No, proliferation is no joke. And the cat most certainly is not out of the bag. If you split the nuclear era in the first 3 decades and the next 5, then by 197

No, proliferation is no joke. And the cat most certainly is not out of the bag. If you split the nuclear era in the first 3 decades and the next 5, then by 1975 seven nations got the bomb: the US, the USSR, the UK, France, China, Israel and India. After that, only three nations did (South Africa, Pakistan and North Korea) and one gave them up eventually. Iran figured out that they can play their cards better if the do not acquire the bomb, but only enrich enough uranium to be able to do that. Many other nations are only "a screwdriver's turn away" from building a bomb, Japan first among them. So much so that there is the concept of "Japan option", or nuclear latency [1]. These countries have looked into the pros and cons of possessing nuclear weapons and decided that it's better for them not to build the bomb, but be able to do that at a moment's notice. In particular, if China were to invade Taiwan, you can be sure than both Japan and South Korea would have the bomb in less than one year, and this is something that the Chinese planners are well aware of. If Japan and South Korea already had the bomb, then it would be much less of a deterrent for China to invade Taiwan. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_latency