At What Cost Perfection?
Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr.In “Serious Rules for Nuclear Power Without Proliferation,” (21.1, March 2014, pp. 77–98) Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski offer a well-researched viewpoint that is an important contribution to the nuclear debate.
With respect to the regulation of nuclear power, however, their article is a blueprint for pursuing perfection that, however admirable, is not attainable, as the authors themselves suggest. They imply that nuclear power should be limited, or at least certainly not expanded, unless the reforms they propose under the rubric of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are implemented: “Unless the signatories to the NPT agree to deal with the fundamental deficiencies of the NPT by interpreting the treaty in a way that sharply limits access to fuels that are also usable in nuclear weapons, and agree to universal enforcement of that interpretation, increased worldwide nuclear energy use will carry with it the inevitable risk of further nuclear weapon proliferation.” (Emphasis added.) This is somewhat reminiscent of the prime minister of Israel saying that, with respect to a possible nuclear deal with Iran, the only acceptable solution would require zero uranium enrichment in Iran. It is widely understood that this is impossible, that no Iranian government would ever agree to this—versus an agreement that would verifiably contain and limit Iran's program—and thus, such a condition is, or should be understood to be, code for “no deal would be acceptable.” This would leave the alternatives to be an Iran unconstrained, or war.
In a similar vein, the authors’ assertion that nuclear power should not be expanded without the implementation of laudable but unattainable reforms is code for “no expansion of nuclear power,” followed very likely by its gradual deep reduction. This would eventually leave the world community with virtually no carbon-free source of baseload energy in the face of increasing warnings from the scientific community that global warming is a huge threat and that we are running out of time to effectively deal with it. The two alternatives that remain after nuclear power is phased out would be the reduction of world energy production toward pre-industrial revolution levels or a dramatically and perhaps irrevocably damaged planet on which to live. The authors apparently do not believe that it is necessary to substantially reduce carbon output in the production of energy. If so, the authors are in significant error. They write: “more importantly, there are environmentally acceptable energy alternatives to nuclear power, including ones superior for coping with climate change.” They mention natural gas, with one third of the carbon footprint of coal. Better certainly, but not enough to have a real chance with climate change in the long run, given the ever-increasing world demand for energy. Further, abolishing civil nuclear power would not cause one nuclear weapon to be dismantled nor prevent a mainly indigenous weapon development—like that of North Korea.
The first NPT deficiency that the authors mention is that it permits withdrawal on three months’ notice. Virtually all modern arms control/nonproliferation treaties permit withdrawal in three, six, or twelve months. The authors’ first objective, or principle, as they put it, is to make NPT withdrawals effectively impossible. This is not achievable in a world of sovereign states, short of war. To make it legally impermissible, which perhaps could be achieved, is not the same as making it effectively impossible. A sovereign state always retains the ability to renounce a treaty.
The second NPT deficiency that the authors assert is that it does not set forth limits on permissible peaceful technology. Their response is to simply restrict access to nuclear weapon usable materials, in particular through uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. The objective of the lead NPT negotiators in the 1960s—the United States and the Soviet Union—was to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. The price required by the non-nuclear weapon state parties—now 189 states, most of the world—was nuclear disarmament by the five NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union/Russia, France, and China) with interim steps in the nearer future, especially a test ban, and the sharing of—and cooperation in—peaceful nuclear technology. The non-nuclear weapon states were willing to accept discrimination with respect to nuclear weapons, but not “double discrimination” which would include peaceful technology, particularly nuclear power and associated technologies such as uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. This is confirmed by the statement by Willy Brandt, then-foreign minister of West Germany, before the Bundestag on April 27, 1967; statements by the Belgium delegate and others at the United Nations during final consideration for the NPT, the General Assembly resolution endorsing it; and by testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Mr. William Foster, the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and chief US negotiator of the NPT, during the treaty's ratification proceedings. Without recognizing the non-nuclear weapon states’ “inalienable right” to nuclear technology, there would have been no NPT.
Confident of their rights, six non-nuclear weapon NPT state parties currently maintain domestic uranium enrichment programs with no one complaining: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, and South Africa. These states, for the most part, view these programs as important economically as well as from the standpoint of national sovereignty. None of these states are about to give up their programs as the authors argue they should. The prospect of rolling back these existing peaceful technology programs is particularly low, considering that the NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states have not fully delivered on their disarmament obligations under the NPT—the test ban, most importantly—to offset the nuclear weapon distinction in their favor.
