The familiar arms-control dictum of “trust but verify” is easier said than done: the need to balance confidence in information against the protection of legitimate state secrets is a persistent stumbling block. This issue becomes particularly sensitive in designing verification measures for both a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which must grapple with the problem of verifying fissile material inside nuclear weapons.
Pavel Podvig and Joseph Rodgers put forward an innovative proposal for simplifying fissile-material verification by “deferring” it. The verification process begins by accounting for all fissionable material outside of weapons use through well-established practices. Meanwhile, material for use in weapons is inventoried by the state, to be subjected to international inspection only after weapon dismantlement. The authors argue that this simplified procedure will make verification—and the treaties it is designed to implement—more politically palatable and operationally plausible.
Tamara Patton and Alexander Glaser respond to Podvig and Rogers by exploring hypothetical scenarios wherein states might attempt to exploit such a simplified verification process. They propose establishing three, sequential phases for deferred verification—initialization (baseline declarations), implementation (checking for accuracy), and completion (moving all formerly secret materials into the “open” segment) phases—as a way to preclude various possible cheating strategies.
But sometimes, as Renata Dalaqua describes, enriching uranium is more than just the production of nuclear fuel. In Brazil, the mastery of this technology was the result of a mutually reinforcing confluence of the state’s political and technological agendas, manifested through what she called Brazil’s “autonomous technopolitical regime.” This phenomenon helps explain the dynamics and evolution of the country’s unusual record of nuclear development.
In considering the use and non-use of chemical weapons (CW) in warfare, Damir Kovačević, Afrimadona, and Martin Claar explore two causal theories: deterrence and norms. A factor analysis indicates that the normative power of non-use is a far more consistent determinant in explaining the decline of CW use in the twentieth century. The notable deviations from this trend-particularly the use of CW by non-state actors-suggest several avenues for further research.
As this issue goes to print, the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has come to an end. American opponents of the INF have often pointed to the lack of limits on China’s land-based missile forces as a justification for the United States to leave the treaty. Shahryar Pasandideh takes a careful look at this rationale—questioning how, from where, and against what targets in China INF-prohibited missiles could possibly be deployed—and finds that the benefits of US withdrawal are vastly outweighed by both the near-term and long-term disadvantages.
Elsewhere in Asia, Nicholas Seltzer offers the first detailed account of the start of South Korea’s ballistic-missile program to be published in the English language. Drawing on firsthand accounts by some of the country’s first missile specialists, Seltzer describes how they acquired the requisite “tacit knowledge, subtle or secret methods and tricks” from American and French partners to successfully build an indigenous ballistic-missile capability. The resulting account may offer broader insights about how a developing country can make rapid strides to “catch up” with others in strategic weapons technology.
Knowledge transfer is equally important for stopping proliferation. This issue features Sarah Bidgood’s study of the state of nonproliferation and disarmament education in American undergraduate schools. Picking up where previous work in the Nonproliferation Review left off, Bidgood finds that university-level engagement on the issue of weapons of mass destruction remains woefully lacking, particularly among women and students of color. She proposes several ways to address this lacunae, including by integrating increasingly popular subjects—such as computer modeling, big-data analysis, and other “new analytical tools”—into the study of weapons of mass destruction.
Sayaka Shingu points out that a sanctions regime is only as effective as its weakest link. In North Korea’s case, its bilateral alliances and partnerships threatened to undermine the goals of the international sanctions regime against it. Using Uganda as a case study, Shingu discusses South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s efforts to supplant Kampala’s historic partnership with Pyongyang by forging new economic, military, and security agreements with Seoul.
Meanwhile, in the biological-weapons domain, rapid developments in biotechnologies are challenging the efficacy of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). Nicholas G. Evans explores four models of science-and-technology review that BWC states parties should consider integrating into the BWC review mechanism during the current intersessional period, for possible adoption at the 2021 Review Conference.
The double issue concludes with four book reviews: Vipin Narang reviews Or Rabinowitz’s Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and its Cold War Deals; Jacques E.C. Hymans reviews Michael D. Cohen’s When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises; Paul F. Walker reviews Preventing Chemical Weapons: Arms Control and Disarmament as the Sciences Converge, edited by Michael Crowley, Malcolm Dando, and Lijun Shang; and Amanda R. Moodie and Michael Moodie review Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia, by the late Raymond A. Zilinskas and his colleague Philipp Mauger.
In this issue, we also bid a sad farewell to two extraordinary colleagues whose untimely passages from the scene have impoverished the nonproliferation community. Anya L. Fink recalls her mentor, Janne Nolan, a longtime member of the Nonproliferation Review editorial board. CNS Director William C. Potter recalls his friend Yukiya Amano, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As this issue goes to print, we have also received news of the passage of Ambassador Roland Timerbayev, one of the authors of the 1975 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. A tribute to Ambassador Timerbayev will appear in our next issue.