Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to bridge the theoretical and empirical parts of the book and provide the reader with a broader context of norms, rules, and order in global nuclear politics. I briefly discuss the historical constitution of nuclear order as it gradually emerged after the Second World War and review the dominant perspectives on nuclear order in contemporary nuclear scholarship. In turn, I use the conceptual framework from the previous chapter to reconstruct a normative structure that underpins the nonproliferation game. Then, I elaborate on the contestedness of nuclear order with respect to ambiguous concepts, clashing norms, and technological change. Finally, I highlight notable patterns of deviant behavior in nuclear politics of the last few decades, with respect to nuclear “outsiders,” “rogues,” and “keepers.”
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Notes
- 1.
I used a minor part of this chapter in my essay “Weapons of Mass Protection? Rogue Asteroids, Nuclear Explosions in Space, and the Norms of Global Nuclear Order,” published in an edited volume Planetary Defense: Global Collaboration for Defending Earth from Asteroids and Comets (Smetana 2019).
- 2.
On the notion of “nuclear exceptionalism,” see Hecht (2012).
- 3.
As one of the manuscript’s reviewer correctly noted, the ideational groundwork for the future international control of nuclear energy already emerged before the Second World War with the discovery of radiation. Similarly, during the Manhattan Project, the scientists involved in building the first atomic bomb fiercely debated the political implications of nuclear weapons invention (Schollmeyer 2005).
- 4.
For the theoretical and conceptual underpinning of strategic arms control idea, see Schelling and Halperin (1961), Bull (1961), Brennan (1961), and Jervis (1993). For the emergence and spread of the arms control idea and its institutionalization in US–Soviet bilateral relations, see Adler (1992), Krause and Latham (1998), and Tannenwald (1999a).
- 5.
North Korea is the only state that had acceded to the NPT and later withdrew.
- 6.
See, for example, Burns (1969), Epstein (1976), Unger (1976), Shaker (1980), Nye (1981), Müller et al. (1994, Chapter 2), Bourantonis (1997), Paul (2003), Krause (2007), Bunn and Rhinelander (2008), Walker (2012, Chapter 3), and Popp et al. (2016).
- 7.
The obligations of NWS in peaceful nuclear use and disarmament pillars are frequently interpreted as a grand “bargain” that had justified the fact that NNWS pledged to permanently forgo an option to develop their own nuclear weapons. For a critique of the notion of an NPT bargain as merely a “prominent ideological myth of the liberal arms control school,” see Krause (2007; cf. Gilinsky and Sokolski 2017).
- 8.
William Walker argues that “most state parties had by now come to regard the NPT [Review] Conference as a quasi-legislative assembly with authority to set the broad agenda” (Walker 2007b, Chapter 439; cf. Walker 2007a, Chapter 750). On the legal and policy dimensions of NPT Review Conferences, see Stoiber (2003).
- 9.
Shampa Biswas suggests that beyond the declared goal of solving the “problem of nuclear weapons,” the global nuclear nonproliferation regime also “helps to constitute a certain rendition of the problem of nuclear weapons that serves a global ordering function” (Biswas 2014, p. 74). See also Ruzicka (2018).
- 10.
The issues related to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament have been also dealt with within the Conference on Disarmament. Furthermore, the adoption of the CTBT or the 2016 resolution on the nuclear ban treaty negotiation were subject to a general vote in the UNGA (see Boulden et al. 2009). Finally, in 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provided the advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, suggesting, inter alia, that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control” (ICJ 1996; cf. Matheson 1997; Heffernan 1998).
- 11.
Hedley Bull—likely the most prominent English School scholar—was himself sometimes vary about hegemonic tendencies of Western states in the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and explicitly recommended to pursue a “Low Posture” doctrine, “in which nuclear countries can best contribute to the management of proliferation by attempting to minimize the gap that separates them from the non-nuclear” (Bull 1987, p. 207). At the same time, he viewed the existing conception of nuclear order as largely beneficial and criticized the unsatisfied Third World countries for the inability to formulate a coherent alternative conception (Bull 1987, pp. 195–196).
- 12.
See also Roberts (2007) and Hassner (2007).
- 13.
In this regard, Ruzicka and Wheeler (2010) point to the importance of “trusting relationships” among states in the NPT regime, that need to be sustained (and preferably bolstered) in order to prevent the erosion of international nuclear order. For a critique, see Bluth (2012).
- 14.
For an excellent account of the role of China in global nuclear order, see Horsburgh (2015).
- 15.
