies,” he says.

Types of Nonproliferation Tactics
On Oct. 7, 2023, Singh awoke to air raid sirens in Jerusalem, where he was conducting interviews, and discovered Israel was under attack. He was airlifted to safety back to the United States, having borne witness to the start of a regional war that “now has become relevant to my research,” he says.

Before his hasty departure, Singh was investigating two singular episodes where military force was deployed to advance nonproliferation goals: Israel’s airstrikes against nuclear reactors in 1981 in Iraq, and in 2007 in Syria. To date, these have been the only major attacks on nuclear facilities outside of an active war.