The third NPT deficiency the authors describe is that it sharply limits International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguard inspections. The NPT doesn't do that; it requires a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Enhanced NPT verification became a major issue at the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995, leading to the IAEA Additional Protocol, which considerably expanded existing IAEA inspection rights. The authors contend that the Additional Protocol is voluntary—which it is—and that a number of states have not adhered to it. But the list of those that have is considerable and growing: 143 NPT states have signed it and it is in force for 122 states.
The fourth deficiency noted by the authors is the treaty's lack of enforcement provisions. Once again: since we do not have a world government but instead live in a world of sovereign states, this makes enforcement difficult. Currently, if there is an alleged violation, and if the IAEA Board of Governors agrees on this, the case can be forwarded to the UN Security Council for consideration of actions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These could include, in extreme cases, a resolution calling on members to solve the problem “by all necessary means,” which can include military action. But a Security Council resolution is subject to veto by a Permanent Member—the same states that are recognized by the NPT as nuclear weapon states—and thus this process can only work if the Permanent Five are in agreement.
Lastly, the authors write that the NPT is deficient because three states—Israel, India, and Pakistan—never joined it and a fourth—North Korea—withdrew from it in order to develop nuclear weapons. That not everyone has joined it hardly seems to be a deficiency in the treaty. The authors correctly assert that the only way these states would ever join (or return to) the NPT and give up their weapons “is if all reduce their nuclear weapons to zero.” In other words: global zero. But that will not happen soon and likely will require major geopolitical changes worldwide. The ongoing and much needed expansion of nuclear power cannot wait on this; the global warming battle would be over.
In their conclusion, the authors suggest a number of incremental changes to address their perceived NPT deficiencies, but for the most part don't propose a practical way to actually implement them. The principles are excellent as objectives but they are not acceptable as preconditions to the continued expansion of nuclear power. And expansion there is: from Russia and Asia, in particular, we can expect perhaps more than an 80 percent increase over the current worldwide level. But the article closes ominously. The authors write that if “there is no realistic prospect of closing the gap between nuclear advocacy and nonproliferation protection” (which, according to the authors, there is not) then “the answer is not to fall in with the nuclear crowd in the hope of making minor adjustments in its rules—but to think about closing the policy gap from the other end.” In this commentator's view, such a decision by the world community would be catastrophic.
Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr.
Former Special Representative of the President for Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament; Executive Chairman, Lightbridge Corporation, McLean, VA
A Worthy Endeavor with the Wrong Conclusion
Marie Isabelle ChevrierJason Enia and Jeffrey Fields (“The Relative Efficacy of the Biological and Chemical Weapon Regimes,” 21.1, March 2014, pp. 43–64) ask a provocative question: “Are the chemical and biological weapon nonproliferation and disarmament regimes stronger and more effective than their nuclear counterpart?” They answer that question by building on their earlier framework to evaluate regime health (“The Health of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” 16.2, June 2009, pp. 173–96) and applying it to the regimes governing chemical and biological weapons (CBW). They confidently conclude that “The CW and BW nonproliferation regimes are comparatively healthier than their nuclear counterpart.” I disagree.
Their elaborate framework exhibits a thorough understanding of regime theory. Enia and Fields include the requisite principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures that constitute regimes and recognize that regimes are more than a sum of these parts. The framework contains fourteen specific aspects under three overarching dimensions. While their framework is a welcome addition to regime theory, they fail to rank these aspects, which implies that they are of equal importance. This commentary addresses a few of these aspects and the way Enia and Fields apply them to the various weapon regimes.
Enia and Fields state that “it is hard to dispute that along all aspects of our framework, the CW and BW regimes are more robust than the nuclear regime.” This overreaching conclusion seems to rest on the discriminatory nature of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) rather than all aspects of the framework. Discriminating between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states weakens the regime and may be a fatal flaw. However, other aspects favor the nuclear weapon regime over its CBW cousins.
Because the authors apply the framework to the nuclear regime sporadically in this article, readers need to have familiarity with their 2009 article assessing the nuclear regime. For example, organizational form is one of the aspects under “institutional and organizational features.” Enia and Fields compare the relatively robust Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons to the woefully inadequate Implementation Support Unit of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). Striking in its absence is any mention of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The institutional and organizational support for the NPT is far more effective than that of the BWC.