Ursula Jasper uses the similar notion of a “technopolitical negotiated order,” which is “based on ongoing processes of re-negotiation, re-affirmation or re-configuration” (Jasper 2016, p. 3).
- 16.
For a conceptual understanding of deterrence as a norm, see Freedman (2013). For a conceptual understanding of universality (or universalization) as a norm, see Müller, Becker-Jakob, et al. (2013, pp. 53–54).
- 17.
For an excellent discussion of the metaphor of proliferation with respect to the spread of weapons, see Mutimer (2000) and Pelopidas (2011, 2015). In spite of occasional theories of beneficial systemic and sub-systemic effects of horizontal spread of nuclear weapons (the so-called proliferation optimism—e.g., Waltz [1981, 2012], and Mearsheimer [1990, 1993]), the vast majority of scholars, experts, international organizations, and governments subscribe to “proliferation pessimism”: an idea that the spread of nuclear weapons is a dangerous phenomenon with strictly negative consequences for international security and order. See also Feaver (1993, 1995, 1997), Lavoy (1995), Knopf (2002), Karl (2011), Sagan and Waltz (2012), Cohen (2016), and Smetana et al. (2017).
- 18.
This is not to suggest that there is no political resistance to civilian use of nuclear energy. However, the notion of the beneficial, peaceful use of nuclear energy has been central to the normative logic of the NPT and the global nuclear order as such.
- 19.
Hecht (2012, p. 102) suggests that “the NPT’s text offered a worldview that conjoined Cold War moral injunctions (to avoid planetary destruction) with postcolonial ones (to transcend the sociotechnical injustices of the colonial order).” See also Hecht (2006, p. 327).
- 20.
Although nuclear disarmament itself naturally presupposes a qualitatively different effort by the NWS than NNWS, the fact that Article VI has been explicitly formulated as an effort of both NWS and NNWS is often omitted in related debates. See Sagan (2009a), cf. Sagan et al. (2010).
- 21.
On July 7, 2017, the UNGA adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as the first international agreement banning nuclear weapons and providing a framework for their elimination (see UNGA 2017). However, the Treaty was adopted without the participation of nuclear-armed states and most NATO allies, who rejected to recognize its validity and to abide by its terms.
- 22.
The review of deterrence-related literature in nuclear scholarship is beyond the scope of this book. Perhaps the most prominent attempts to conceptually tackle this issue were written by Brodie (1946), Schelling (1966), Morgan (1977), Jervis (1989), Freedman (1989), and Powell (1990).
- 23.
On Israeli nuclear opacity—or the amimut—see Cohen and Frankel (1987) and Cohen (1998, 2010).
- 24.
Nuclear scholars frequently use the notion of “nuclear taboo” for the military non-use norm. However, the use of the term is not wholly unproblematic as a number of works contest the “taboo-like” nature of the norm (Press et al. 2013; Paul 2010; Sagan and Valentino 2017; Smetana and Vranka 2018).
- 25.
The 1996 ICJ ruling on this matter stated rather indecisively that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular, the principles and rules of humanitarian law; however, […], the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake” (ICJ 1996). The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the UNGA on July 7, 2017, states that “any use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict” and explicitly prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in Article I of the Treaty (UNGA 2017).
- 26.
In the case of all the states except South Sudan, this would involve their de-nuclearization prior to their accession.
- 27.
The negative security assurance is a pledge of a NWS not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a NNWS, whereas the positive security assurance would have a NWS come to the aid of a NNWS in response to the aggression by another state armed with nuclear weapons. See Bunn and Timerbaev (1993).
- 28.
On the link between US extended deterrence/assurance and nonproliferation, see Bleek and Lorber (2014), Knopf (2012), Müller and Schmidt (2010), Kroenig (2016), and Reiter (2014).
- 29.
The IAEA safeguards have been originally applied only to the NNWS, which eventually had to put all of their nuclear facilities under the IAEA monitoring. However, the five NWS eventually accepted the application of safeguards on some of their civilian facilities through the Voluntary Offer Agreements, to somehow balance the unequal treatment in the NPT (cf. Baeckmann 1988; Müller, Becker-Jakob, et al. 2013, p. 53; Tannenwald 2013, pp. 304–305). On the Additional Protocol, see Hirsch (2004).
- 30.
Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNE) offer an excellent example of the dynamic normative development of nuclear order. Whereas PNE’s received its own article in the NPT, the concept nevertheless underwent a normative contestation through states’ practice and discursive interventions. Soon the very idea has become completely obsolete and in the 1990s prohibited under the CTBT. Cf. Long (1976) and Harrington and Englert (2014).
