If nuclear disarmament happens how can we be sure that other countries will get rid of their weapons?
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2We can't. That's a big reason why unilateral nuclear disarmament is stupid. – Michael Benjamin Feb 20 '18 at 19:56
2 Answers
If you unilaterally get rid of your nuclear weapons then cannot be sure that other countries will. I'll assume you mean multilateral disarmament in the context of an arms reduction treaty.
The process of checking if a country is getting rid of their nuclear weapons is called "verification", and it is one of the most complex parts of an arms reduction treaty.
In the case of the START treaties that saw a reduction in American and Soviet/Russian strategic nuclear weapons, there was the requirement to destroy the delivery vehicles (ie rockets) in a public and verifiable way. There was an agreement to allow the other side to have regular intrusive verification of nuclear sites (ie Russian inspectors visiting American nuclear weapons sites and vice-versa. There would be regular exchanges of information and this would be backed up by each side's intelligence gathering (such as spy satellites).
A treaty requires a certain level of trust, and the implementation period for the treaty is staged to allow that trust to be build up. If there is no trust between two countries, such as between the USA and North Korea, then a verifiable treaty may be impossible to negotiate
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No country holding nuclear weapons will ever relinquish the technology nor all the nuclear weapons.
Instead any agreements between nuclear powers will at most reduce arsenals and/or delivery systems.
The way to make sure others keep the contract is usually done by agreeing to international inspections to all sides, and in cases a country is in violation expose sanctions backed by the international community. Of course if the situation is severe military options will be considered.
Intelligence and spying are of course another way to check;
Of the two known nuclear development technologies, uranium enrichment is usually detectable while plutonium enrichment may be harder, so it depends on the sophistication of the technology the country has whether intelligence is accurate.