Chapter Three: Why States Give up the Bomb

Abstract

Rarely in the atomic age have hopes for genuine progress towards disarmament been raised as high as they are now. Governments, prompted by the renewed momentum of non-proliferation and disarmament initiatives, have put nuclear policy at the top of the international agenda.

But how can countries move from warm words to meaningful action? By what means could the world be weaned from its addiction to nuclear weapons and who should undertake the task of supervising this process? This Adelphi examines practical steps for achieving progress toward disarmament, assessing the challenges and opportunities associated with achieving a world without nuclear weapons. It places the current debate over abolition in the context of urgent non-proliferation priorities, such as the need to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of extremist regimes and terrorists. It distils lessons from states that have already given up nuclear programmes and from the end of the Cold War to suggest ways of countering the efforts of Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. For the longer term, it offers policy recommendations for moving towards a reduced global reliance on nuclear weapons.

Notes

‘Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order for Peace and Prosperity: The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond’, p. 4, http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/PDF/2020report0508.pdf.

Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 43–4.

The counterargument is, of course, that the lower one goes in the general level of nuclear weapons, the more precious they become in relative terms and the more difficult it is to give them up.

Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montréal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 2000), pp. 3–11.

Ariel E. Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’, International Security, vol. 27, no. 3, Winter 2002–03, p. 68.

Harald Müller and Andreas Schmidt, ‘The Little Known Story of De-Proliferation: Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapons Activities’ (draft), paper presented at International Studies Association Convention, San Francisco, California, 26–29 March 2008, http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/3/4/5/pages253459/p253459-1.php, forthcoming in William C. Potter (with Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, ed), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation: The Role of Theory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

When interpreting the results one has to remember that they are based on bivariate correlations which may hide more complex relationships between the variables.

Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 14, 25.

Cirincione, Bomb Scare, pp. 45–6.

This is the general argument, supported by case studies, in Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Similar evidence on the positive impact of the normative environment can be seen in efforts to ban landmines and cluster munitions. These cases show, on the other hand, that those countries whose security is most directly affected by the ban tend to drag their feet and even oppose the ban.

George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation, updated edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).

Müller and Schmidt, ‘The Little Known Story of De-Proliferation’, p. 36.

Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995), p. 332.

Perkovich, ‘The Next Big Steps Required to Move toward Nuclear Disarmament’, paper prepared for the conference, ‘The NPT and a World without Nuclear Weapons’, p. 1.

See David Cortright and George A. Lopez, Sanctions and the Search for Security: Challenges to the UN Action (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002).

Virginia I. Foran and Leonard S. Spector, ‘The Application of Incentives to Nuclear Proliferation’, in Cortright (ed), The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), pp. 24–5.

See Gitty M. Amini, ‘A Larger Role for Positive Sanctions in Cases of Compellance?’, working paper no. 12, Center for International Relations, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, May 1997, pp. 27–8. In their study of 116 sanctions cases, Han Sorussen and Jongryn Mo also find that ‘incentives increase the effectiveness of sanctions’. Sorussen and Mo, ‘Sanctions and Incentives’, paper delivered at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2–5 September 1999, p. 2.

Reiss, Bridled Ambition, p. 326.

Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 4.

Andrew Hurrell, ‘An Emerging Security Community in South America’, in Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 228–64; Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Beyond Waltz's Nuclear World: More Trust May Be Better’, International Relations, vol. 23, no. 3, 2009, pp. 434–42.

Reiss, Bridled Ambition, p. 66.

José Goldemberg, ‘Looking Back: Lessons From the Denuclearization of Brazil and Argentina’, Arms Control Today, vol. 36, April 2006, http://www.armscontrol/print2023.

Ibid.

Reiss, Bridled Ambition, p. 68.

Ibid., p. 28.

Paul Davis, ‘Giving up the Bomb: Motivations and Incentives’, International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 2009.

Quoted in Reiss, Bridled Ambition, p. 32.

Rep. Tom Lantos, interview by Robert Siegel, All Things Considered, NPR, 30 January 2004.

Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms, pp. 151–69.

US Department of State, ‘Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism’, in Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1996, April 1997, http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1996Report/overview.html.

Flynt Leverett, ‘Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb’, New York Times, 23 January 2004, p. A23.

Thomas E. McNamara, ‘Unilateral and Multilateral Strategies Against State Sponsors of Terror: A Case Study of Libya, 1979 to 2003’, in Cortright and Lopez (eds), Uniting Against Terror: Cooperative Nonmilitary Responses to the Global Terrorist Threat (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 83–122.

Paul, Power versus Prudence, pp. 117–20.

Reiss, Bridled Ambition, p. 3.

Foran and Spector, ‘The Application of Incentives to Nuclear Proliferation’, p. 40.