Is there A theory of nuclear proliferation? An analysis of the contemporary debate

Nonproliferation Review

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 43-60

  Ogilvie White, Tanya ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85008798884     PISSN: 10736700     EISSN: 17461766     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10736709608436652     Document Type: Article

References (152)

1. Zachary S. Davis and Benjamin Frankel, eds., The Proliferation Puzzle: Why Nuclear Weapons Spread and What Results (London: Frank Cass, 1993).
2. The concept of levels of analysis is an abstract construct invented by theorists trying to understand and explain behavior. The levels of analysis represent the different levels of explanation: the individual level, the state level, and the international level. Few theories have provided explanations of behavior at all levels, and those that have, have tended to be ahistorical and apolitical, leading to distorted explanations of behavior.
3. Structural explanations of international relations often turn human agents into puppets whose behavior is determined by impersonal social forces, whereas explanations based on agency generally presuppose that human beings control events. The problem is that agents and structures are inextricably linked, but most social science theories cannot synthesize these two extreme positions. For an introduction to the agent-structure debate.
4. Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, eds. The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 102-114.
5. Research in the social sciences can be broadly divided into three main perspectives: positivism, interpretivism, and postmodernism. Positivists believe that truth is pre-existent and that it is the researchers task to discover it. Their aim is to use reason and gather evidence to arrive at objective truth. In this sense, knowledge is only valid if it is backed up with scientific evidence. In contrast, interpretivism is based on the idea that truth is socially constructed, and that knowledge is concerned with interpretation, meaning and illumination. Interpretivists believe that it is the researchers task to discover meaning within social interactions. Postmodernists believe that there are no secure foundations for knowledge, and that all knowledge claims are open to challenge. The goal of postmodernists is not to arrive at the truth, whether pre-existent or socially constructed, but to demonstrate the fallibility of all over arching theories, and to focus on what has previously been taken for granted, neglected, or regarded as insignificant. The problem with taking a positivist approach to explaining nuclear proliferation dynamics, is that information is scarce due to the nature of the subject, and it is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to use scientific methods to arrive at the truth.
6. Epistemology is concerned with the relationship between knowledge claims and how the truth is constructed: it looks at what distinguishes different kinds of knowledge claims and the criteria used to distinguish them. Ontology is about what exists, what is the nature of the world, what is reality. The two are related since claims about what exists in the world imply claims about how what exists may be known. The discussion in endnote number 4 shows how positivism, interpretivism, and postmodernism offer different approaches to ontology and epistemology.
7. Bradley A. Thayer, Nuclear Weapons as a Faustian Bargain, Security Studies 5 (Autumn 1995), pp. 150-151.
8. Shai Feldman, Is There A Proliferation Debate? Security Studies 4 (Summer 1995), p. 790.
9. Charles W. Kegley’s Capabilities model, which is based on the assumption that states develop nuclear weapons when they possess the technological and the economic capability to do so. Kegley used his model to draw up a list of future proliferants, which includes, among others, Japan, Spain, Italy, and Australia, but omits Iraq, Iran, and North Korea on the basis that they could not meet the high economic and technological standards that he set to distinguish realistic nuclear aspirants from non realistic aspirants. In his self-critique he admits that his model is flawed because the motives, incentives and intentions of the state need to be taken into account, as well as psychological and cognitive variables, which are difficult to quantify.
10. Kegley H, International and Domestic Correlates of Nuclear Proliferation: A Comparative Analysis, Korea and World Affairs 4 (Spring 1980).
11. Most theories of international relations are based on the rational actor model, which presupposes that individuals, and by extension states, are driven by goals, and that they strive to be rational in their attempts to achieve these goals. It follows that it is possible for the social scientist to explain and predict the behavior of individuals/states once their goals have been identified.