Regarding normative features, there is a strong norm against the use of nuclear weapons.Footnote1
1 See for example, Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, (London: Cambridge University Press, 2007); William C. Potter, “In Search of the Nuclear Taboo: Past, Present, and Future,” Proliferation Papers No. 31, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Winter 2010, <www.ifri.org/downloads/pp31potter.pdf>.
Economist Thomas Schelling devoted his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech to the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, citing instances when states could have used nuclear weapons but did not: the United States in Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In contrast, the norm against chemical weapon use is relatively weak. The authors acknowledge that Iraq used CW in the 1980s, as did Syria in 2013. They do not address, however, the murkier instances of the use of chemicals that weaken the CW regime norms. Among them are: the US use of white phosphorus in Iraq; the US use of chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange in Vietnam; and Russia's use of an anesthetic (chemical) in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege that killed more than 120 hostages.Footnote22 In Iraq, the United States claimed that white phosphorus is an incendiary rather than a chemical weapon. See George Monbiot, “The US used chemical weapons in Iraq—and then lied about it,” Guardian, November 14, 2005, <www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq>. On chemical weapon use in Vietnam, see Beverky Deepe Keever, “Remember Agent Orange: The U.S.’ Own Chemical Weapons History, Honolulu Civil Beat, September 6, 2013, <www.civilbeat.com/voices/2013/09/06/19831-remember-agent-orange-the-us-own-chemical-weapons-history/>. On the use of chemical agents in Moscow, see, for example, “Gas ‘killed Moscow hostages,’” BBC News World Edition, October 27, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2365383.stm>, and “Moscow siege gas ‘not illegal,’” BBC News World Edition, October 29, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2371691.stm>.
The norm of non-use of nuclear weapons is stronger than the norm of non-use of CW.Enia and Fields apply the participatory scope very narrowly, counting only the number of states that are party to the treaties that underlie the regimes. Participation in all of these regimes extends beyond state parties to many other stakeholders. International organizations such as the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross, nongovernmental organizations, states that are observers to the treaties, as well as individuals, academics, and advocates, all participate in the regimes and contribute to their strength. Even with regard to states, Enia and Fields do not assess the relative level of participation across states. How many of the state parties, for example, attend review conferences and annual meetings? How many parties to the BWC submit their annual information exchanges? By the narrowest and widest interpretation, participation in the nuclear regime is greater than either its chemical or biological counterparts.
Beyond a discussion of the framework, the authors erroneously state that the use of incapacitating chemical weapons is not prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a serious flaw in the article. They conflate riot control agents, permitted for domestic law enforcement but not warfare, with incapacitating chemical weapons. The CWC definition of a toxic chemical includes incapacitating agents and that definition makes its way into the definition of a chemical weapon. The relevant language in Article II is “any chemical which … can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm.” Riot control agents are defined as “Any chemical … which can produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.” Careful attention to the negotiations of the CWC, moreover, would reveal a conundrum faced by the negotiators. The language regarding the use of chemical agents for domestic law enforcement was left deliberately vague: “Purposes Not Prohibited Under this Convention” includes “Law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes.” This ambiguous language was designed to permit the use of lethal injections of chemical agents for executions while not seeming to endorse capital punishment.Footnote3
3 Adolf von Wagner, “Toxic Chemical for Law Enforcement Including Domestic Riot Control Purposes Under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” in Alan M. Pearson, Marie Isabelle Chevrier, and Mark Wheelis, eds., Incapacitating Biochemical Weapons: Promise or Peril? (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 198–99. Von Wagner was the German ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament and led the final stage of negotiations on the CWC.
Despite these criticisms, Enia and Fields note that “important lessons … [can] be gleaned from a comparative analysis” of nonproliferation and disarmament regimes. Their article is a valuable contribution to that effort and encourages scholars to step outside their regime silos.
Marie Isabelle Chevrier
Chair and Professor Department of Public Policy and Administration Rutgers University-Camden Camden, NJ
* * * * *
A Worthy Endeavor with the Wrong Conclusion
Jenifer MackbyJason Enia and Jeffrey Fields contend that the chemical weapon (CW) and biological weapon (BW) regimes are comparatively healthier and more robust than their nuclear counterpart. They believe that this is due to the strong norm against possession and proliferation of both CW and BW. The norm, they say, “is adequately embedded into the existing features of the regimes in ways that do not exist in the nuclear nonproliferation regime.” They maintain this assertion even though chemical and biological weapons (CBW) have been used more frequently and are easier to make than nuclear weapons. They also acknowledge that the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) has no verification or organization to monitor compliance.
