THE CONCEPT OF NUCLEAR LEARNING

Abstract

This article seeks to elucidate the concept of nuclear learning. It explores both the “nuclear” and the “learning” aspects of the concept. On the nuclear side, it distinguishes between learning basic facts about nuclear arms and drawing inferences about the larger implications of those facts. On the learning side, it discusses three issues: whether to use the term in a normative or value-neutral manner; the difference between learning that leads to a change in means versus learning that leads to a re-evaluation of ends; and whether learning only takes place at the level of individuals or whether there can also be learning by collective entities. The article argues there is no universal best answer to these questions and that the particular concept of learning that should be employed depends on the goals of the analyst. If the goal is to reduce the chances of nuclear war, however, one type of learning that will be important to consider is whether there is shared, cross-national learning.

Keywords:

• Nuclear proliferation
• learning
• nuclear deterrence
• strategic stability
• strategic dialogue

Notes

1. The most influential presentation of the debate between proliferation optimists and pessimists remains Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).

2. Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 371–402.

3. This article was originally prepared for a conference organized by the Naval Postgraduate School's Center on Contemporary Conflict and co-sponsored by the US Department of Energy and Defense Threat Reduction Agency on “A Decade of Nuclear Learning: Ten Years after the South Asian Nuclear Tests,” Honolulu, Hawaii, February 12–13, 2009.

4. Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Christopher Clary, “Pakistan's Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,” in Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 65, 88, 90.

5. Timothy D. Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” in Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia, p. 161.

6. Rajesh M. Basrur, “The Lessons of Kargil as Learned by India,” in Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia, p. 330.

7. Michael Krepon, “The Limits of Influence: US-Pakistani Nuclear Relations,” Nonproliferation Review 18 (March 2011), pp. 89–92.

8. Jeffrey W. Knopf, “The Importance of International Learning,” Review of International Studies 29 (April 2003), pp. 185–207.

9. Anne Harrington de Santana, “Nuclear Weapons as the Currency of Power: Deconstructing the Fetishism of Force,” Nonproliferation Review 16 (November 2009), pp. 325–45.

10. For a review of such surveys in the United States during the Cold War, see Thomas W. Graham, “The Pattern and Importance of Public Knowledge in the Nuclear Age,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 32 (June 1988), pp. 319–34.

11. Itty Abraham, “Introduction: Nuclear Power and Atomic Publics,” in Itty Abraham, ed., South Asian Cultures of the Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), p. 14.

12. Haider Nizamani, “Paksistan's Atomic Publics: Survey Results,” in Abraham, ed., South Asian Cultures of the Bomb, pp. 146–47.

13. R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science 222 (December 23, 1983), pp. 1283–92.

14. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

15. Bernard Brodie, “Implications for Military Policy,” in Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1946), p. 76.

16. William Liscum Borden, There Will Be No Time: The Revolution in Strategy (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1946).

17. Jack S. Levy, “Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994), pp. 279–312.

18. Knopf, “The Importance of International Learning,” pp. 190–91.

19. Breslauer and Tetlock describe this as “learning how” versus “learning that.” See George W. Breslauer and Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).

20. Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25 (April 1993), pp. 275–96.

21. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978).

22. Ernst B. Haas, When Knowledge is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

23. Nye, “Nuclear Learning,” p. 380.

24. This is reflected in the title of one of the earliest studies of learning in foreign policy, Lloyd S. Etheredge, Can Governments Learn? American Foreign Policy and Central American Revolutions (Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1985).

25. Levy, “Learning and Foreign Policy,” p. 287.

26. Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973–1996 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

27. Amandeep S. Gill, “Nuclear Learning Revisited,” paper presented at a Center for International Security and Cooperation social science seminar, Stanford University, June 4, 2009.

28. Knopf, “The Importance of International Learning,” pp. 185–86, 192–96, 207.

29. For an affirmative answer, see Janice Gross Stein, “Political Learning by Doing: Gorbachev as Uncommitted Thinker and Motivated Learner,” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994), pp. 155–83.

30. Knopf, “The Importance of International Learning,” pp. 201–06.

31. This is also an important theme in Gill, “Nuclear Learning Revisited,” paper presented at a Center for International Security and Cooperation social science seminar, Stanford University,

32. Amandeep Gill, “Nuclear Learning Revisited,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies seminar, Monterey Institute of International Studies, June 11, 2009.

33. Levy, “Learning and Foreign Policy,” pp. 289–91.