INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMICS OF NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

Abstract

This special section examines the disarmament dynamics being generated by President Barack Obama and other world leaders in their advocacy of a nuclear-weapon-free world. It explores the responses of five groups of states (nuclear weapon states, threshold states, advocacy states, holdout states, and defiant states) to the new disarmament momentum, assessing whether a global consensus on—and concrete progress toward—nuclear elimination is likely. The main goals of this special section are: to generate scholarly debate on this important subject (the literature has tended to focus on understanding proliferation rather than disarmament dynamics); and to examine the potential consequences of reinvigorated disarmament leadership for the upcoming Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which will be held in New York City in May 2010.

Keywords:

• Nuclear disarmament
• nuclear abolition
• nuclear-weapon-free world
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

The idea of abolishing nuclear weapons is now firmly back on the international security agenda. Ever since U.S. statesmen George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn wrote their now famous January 2007 and 2008 Wall Street Journal articles calling on governments to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the nuclear abolition wave has been building, with key universities and foreign policy think tanks hosting growing numbers of conferences and publications on the subject.1 The goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world is now strongly advocated by President Barack Obama and other leading U.S. political figures, Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as by other influential people and leaders around the world. This support has created an atmosphere of optimism that the new abolition wave may be able to generate enough force to overcome the resistance that has been blocking disarmament momentum for many years. The decision of the Nobel Committee to award Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize may well add to this dynamic, generating support for what Obama has described as “an affirmation of American leadership” and an international “call to action.”2

In the past, nuclear abolitionist movements emerged either as a result of great fears or great opportunities, mostly under the leadership of civil society movements predominantly motivated by idealistic and moral goals, or of members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), motivated by a variety of goals.3 The advent of the nuclear age, marked by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, provoked such horror around the world that nuclear disarmament quickly came to be seen as the only solution to avoid global nuclear annihilation. As Bernard Baruch, the U.S. delegate to the inaugural meeting of the UN Atomic Energy Commission, explained on June 14, 1946, “We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. … If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. … We must elect world peace or world destruction.”4 But these efforts dissipated as obstacles were strewn in the abolitionists’ path, and it wasn't until the early 1980s that a new abolition wave emerged, as a result of fears that a serious deterioration of U.S.–Soviet relations could lead to a catastrophic nuclear showdown between the superpowers. The nuclear abolition movement then gained considerable momentum in the 1990s, as a result of hopes that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War would rapidly diminish and curtail the role of nuclear weapons in international politics. At the end of the 1990s, however, these hopes receded again, as what one scholar described as a “second nuclear age” dramatically increased disarmament resistance among key states.5

The nuclear abolitionist wave that is building up today is unique in that it is being generated by influential (essentially U.S.) elites who have reached the conclusion that the elimination of nuclear weapons is both possible and, most importantly, in the interests of the United States and the world. One of the central arguments they put forward is that progress toward a nuclear-weapon-free world is the only way to overcome long-standing bottlenecks in the nuclear nonproliferation regime. This is highly significant—for the first time in decades, the disarmament wave is developing at the elite level within key nuclear weapon states (NWS) instead of at the grassroots level or within the NAM, as has traditionally been the case.

This exceptional development invites a fresh study of the material and ideational drivers of the phenomenon. This is necessary for two reasons: first, over the past decade, the emphasis in the scholarly literature has been overwhelmingly on the study of nuclear proliferation dynamics; work on nuclear disarmament dynamics has been extremely rare. The rationale for this focus was that understanding the ins and outs of nuclear proliferation would help states and epistemic communities formulate policies to thwart it, and, in turn, that this would be sufficient to solve the problem altogether. Now that the paradigm appears to be shifting and success on the nuclear project is increasingly considered to be contingent on clear progress on the disarmament front, the need for a new study on the subject is obvious and—we believe—urgent. As a notable political theorist wisely pointed out, “The deeper we embed ourselves in a paradigm, the more difficult it becomes to abstract ourselves from it and look at the world afresh.”6

A fresh study of the subject is also timely because in May, the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will convene in New York, and governments around the world will make key decisions about the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. As longtime scholar and activist Rebecca Johnson explains:

The review process has two different but related objectives and tasks. The first … is to create a context for revalidating the multilateral regime against nuclear proliferation, increasing its credibility and enabling states to reinvest in the Treaty's purposes and implementation. The second is to look forward and reinvigorate the infrastructure; establishing or constructing (where necessary) appropriate diplomatic mechanisms for the 21st century that will enable states and their citizens to participate fully and accountably in implementing the Treaty.7

In view of the current new developments mentioned above, it is essential to make room for a policy-relevant analysis of the place and role that key governments will give to nuclear disarmament in the regime during this crucial upcoming event; it is also useful to offer some insight into how that diplomacy is likely to unfold.

This special section of the Nonproliferation Review conducts such a study using a country-based analysis, with states divided into different groups. We have adopted this approach because, although the appreciation, management, and implications of current disarmament dynamics and diplomacy vary for each country, strong similarities exist among some states, which therefore deserve to be examined as a group. We believe that this is the best way to provide a clear picture of today's key global developments on the subject.