Enia and Fields argue repeatedly, and correctly, that the BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prohibit these weapons (with the exception of incapacitating chemical agents) for all states, while no convention proscribes the possession or use of nuclear weapons. They do not mention the intrinsic obligation in Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to eliminate nuclear weapons, which has been in force since 1970, or the proposal many states have made for a convention prohibiting nuclear weapons.
This article adopts a framework of regime health comprising normative, institutional, and behavioral features of regimes. Within the institutional and organizational features, the authors state that they would expect relatively healthy regimes to contain institutions; the presence of such a body could signal a strong regime. Such bodies help to implement and operationalize verification provisions, organize on-site inspections, help settle disputes, organize meetings of the state parties, etc. Treaties such as the CWC, the NPT, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty could not subsist without their supporting organizations.
Yet there is no international organization for the BWC, and it has no means of verification. In a table of normative, institutional, and organizational features, the authors acknowledge the lack of a BWC implementing body, but note that there is “some effort made with Implementation Support Unit.” Perhaps they are not aware that this unit comprises only three people who service meetings and compile documents. It would be rash to compare this unit to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), each of which routinely monitor and inspect state parties to the CWC and NPT, respectively. Their Table 3 avoids comparisons to the nuclear regime entirely, even though a large part of it is devoted to “Institutional and organizational features.” The OPCW has a budget of €75 million and a staff of 500. It has conducted 5,365 inspections on the territory of eighty-six states. About a third of the IAEA budget of €344 million is spent on nuclear verification. In recent years, around 280 IAEA inspectors carried out safeguards inspections on more than 900 facilities in conformity with the NPT. It would have been useful if the table included the organization that conducts inspections for the treaty that is considered the cornerstone of arms control and security.
The authors claim that BWC state parties continue to debate how to develop a BWC monitoring and verification organization, that there are efforts to “rectify” the gaps between the lack of verification in the BWC versus the CWC, and that there is a “hope” that the differences over institutional features will be resolved. However, efforts to conclude a verification protocol for the BWC were rejected after six years of negotiations on the grounds that it would not reveal BW proliferation and might compromise legitimate research. The United States made this clear in 2001, when the George W. Bush administration rejected the verification protocol and, more recently, when the Barack Obama administration stated that the treaty is not verifiable. Thus it seems unlikely that the gaps will be rectified.
This is not to say that the NPT is in perfect health—far from it. The NPT has inherent problems for a number of reasons, including the difficulty of monitoring all activities dealing with nuclear materials. In addition, it is discriminatory, as the authors point out. The NPT calls for all but the five recognized nuclear weapon states to forgo nuclear weapons although the intention, as mentioned, is to even the playing field through nuclear disarmament. In return, the non-nuclear weapon states have a right to an exchange of nuclear equipment and technology for peaceful purposes. All three treaties deal with materials that have dual uses and provide for peaceful uses of those materials.
As for the normative features, nuclear weapons play a central role in the national security doctrines of the five nuclear weapon states in the NPT, as well as the four outside of it (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan). The role of deterrence has suited them over the years, and many believe it has kept the peace. The authors find that, because of the discriminatory policy on possession enshrined in the nuclear nonproliferation regime, there is more equality in the nondiscriminatory BW and CW regimes and hence there are no such tensions, as these weapons are prohibited to all states. This is a valid point, as the discriminatory aspect has provided grounds for grievances among state parties to the NPT, in particular among non-aligned states.
Finally, the authors weave into the article the notion of a taboo against chemical and biological weapons, which they believe does not exist for nuclear weapons to the same degree. They explain that nuclear weapons have been embedded in military strategy and could be used in a counterforce manner, whereas chemical and biological weapons have limited counterforce value and have not been integrated into military doctrine. While others (e.g. Japan) might argue about which weapons are more taboo, the authors believe that a normative aspect or taboo developed against CBW help make these regimes more robust and comparatively healthier than their nuclear counterpart. They conclude by severing regime health from the notion of perfect compliance, leaving open the question of how imperfect compliance can become before affecting the strength of the treaty.