12. The fact that the United States had developed nuclear weapons clearly provided the most important incentive for the Soviet Union to do the same. To use the example of India, China’s nuclear test in 1964 led to calls for an Indian device, and played a fundamental role in persuading Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri that India should at least research the benefits that a nuclear test might have for the country. In Ukraine’s case, the nuclear threat from Russia after independence, played an important role in delaying President Leonid Kravchuk’s decision to abandon nuclear weapons.
13. Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Paper 171 (1981).
14. Kenneth N. Waltz, Nuclear Myths and Political Realities, American Political Science Review 84 (Fall 1990).
15. Kenneth N. Waltz, Nuclear Myths and Political Realities, American Political Science Review, p. 734.
16. Andrew Mack has used rational deterrence theory to explain North Korea’s nuclear intentions and motivations from the 1970s to the 1990s. He argues that nuclear weapons provided Pyongyang with a strategic equaliser in the inter-Korean military competition, and provide a deterrent to the use of American nuclear weapons against the north in the face of deteriorating alliance relationships.
17. Andrew Mack, North Korea and the Bomb, Foreign Policy 83 (Summer 1991), pp. 91-93.
18. However, this analysis is open to question. Firstly, North Korea’s nuclear capability appears to have been limited, and could not be described as a credible deterrent. Secondly, Kim Il-Sung himself admitted that it was illogical for North Korea to challenge the power of the United States. Lastly, if Pyongyang’s nuclear behavior was being driven by strategic considerations, why was the framework agreement signed at a time when North Korea’s strategic position had not improved? Rational deterrence theory cannot explain this.
19. Seong W. Cheon, National Security and Stability in East Asia: The Korean Peninsula, PPNN Core Group Meeting Paper, Japan (November 1992), p. 39. In this context, stability is used to describe the absence of war.
20. Waltz (1990), p. 737.
21. As Scott Sagan notes, leaders tiying to justify the existence of existing nuclear weapons systems took a long time to recognize the truly devastating power of nuclear weapons. For more information about the changing perceptions of nuclear weapons, see Scott Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 259-260
22. Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1964 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air. University, 1971), p. 122. For an introduction to the debate on how perceptions of nuclear weapons have changed
23. Gregg Herkin, The Winning Weapons (New York: Vintage, 1982)
24. Eric Herring, The Decline of Nuclear Diplomacy in Ken Booth, ed., New Thinking About Strategy and International Security (London: Harper Collins, 1991).
25. Notice how policymakers in the nuclear weapons states justified their nuclear status using rational deterrence theory, but completely abandoned the concept of rational deterrence when justifying their attempts to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons, as they.became increasingly concerned about the possibility of irrational behavior and accidents if nuclear weapons got into the wrong hands. Brahma Chellaney is particularly critical of this hypocritical and ethnocentric reasoning in his article Naivetd and Hypocrisy: Why Anti-Proliferation Zealotry Does Not Make Sense, Security Studies 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 780-781.
26. Waltz also claims the more unstable a government, the shorter the attention span of its leaders.
27. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 9.
28. Waltz (1990), pp. 738-741.
29. Vertical nuclear proliferation refers to the accumulation of nuclear weapons within the nuclear weapon states (NWS), which occurred during the Cold War, as the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China built up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Horizontal proliferation refers to the spread of nuclear. weapons to non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). The existence of the former was stressed particularly by policy makers and academics in India during negotiations over the NPT, who were keen to point out the discriminatory nature of the Treaty, which the NWS were forcing on the NNWS.
30. This has been pointed out on many occasions, most recently and almost gleefully by Peter D. Feaver in Optimists, Pessimists, and Theories of Nuclear Proliferation Management, Security Studies 4 (Summer 1995), p. 755-756.
31. C. Raja Mohan, Atomic Teeth To Apartheid: South Africa and Nuclear Weapons, Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis 12 (January-March 1980)
32. D. Venter, South Africa and the International Controversy Surrounding its Nuclear Capability, Politikon 5 (Spring 1978).
