The New York Times has an article of analysis of the agreement between the US and Russia on reducing nuclear arms, and about a third of the way down it refers to other countries that have warheads.
[A]fter the fall of the Soviet Union, only Russia matches American nuclear power. Russia deploys 2,600 strategic warheads; the United States deploys about 2,100. Both have thousands more reserve warheads or tactical warheads that future negotiations will try to limit. By contrast, China has an estimated 180 warheads, India and Pakistan each have about 70 or 80 and North Korea just a few.
Where is Israel? It’s not here. Now France and Britain also have nuclear warheads and they’re not listed. And yet, you have Pakistan there in the Middle East, and for anyone following the Middle East, the fact that Israel is a nuclear power is constantly mentioned in the Arab world, as it should be. But this fellow Peter Baker leaves it out of his article. The conventional wisdom is just to ignore Israel as a nuclear power. I gather they’re supposed to have a couple hundred weapons. Now maybe Baker is looking where there are threats to instability. India and Pakistan are threats to each other. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s a big deal by its absence. It’s just bias: the idea that Israel is a beleaguered state that everyone wants to destroy, not this nuclear state. The presumption is that Israel’s nuclear warchest is not a source of instability in the Middle East in any way, shape fashion or form. Now maybe it isn’t, but remind us about it, and let us decide.
By the way, you don’t hear these words come out of my mouth very often, but there is a very good article in the New York Times today on foreign affairs, about internet censorship in China.