Jenifer Mackby
Adjunct Fellow Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington, DC
Jason Enia and Jeffrey Fields respond
Jason EniaJeffrey FieldsWe are grateful to Marie Isabelle Chevrier and Jenifer Mackby for providing thoughtful and useful commentaries on our article. We believe that our framework's utility lies in its ability to structure a rigorous, comparative assessment of these regimes and force attention on regime components that are often overlooked. In this regard, we take the discussion here as evidence that the framework is working. We appreciate the opportunity to respond to these commentaries. While our response does not comprehensively deal with Chevrier's and Mackby's concerns, we hope it pushes the conversation forward.
Chevrier begins her commentary noting that one of the deficiencies of our framework is that it fails to rank the fourteen different aspects and that this “implies they are of equal importance.” We do not agree that the lack of rank necessarily implies equal weight. However, the broader questions of whether and how they should be ranked are ones with which we continue to grapple. Unfortunately, existing regime literature offers little guidance on how and why to justify the idea that one regime component is more important than another. For example, are the normative features of regimes inherently more important indicators of regime strength than the institutional features? It is difficult to say in a general theoretical sense, especially as the regime literature remains split on the question of which of these components is necessary and sufficient for regime formation. If we ask these questions of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon regimes more specifically, the answers are equally—if not more—elusive. Are the behavioral aspects of the chemical weapon regime more important than the rules embodied in the CWC? And what of the dimensional interaction effects that are crucial to any assessment of regime health? How are these to be weighted? These are challenging but nonetheless vital questions for our long-term project.
Mackby's commentary points out that we “would expect relatively healthy regimes to contain institutions.” The remaining pieces of her commentary, however, focus on the organizational differences between all three regimes, arguing that our analysis misses some key organizational deficiencies in the biological and chemical weapon regimes. We argue that this conflates the terms institutions and organizations in ways that are problematic. In our article, we use institutions in reference to the formal and informal rules embedded throughout the regime. We use organizations to refer to “regime-specific international bodies and/or secretariats.” The distinction is an important one as “the presence or absence of [organizations] could signal a relatively strong or weak regime depending on the way it relates to other characteristics” (p. 47) and this could be entirely independent of the regime's rule structures, particularly if informal institutions are important components. After reviewing each of these categories across the biological and chemical weapon regimes, we stand by the analysis in our article.
Finally, both commentators take issue with our analysis of the relative strength of the norms of the chemical and biological weapon regimes, pointing out that chemical and biological weapons have been used more than nuclear weapons. While this is obviously empirically true, our framework makes an attempt to separate behavioral aspects from normative ones. Following much of the literature on norms, we do not take instances of norm violation as the totality of the evidence as to the norm's existence or strength (or weakness).Footnote4
4 For example, since “one central question of norms research is the effect of norms on state behavior, it is important to operationalize a norm in a way that is distinct from the state or non-state behavior it is designed to explain.” Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 (1998), p. 892.
Given the material interests at stake in the nuclear cases of non-use, any assessment of the strength of the norm cannot simply rest on the number of times the weapons have been used.Footnote55 See the debate between Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), and T.V. Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
In the same way, assessments of the relative strength (or weakness) of the non-use norms for chemical and biological weapons cannot solely rest on isolated instances of use. While we agree with Chevrier's characterization of the absolute robustness of the nuclear regime's norm, the relative aspect that tipped the scales toward the biological and chemical weapon regimes is mentioned in Mackby's commentary and addressed directly in our article: “The nuclear weapon states, to varying degrees, still view nuclear weapons as a vital part of their national security doctrines.”In some ways, it feels odd to discuss the weaknesses of the nuclear nonproliferation regime relative to others. One of the initial goals of this project, and a common thread running through both of our Nonproliferation Review articles, was to demonstrate that each of these weapon regimes is much more than its foundational treaty and ultimately more robust than the “sky is falling” pessimists would have us believe. While there is obviously room to debate relative assessments of regime strength, we hope a byproduct of this discussion and others like it is a continued push to employ broader sets of analytical lenses.
More than Economics
Miles PomperJeffrey Lantis (“Economic Competition and Nuclear Cooperation: The ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ Revisited,” 21.1, March 2014, pp. 21–42) provides a useful addition to recent scholarship on the motivations for bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements. As Lantis notes, scholars such as Georgetown University's Matthew Kroenig and Texas A&M University's Matthew Fuhrmann have tended to view these agreements through a strategic prism. Fuhrmann, for example, has argued that states provide such assistance to strengthen allies and democracies and to build relationships with enemies of enemies. Kroenig predicts that superpowers will be less likely than regional powers to transfer proliferation-sensitive technology.