33. Zachary S. Davis, The Realist Nuclear Regime," Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993), p. 79.
34. Davis’s approach could provide a more convincing explanation of why South Africa developed its nuclear weapons program in the 1970s and 1980s than if he used rational deterrence theory. South Africa’s nuclear weapons program lacked a strategic rationale, and appears to have been driven by political rather than military considerations. Rather than functioning as a conventional deterrent, Davis could argue that Pretoria’s leaders intended to use its nuclear weapons as a diplomatic bomb, to obtain concessions and assistance from the United States. Moreover, he could assert that once it became clear that this diplomatic bomb was having a detrimental effect on South Africa’s diplomatic relations and economy, nuclear weapons were abandoned. This is the official explanation provided by South Africa’s leaders, who argue that the diplomatic bomb was developed in response to South Africa’s deteriorating security situation in 1974, when it was believed that Communist involvement in Angola would threaten Pretoria. However, it does over simplify the situation, justifying and rationalizing South Africa’s nuclear activities, ignoring complex internal dynamics that were driving South Africa’s nuclear behavior.
35. North Korea began a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s despite the strong possibility that this might jeopardize its survival. Ukraine also played a game of nuclear brinkmanship in the early 1990s, which is impossible to explain if only external factors are taken into account.
36. India continues to refuse to sign the NPT, despite strong pressure to do so. External factors, such as the nuclear threat from Pakistan, certainly play a part in this, but India’s long held belief that the NPT is discriminatory, and India’s determination to be treated as an equal, also play a role in its refusal to sign.
37. Richard K. Betts, Paranoids, Pygmies, Pariahs and Non-proliferation Revisited, Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993).
38. Following criticism from proliferation pessimists, Waltz has made it clear recently that different types of state are likely to behave differently once they possess nuclear weapons. In line with Betts, Waltz argues that pariah states such as Libya and Iraq should be prevented from acquiring nuclear capabilities.
39. Kenneth N. Waltz, A Reply, Security Studies 4 (Summer 1995), p. 804. This in inconsistent with his argument in The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.
40. Betts pp. 107-109.
41. Indira Gandhi’s initial decision to go ahead with a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) in 1971, appears to have been influenced by concerns about India’s deteriorating strategic position. However, by the time the test was carried out in 1974, India’s international relations had improved considerably. The fact that India experienced serious domestic unrest between 1971 and 1974 could shed some light on the Prime Minister’s decision to go ahead with the test anyway, in an attempt to improve domestic morale and divert attention from the internal economic and political problems that were plaguing the government.
42. Shyam Bhatia, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Ghazibad: Vikas Publishing House, 1979).
43. Waltz states that structural theory will not show how systems determine the behavior and interaction of their units but only how The structure of the system affects the interacting units and how they in turn affect the structure (emphasis added). Later on he explains that the structure of the system only partly explains behavior and outcomes.
44. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 40, 73.
45. Waltz admits that structures condition behaviors and outcomes, yet explanations of behaviors and outcomes are indeterminate because both unit-level and structural causes are in play.
46. Robert O. Keohane, ed., NeoRealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 343.
47. The concept of polarity has been the subject of great debate in the Held of international relations since the 1960s. However, the end of the Cold War has given the debate new life. The main questions that have been addressed are: How should polarity be defined? What is the relationship between polarity and stability? Should the structure of the international system be described as unipolar or multipolar?
48. John J. Mearsheimer, Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War, International Security 15 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56
49. Kenneth M. Waltz, The Emerging Structure of International Politics, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 30-September 2, 1990
50. Richard Ned Lebow, The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism, International Organization 48 (Spring 1994), pp. 249-279
51. R. Harrison, What Was Bipolarity? International Organization 47 (Winter 1993), pp. 77-107.
52. Steve Weber also Links the proliferation issue and the nuclear issue directly, attempting to develop a modified form of neo-realism in order to explain the absence of war between the great powers during the Cold War, and since. He argues that the presence of nuclear weapons in the international system is bringing about a slow structural change, from the anarchic ordering principle of the conventional world, to a more hierarchic structure, in which nuclear weapon states, acting as joint custodians of the international system, take on the role of the overarching power which acts as a structural constraint, reducing the incentives to go to war. However, Weber focuses on explaining international outcomes (the absence of war), and does not get involved in the more complex debate about the dynamics of nuclear proliferation, as Waltz does.
