COUNTERING PROLIFERATION

Abstract

Over the past decades, the United States has had wins, losses, and draws in a continuing attempt to prevent a world of many nuclear powers. A review of that record suggests lessons or insights for future efforts to counter proliferation as well as for thinking about the 2016 proliferation future. Those lessons range from a need to adapt to the fact that critical U.S. security guarantees are no longer a nonproliferation “free good,” through the recognition that “buying time” is a good in itself, to the importance of a successful nonproliferation policy that builds partnerships with other countries. Perhaps the most important insight from the proliferation policy past for thinking about the 2016 proliferation future, however, is that, repeatedly, fears of runaway proliferation have energized the United States and other governments to act together to make those fears a self-denying prophecy. With hard work and luck, this may yet happen again.

Keywords:

• U.S. nonproliferation policy
• U.S. counterproliferation policy
• Nonproliferation strategy
• Arms control
• NPT
• U.S. alliances
• IAEA
• CTR
• Proliferation dynamics

Notes

1. For background on this point, see Lewis A. Dunn, Peter R. Lavoy, and Scott D. Sagan, “Conclusions: Planning the Unthinkable,” in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 23–57.