Meanwhile, the economic motivations for nuclear cooperation agreements are minimized, despite the multibillion sales typical in the industry. Lantis provides a useful corrective by focusing on the dynamics of economic competition among nuclear suppliers and how these might affect decisions on concluding nuclear cooperation agreements and the policies entailed in those agreements, looking particularly at the cases of Vietnam and Jordan.
Nonetheless, Lantis, Kroenig, and Fuhrmann all neglect important dynamics that can contribute as much to decisions on forging nuclear cooperation agreements as the ones they cite and that don't fit neatly into either the strategic or economic dimensions. One of these involves norm building. Lantis points to this issue obliquely in his conclusion when he discusses the need for further research on “principled restraint.” His piece also examines “principled restraint” in the context of the US “gold standard” debate over whether all new US nuclear cooperation agreements—including the ones with Vietnam and Jordan—should include a pledge from the recipient state to forgo uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing.
However, one could argue that principled restraint has generally been exercised by major nuclear powers in recent years, following Nuclear Supplier Group guidelines intended to prevent transfers of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technology. And US policy has been even stricter, including limitations of any use of this technology with US-derived fuel or facilities. The “gold standard,” on the other hand, is an attempt to enact a global norm—preventing the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology to new states—using US nuclear cooperation agreements as leverage.
A second dynamic involves the relationship nuclear suppliers have to their host government and how this affects the nature of nuclear cooperation agreements. Lantis, for example, notes that the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, as a state-owned company, is able to operate with unique liability coverage. He also notes that Rosatom can provide uniquely enticing financing arrangements but does not explicitly tie this to the fact that it can obtain state subsidized financing. US firms, on the other hand, enjoy no such benefits. Particularly, if such research is extended to France and South Korea—both state-owned industries to a greater and lesser degree—it would be worth examining how a supplier's relationship to its host government affects the kind of nuclear cooperation agreements it seeks and signs and on what terms.
Another aspect of Rosatom's operations points to a potential definitional issue in the economic argument Lantis advances. His thesis tends to assume that economic interests are triumphant if compelling strategic interests are absent. But what does he mean by economic interests? Rosatom, for example, has recently employed a “build-own-operate” (BOO) strategy in several contract negotiations, in which a recipient state only has to promise a purchase price for electricity from a nuclear plant and Rosatom shoulders many of the other risks. Many independent analysts question whether the BOO strategy can actually be profitable and see it more as a means of providing a government-subsidized jobs program for Rosatom workers and of Russia gaining prestige—if not direct strategic benefits—abroad.
Miles Pomper
Senior Research Associate James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Washington, DC
Notes
1 See for example, Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, (London: Cambridge University Press, 2007); William C. Potter, “In Search of the Nuclear Taboo: Past, Present, and Future,” Proliferation Papers No. 31, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Winter 2010, <www.ifri.org/downloads/pp31potter.pdf>.
2 In Iraq, the United States claimed that white phosphorus is an incendiary rather than a chemical weapon. See George Monbiot, “The US used chemical weapons in Iraq—and then lied about it,” Guardian, November 14, 2005, <www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq>. On chemical weapon use in Vietnam, see Beverky Deepe Keever, “Remember Agent Orange: The U.S.’ Own Chemical Weapons History, Honolulu Civil Beat, September 6, 2013, <www.civilbeat.com/voices/2013/09/06/19831-remember-agent-orange-the-us-own-chemical-weapons-history/>. On the use of chemical agents in Moscow, see, for example, “Gas ‘killed Moscow hostages,’” BBC News World Edition, October 27, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2365383.stm>, and “Moscow siege gas ‘not illegal,’” BBC News World Edition, October 29, 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2371691.stm>.
3 Adolf von Wagner, “Toxic Chemical for Law Enforcement Including Domestic Riot Control Purposes Under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” in Alan M. Pearson, Marie Isabelle Chevrier, and Mark Wheelis, eds., Incapacitating Biochemical Weapons: Promise or Peril? (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 198–99. Von Wagner was the German ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament and led the final stage of negotiations on the CWC.
4 For example, since “one central question of norms research is the effect of norms on state behavior, it is important to operationalize a norm in a way that is distinct from the state or non-state behavior it is designed to explain.” Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52 (1998), p. 892.
5 See the debate between Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), and T.V. Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).