53. Steve Weber, Realism, Detente, and Nuclear Weapons, International Organization 44 (Winter 1990).
54. Daniel Deudney takes Weber’s approach even further, arguing that nuclear weapons have eclipsed the role of the state in the international system.
55. Daniel Deudney, Dividing Realism: Structural Realism Versus Security Materialism in Nuclear Security and Proliferation, Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993).
56. Sagan and Waltz, p. 41.
57. The concept of the proliferation chain was developed by Lewis A. Dunn and William H. Overholt. According to their model, proliferation occurs in the first link in the chain when constraints (such as domestic opposition, cost and technological barriers) are relaxed and underlying pressures (such as prestige considerations and security calculations) coincide with triggering events (such as foreign or domestic crises, nuclearization of another country or reduction of alliance credibility). Once proliferation has occurred in the first link, other links soon emerge and a chain begins to form as adversaries feel insecure and acquire nuclear weapons in an attempt to overcome the nuclear threat. Eventually a proliferation turning point is reached, when the proliferation chain gathers a momentum of its own, and will spiral out of control unless an Anti-proliferation crackdown is imposed by the international community. Using this model, Dunn and Overholt predicted that an Indian chain would emerge, and would eventually include: Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Argentina, and Brazil, by 1995.
58. Dunn and Overholt, The Next Phase in Nuclear Proliferation Research, Orbis 20 (Summer 1976).
59. Waltz (1995), p. 803.
60. Benjamin Frankel, The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993), p. 37.
61. Benjamin Frankel, The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Security Studies, pp. 37-38.
62. Benjamin Frankel, The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Security Studies p. 40.
63. Mearsheimer (1990), pp. 38-39.
64. John J. Mearsheimer, The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent, Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993), p. 54
65. John J. Mearsheimer, The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent, Foreign Affairs p. 58.
66. For information about the negotiations between the United States and Ukraine over the nuclear issue between 1991-1995, and the terms of the agreements, see James Cow, Ukraine, the NPT and a Model Security Policy: to Have and Have Not? in J. B. Pole and R. Guthrie, eds. Verification 1995 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 115-131
67. Marco de Andreis and Francesco Calogero, The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy, SIPRI Research Report No. 10 (January 1994).
68. Irene Marushko, Ukraine Becomes Nuclear Weapons Free Country, IAEA Daily Press Review, June 4, 1996.
69. It is interesting to note that Waltz stated that a separate theory dealing with the politics and policies of states would be valuable, but that it would be impossible to combine systems theory and domestic politics theory into one theory. See Waltz (1986), p. 344.
70. Barry Buzan, et al. p. 9.
71. Barry Buzan, pp. 11-13.
72. It should be noted here that Buzan et aL use the label structural realism to refer to their more wide-ranging form of neorealism. Buzan et aL, p. 9.
73. Buzan et al. state that Structural logic can certainly be used to shape and inform the analysis of foreign and domestic policy but it is mostly to abstract and large scale to be used prescriptively. They suggest that their theory is better suited to interpret history—especially grand history.
74. Buzan et al, p. 13.
75. Jack Snyder’s approach suffers from the same conceptual contradictions. He constructs a domestic politics model that he claims stays within the realist tradition, in an attempt to combine domestic and international levels of analysis. His aim is to explain the over expansion of the great powers over the last 200 years, which he argues occurred as a result of industrialization and domestic coalitions, combined with systemic pressures.
76. Buzan et al, Snyder focuses on explaining systemic outcomes, which makes it particularly difficult to apply his model to the specific dynamics of nuclear proliferation.
77. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991).
78. Mitchell Reiss, Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Non-proliferation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
79. Mitchell Reiss, Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Non-proliferation, pp. 248-263.
80. Mitchell Reiss, Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Non-proliferation, p. 173.
81. Mitchell Reiss, Without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Non-proliferation, p. 268.
82. Etel Solingen, The Domestic Sources of Nuclear Postures: Influencing Fence-sitters in the Post-Cold War Era, IGCC Policy Paper Number 8, University of California, October 1994.
83. Glenn Chafetz, The End of the Cold War and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation: An Alternative to the Neo-realist Perspective, Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993).
84. Glenn Chafetz, The End of the Cold War and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation: An Alternative to the Neo-realist Perspective, Security Studies p. 133.
85. Glenn Chafetz, The End of the Cold War and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation: An Alternative to the Neo-realist Perspective, Security Studies p. 128.
86. Glenn Chafetz, The End of the Cold War and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation: An Alternative to the Neo-realist Perspective, Security Studies pp. 139-146.
87. David Fischer, South Africa, in Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak, eds., Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War (Washington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994).
88. Olli-Pekka Jalonen’s Analysis of the dynamics of nuclear proliferation in Ukraine is based on neo-liberal institutionalism.
89. Jalonen, Spiral Into Hopelessness? Post-Soviet Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, in Clive Archer and Olli-Pekka Jalonen, eds., Changing European Security Landscape (Tampere: TamperePeace Research Institute, 1995).For an insight into the complexities of Ukraine’s nuclear diplomacy
90. Natalya Yakovenko, Independent Ukraine 1991-1995: A Difficult Stage of Development (Lancaster: Centre for Defence and Security Studies, 1995).
91. Neo-liberal institutional theory cannot explain why India, which is arguably the largest democracy in the world, took the decision to develop a nuclear capability in the 1960s and 1970s, despite domestic and international opposition to nuclear weapons. It also fails to explain why, in the lead up to the general election, between December 1995 to April 1996, India appears to have made arrangements to carry out another nuclear test, and why in August 1996, India test-fired its medium-range Agni missile, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
92. Christopher Thomas, India Puts Range of Weapons to the Test, The Times (U.K.), August 27, 1996, p. 11.
93. The Advent of Kim Jongil’s Regime in North Korea and Prospects for its Policy Direction, Policy Studies Report, The Research Institute for National Unification, Seoul, December 1995.
94. Stephen M. Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 6.
95. The most recent attempt to incorporate the decisionmaking process into armament dynamics has been made by Jean Pascal Zanders, who set out to develop a model to explain the proliferation of chemical weapons. His assimilation model treats proliferation as a process, showing how obstacles have to be overcome in a dual political and military decisionmaking track. However, although he addresses the question of how proliferation occurs, he does not address the question of why it occurs, arguing that realist, neo-liberal and technological determinants theories already provide a satisfactory answer to this question.
96. Zanders, Dynamics of Chemical Armament: Towards a Theory of Proliferation (Brussels: University of Brussels, 1996).
97. Meyer., p. 5.
98. Meyer’s analysis of the careful balance that decisionmakers have to achieve between internal and external concerns helps explain why India’s Prime Minister, Baladur Shastri, secretly sanctioned work to begin on a PNE in 1964 in response to China’s first nuclear test, but made announcements that India would not develop a nuclear capability. This shows Shastri trying to balance external threats to India’s security with internal pressures,- as most of India’s elites were opposed to nuclear weapons during the 1960s and remained committed to Nehru’s vision of a peaceful and non-aligned India. For information about the public debate in India over nuclear weapons.
99. Frank E. Couper, Indian Party Conflict on the Issue of Atomic Weapons, Journal of Developing Areas 3 (January 1969). For information about Shastri’s response to China’s nuclear tests.
100. A. G. Noorani, India’s Quest for a Nuclear Guarantee, Asian Survey 5 (July 1967). India has fluctuated between stages two and three since the PNE in 1974, although more recently scholars have claimed that India possesses a secret operational nuclear weapons program.