Five groups of states are examined. The first are the NWS, that is, the five nuclear-armed states recognized under the NPT (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The second group comprises the “threshold states”: states like Brazil and Japan that have the building blocks in place to develop nuclear weapons, but to date have refrained from crossing the so-called “nuclear threshold.” We refer to the third group of states as the “advocacy states” or the non-nuclear-armed states that are making a point of promoting the merits of a world free of nuclear weapons. The fourth group consists of the “holdout states,” that is, the three states that have opted to remain outside the NPT framework and to develop nuclear weapons despite international condemnation (India, Israel, and Pakistan). Finally, states in the fifth group are labeled the “defiant states”: states that have enjoyed the many benefits of NPT membership but have deliberately and repeatedly flouted nonproliferation norms, either by developing nuclear weapons and withdrawing from the NPT (North Korea) or by adopting a confrontational stance toward the nonproliferation regime and defying UN Security Council resolutions (Iran).

This special section is a steppingstone to a more ambitious book project that will look in more depth at some of the country perspectives developed here, in particular those of each of the NWS. The planned volume will also examine additional country perspectives not addressed in this special section. Among others, it will look at cases of the “new nuclear aspirants”; that is, those states in the Middle East and Southeast Asia that could be tempted to develop nuclear weapons as spin-offs from peaceful nuclear programs currently being launched in the context of the so-called nuclear renaissance.8 The expanded project will also examine the case of the “silent proliferators”—states such as Syria, or possibly Myanmar, which are suspected of being active proliferators (or of collaborating with them) but which forcefully deny those allegations.

Contributors to this special section of the Review include nonproliferation scholars from Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, and the United States. With research interests centered on the study of nuclear issues against the backdrop of great power relations, David Santoro (University of British Columbia, Canada) opens this series of articles with an examination of the current nuclear doctrines, postures, and disarmament policies of the five NWS, with the goal of clarifying whether or not these powers will formulate, at the 2010 NPT Review Conference and beyond, sustained and coordinated policies in favor of nuclear disarmament. Maria Rost Rublee (University of Auckland, New Zealand), a specialist in nonproliferation norms and nuclear restraint, then moves on to analyze the opportunities and challenges posed by the threshold states to the current nuclear disarmament momentum, specifically focusing on the cases of Japan and Brazil. This is followed by Marianne Hanson's paper on the advocacy states. An international security scholar with expertise on the debate about the abolition of nuclear weapons and on attempts to delegitimize weapons of mass destruction, Hanson (University of Queensland, Australia) examines the recent efforts undertaken by the governments of Australia, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, and Sweden in promoting nuclear disarmament, mostly via their leadership of—or major involvement in—two disarmament groupings: the New Agenda Coalition (NAC) and the Seven-Nation Initiative (7NI). It is worth pointing out here that Hanson's focus on the disarmament advocacy of the Western members of these groupings helps distinguish the current disarmament momentum from the earlier activities of the NAM. Next, Natasha Barnes and Tanya Ogilvie-White (both of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand) and Rodrigo Álvarez Valdés (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Chile), all scholars in nonproliferation, nuclear governance, and disarmament issues, explore the cases of the three holdout states and the implications for the current nuclear disarmament momentum. Separately, Tanya Ogilvie-White also explores the likely responses of North Korea and Iran (the defiant states) to the Obama administration's efforts to reassert U.S. moral authority on nuclear issues. Unlike the other four articles that comprise this study, this examination of the defiant states provides a theoretically driven analysis—a necessary departure from the approach of the others, due to the dearth of reliable information in the open literature about the nuclear activities and motivations of the two states under scrutiny. Finally, Wade Huntley, an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, California), concludes the special section by drawing general conclusions across the five groups of states, focusing on the potential ramifications of the research findings for the 2010 NPT Review Conference, for the nonproliferation regime in general, and for current disarmament efforts specifically. Will the disarmament wave that is slowly building eventually generate enough force to break the dam of disarmament resistance, or will this one go the way of those before it, blocked by strategic and technical obstacles and insufficient political will?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to our paper reviewers, who have made numerous thoughtful and judicious comments and suggestions that have enabled us to greatly improve the quality of this research enterprise. Many thanks to Christophe Carle (French Ministry of Defense), Lewis Dunn (Science Applications International Corporation), Devin Hagerty (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Michael Keifer (Analytic Services Inc.), Mark Smith (Wilton Park), and Christine Wing (New York University's Center on International Cooperation).

Notes

1. George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. A15; and “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, p. A13.

2. “Remarks by the President on Winning the Nobel Peace Prize,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, October 9, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-Winning-the-Nobel-Peace-Prize/>.

3. For a historical review of nuclear abolitionist waves, see Michael Krepon, “Ban the Bomb. Really,” American Interest 3 (January/February 2008), pp. 88–93.

4. Bernard Baruch, “Proposals for an International Atomic Development Authority by the United States Representative to the Atomic Energy Commission,” Department of State Bulletin 14 (June 23, 1946), p. 1057.

5. Paul Bracken, “The Second Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 79 (January/February 2000), pp. 146–56.

6. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 388

7. Rebecca Johnson, “Looking Towards 2010: What Does the Nonproliferation Regime Need?” Disarmament Diplomacy 84 (Spring 2007), <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd84/84npt.htm>.

8. For a review on the proliferation risks associated with peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements, see Matthew Fuhrmann, “Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements,” International Security 34 (Summer 2009), pp. 7–41.