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14 August 2024

Four Warnings About the “Dark Quad”

Dr. Christopher Ford

It would probably be difficult to overstate the potential challenges that the “Dark Quad” presents to international peace and security – not to mention to our own country’s national security interests and those of our allies and partners, and indeed all who prize peace and wish to preserve their political autonomy as sovereign peoples. Time being short, I’ll mention just four big ones.

These remarks offer only my personal opinions, of course, and don’t necessarily represent the views of anyone else. They’re also pretty depressing, I suppose. But let me offer what insights I can.

My four warnings are all related to the fact that the military quasi-alliance of the Dark Quad includes both the world’s only two nuclear-armed revisionist great powers and the world’s two most prominent nuclear proliferators.
  • Of the two proliferators, North Korea, of course, pursued nuclear weapons for years, signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in bad faith, immediately violated it, got caught, obtained a concessionary deal with the West in return for supposedly freezing its nuclear weapons work, violated that promise too, then pulled out of the NPT, and has since built itself a rapidly-growing and ever more sophisticated nuclear arsenal.
  • For its part, Iran pursued nuclear weapons for years, got caught, faced international sanctions, obtained a concessionary deal with the West in return for temporarily delaying its nuclear progress, but is today busily at work enriching uranium and cementing its status as a so-called “latent” or “virtual” nuclear weapons possessor able to sprint toward weaponization at the drop of a hat.

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