- 31.
See also Rockwood (2016) and the related articles in the special section of the Nonproliferation Review.
- 32.
By the successful adoption of UNGA resolution 71/258, the majority of UN member states agreed to convene a UN conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons in 2017; however, all the NWS and most of US allies voted against the resolution and declined to participate at the conference (see UNGA 2016; Reif 2016; Fihn 2017b; Sauer 2017). As noted above, The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was eventually adopted by the UNGA on July 7, 2017 (UNGA 2017).
- 33.
Although some scholars suggest that the commitment to general and complete disarmament had already been “disjoined from nuclear disarmament obligations” (Granoff 2006, p. 1001), the issue of mutual linkage between these concepts is still subject to contestation in the NPT context (cf. Burroughs 2016; Meyer 2016; Rydell 2016).
- 34.
For the discussion of different approaches, see Ware (2015).
- 35.
As some scholars observed, this rule has some rather unconventional implications. For example, if any of the current NWS decides to unilaterally dismantle all of its nuclear weapons, it would continue to be treated as a NWS under the treaty terms; at the same time, the states acquired nuclear weapons after 1967 cannot be granted the NWS status and can only join the treaty if they disarm and join as NNWS (see Müller, Becker-Jakob, et al. 2013, p. 54).
- 36.
As I discuss in the last section of this chapter, the legitimacy of this norm that has divided the formally equal states (in international order) to unequal categories (in nuclear order) has been heavily contested by the NPT “outsiders” since the NPT adoption (cf. Singh 1998; Tannenwald 2013).
- 37.
Due to space concerns, this section is far from being exhaustive and rather points to some of the trends that are at the forefront of contemporary nuclear discourse.
- 38.
Some scholars and experts question the existence of this connection. For example, Oliver Thränert even suggests that nuclear arms races of the 1970s and 1980s in fact prevented further horizontal proliferation at the time (Thränert 2008, p. 334).
- 39.
For a study that suggests that such a link is not supported by empirical evidence, see Kroenig (2014b).
- 40.
Note that unlike nuclear disarmament, nuclear arms control practices are philosophically fully compatible with the norm of nuclear deterrence. For the elaboration of this argument, see, for example, Mutimer (2011). For the evolution of arms control idea in the context of nuclear deterrence, see Adler (1991, 1992).
- 41.
See, for example, Albin (2001, Chapter 6), Albin and Druckman (2014), Müller (2010a, 2011b, 2017), Müller, Becker-Jakob, et al. (2013), Tannenwald (2013), Fahmy (2006), Schaper (2014), Rathbun (2006), or Fey and Melamud (2014).
- 42.
For a critique of this perspective, see Krause (2007), Thränert (2008, pp. 333–336), and Colby (2015).
- 43.
In 2011, a newly independent South Sudan joined this group. Although South Sudan has not acceded the NPT yet, it is likely due to the internal problems that the newborn state is dealing with, and the country is not considered a proliferation threat. Furthermore, although North Korea could be also considered an “outsider” since its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, the legality of North Korean withdrawal has been heavily contested and in the NPT setting North Korea is therefore treated differently than India, Pakistan, and Israel (see, e.g., Bunn and Rhinelander 2005b).
- 44.
Whereas the NWS usually contest the fact that their behavior would be inconsistent with the fundamental norms of the NPT, there were also situations in which some of the NWS would engage in a forthright defiance of the existing standards—for example, under George W. Bush administration, the new US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton publicly rejected the prior commitments to work toward nuclear disarmament (Allison 2010, p. 80).
- 45.
Although France and the UK also engaged in some quantitative reductions in their—significantly smaller—nuclear arsenals, they have been doing this unilaterally, out of any formal arms control framework. For a critical discussion of the conceptual link between arms control and disarmament, see Mutimer (2012), and Dalton et al. (2016, pp. 7–8). For the debate over the need to engage all NWS in multilateral strategic arms control, see Smetana and Ditrych (2015).
- 46.
It should be noted that many themes of the Humanitarian Initiative have previously appeared in the earlier statements of like-minded NNWS, the NAM states in particular.
- 47.
For scholarly perspectives on the TPNW, see Potter (2017), Onderco (2017), Sagan and Valentino (2017), or Egeland (2018).
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Smetana, M. (2020). On Nuclear (Dis-)Order. In: Nuclear Deviance. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24225-1_4
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