101. Warren H. Donnelly, India and Nuclear Weapons, Congressional Research Service Issue Brief, The Library of Congress, January 27, 1989.
102. In India’s case, it is difficult to see the final decision to carry out the PNE in 1974 in rational terms. Indira Gandhi’s initial decision to go ahead with the PNE in 1971 appears rational as deteriorating regional and international relations at that time raised concerns about India's strategic position, but by 1974 this situation had changed as India's international relations had improved. However, between 1971 and 1974 India experienced serious domestic unrest, and it has been suggested that this explains the timing of the PNE, as India’s leaders attempted to divert attention away from its internal problems. Yet, evidence suggests that the PNE was actually carried out as a result of an ad hoc decision taken by an elite group of political leaders and members of the atomic energy agency (AEC), who were aware that the timing was not ideal, but took the decision to go ahead with the test anyway because it was too late to turn back for practical reasons. Should this be seen as a rational response?
103. Raja Ramanna, Years of Pilgrimage: An Autobiography (New Delhi: Viking, 1991).
104. Graham Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
105. Graham Allison, Essence of Decision pp. 164-171.
106. Morton H. Halperin in Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974), pp. 29-58.
107. Sagan and Waltz, Halperin in Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy pp. 49-53.
108. Sagan, pp. Halperin in Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy 251-262.
109. Mark Hibbs, South Africa’s Secret Nuclear Programme: The Dismantling, Nuclear Fuel (24 May 1993).
110. John Simpson, of the Programme for the Promotion of Nuclear Non-proliferation (PPNN), has pointed out this possibility in an interview with Mark Hibbs.
111. Hibbs, p. 6.
112. Alexandre Y. Mansourov, North Korean Decision-Making Processes Regarding the Nuclear Issue (Berkeley: Nautilus Institute,.1994), pp. 2-3
113. Selig S. Harrison, The North Korean Nuclear Crisis: From Stalemate to Breakthrough, Arms Control Today 24 (November 1994), p. 18.
114. Selig S. Harrison, Striking parallels exist between the attitude towards nuclear weapons of the different heads of India’s atomic energy commission (AEC), and India’s proliferation decisions, leading to the conclusion that individuals can play a key role in influencing nuclear weapons programs.
115. Bhabha, head of the AEC in 1964, persuaded Shastri to give the go-ahead for work to begin on the PNE. Indira Gandhi reversed this decision in 1966, possibly after advice from Vikram Sarabhai, the new head of the AEC, who was bitterly opposed to nuclear weapons and to testing. This decision was then over turned again in 1971, immediately after a new chairman of the AEC had been appointed. It does not come as a surprise to discover the H. N. Sethna was in favor of nuclear weapons.
116. Ramanna, pp. 88-89.
117. Vikram Sarabhai, Chairman of the AEC between 1966 and 1971, was fiercely opposed to nuclear weapons. His beliefs appear to have had an important influence on the AEC, and on India’s nuclear decisionmaking elite.
118. Ramanna. The military has not played a significant role in India’s nuclear decisionmaking. The organization with the most influence over nuclear decisions in India is the AEC. Why has the military traditionally been excluded from nuclear decisionmaking circles in India, and why has the AEC played such a pivotal role? Organization theory cannot explain this.
119. Feaver, p. 763.
120. The concept of belief systems was first introduced into international relations theory by Ole Holsti. A good introduction to belief systems in general, and to Ole Holsti’s work in particular, is provided by Steve Smith, Belief Systems and the Study of International Relations, in R. Little and Steve Smith, eds. Belief Systems and International Relations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
121. H Niall Michelsen points this out in relation to U.S. and Russian nuclear policies, arguing that the beliefs of the presidents of both states have an important impact on policy.
122. Michelsen, Presidential Views of Nuclear Trends, The Journal of Strategic Studies 17 (September 1994).
123. Janice Gross Stein, International Negotiation: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Negotiation Journal (July 1988), pp. 221-230
124. Ole Holsti, Crisis Decision Making, in Philip E. Tetlock, ed., Behavior, Society and Nuclear War, Volume 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
125. Jean Lave, Cognition in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
126. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976).
127. Glenn H. Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977).
128. Peter Haas, Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination, International Organization 46 (Winter 1992), p. 29.
129. Peter R. Lavoy, Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 2 (Spring/Summer 1993).
130. Peter R. Lavoy, Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 2 p. 199.
131. Peter R. Lavoy, Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 2 p. 200.
132. Peter R. Lavoy, Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 2 p. 202.
133. Peter R. Lavoy, Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 2 p. 199.
134. Haas, p. 21.
135. Emmanuel Adler, The Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear. Arms Control, International Organization 46 (Winter 1992).
136. Haas, p. 15.
137. The idea that foreign policy learning is possible is not new. For early explorations into this subject see Ernest R. May, Lessons of the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)
138. Jervis, chapter 6. However, interest in learning models has increased recently, inspired by the inability of structural theories to explain the end of the Cold War, and in particular the foreign policy changes that occurred under Mikhail Gorbachev
139. George W. Breslauer, Explaining Soviet Policy Changes: Politics, Ideology and Learning, in George W. Breslauer, ed., Soviet Policy in Africa: From the Old to the New Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 196-216
140. Janice Gross Stein, Political Learning By Doing: Gorbachev as Uncommitted Thinker and Motivated Learner, International Organization 48 (Spring 1994).
141. Recently, President Leonid Kuchma declared that the Ukrainian people, having suffered from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, are well acquainted with the potential disaster that nuclear weapons can bring Ukraine calls on other nations to follow our path and do everything to wipe nuclear weapons from the face of the earth as soon as possible. See Marushko.
142. In February 1995, the White House issued a report to define the long-term U.S. strategy in the post-Cold War environment, which provides important insights into the thinking of the Clinton administration on the issues of nonproliferation and arms control. The report stressed the need for the United States to retain robust strategic nuclear forces sufficient to deter any future hostile foreign leadership. In doing this, it reinforces the idea that nuclear weapons play a vital role in national security policy. At the same time, the report stated that the United States seeks to cap, reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the nuclear and missile capabilities of India and Pakistan. It is unwise for the nuclear weapons states to continue to define their own security needs in nuclear terms, and at the same time to try and convince other states that it is not in their interests to maintain or acquire a nuclear capability. See The Monitor 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 8-10.
143. India has refused to sign the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), claiming that it does not go far enough towards global nuclear disarmament, and also due to the hypocrisy of the nuclear weapon states. Speaking at the disarmament conference in Geneva in June, Ms. Arundhati Ghose, India’s ambassador to the United Nations stated that we cannot accept that it is legitimate for some countries to rely on nuclear weapons for their security while denying this right to others. Financial Times, June 21, 1996.
144. George Bunn, Expanding Nuclear Options: Is the U.S. Negating Its Non-Use Pledges? Arms Control Today 26 (May/June 1996).Lavoy points this out in his article.
145. Lavoy, Arms Control Today pp. 202-204.
146. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990).
147. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance p. 3.
148. Steven Flank, Exploding the Black Box: The Historical Sociology of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies 3 (Winter 1993-1994).
149. Steven Flank, Exploding the Black Box: The Historical Sociology of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies pp. 270-272.
150. Steven Flank, Exploding the Black Box: The Historical Sociology of Nuclear Proliferation, Security Studies pp. 276-277.
151. Steven Flank, Nonproliferation Policy: A Quintet For Two Violas? The Nonproliferation Review 1 (Spring/Summer 1994), p. 71.
152. Michael J. Engelhardt, Rewarding Nonproliferation: The South and North Korean Cases, The Nonproliferation Review 3 (SpringSummer 1996).