Stigmatizing the bomb origins of the nuclear taboo

International Security

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 5-49

  Tannenwald, Nina ^a,b  

^a International Relations Program   (United States)

^b BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85047694515     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2005.29.4.5     Document Type: Review

References (213)

1. James M. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space Age (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 265.
2. NSC (National Security Council) meeting, May 27, 1957, in Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1955-57, Vol. 19 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), p. 499.
3. NSC meeting, February 27, 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States (Hereafter FRUS), 1955-57, in ibid., p. 211.
4. Thomas C. Schelling, "A Half-Century without Nuclear War," Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy (2000), http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/ Summer00/legacy_of_hiroshima.htm.
5. See Nina Tannenwald, "The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and Normative Basis of Nuclear Nonuse," International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer 1999), pp. 433-468.
6. Thomas C. Schelling, "The Role of Nuclear Weapons," in L. Benjamin Ederington and Michael J. Mazarr, eds., Turning Point: The Gulf War and U.S. Military Strategy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994), pp. 105-115.
7. John Lewis Gaddis, "The Origins of Self-Deterrence: The United States and the Nonuse of Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1958," in Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
8. For realist arguments on norms, see Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999);
9. and Scott D. Sagan, "Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction," in Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, eds., Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 73-95.
10. For rationalist arguments on norms, see James D. Morrow, "The Laws of War, Common Conjectures, and Legal Systems in International Politics," Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 31, Pt. 2 (January 2002), pp. S41-S60;
11. Jon Elster, "Social Norms and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Fall 1989), pp. 99-117;
12. Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), chaps. 4, 5;
13. and Edna Ullman-Margalit, The Emergence of Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
14. Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive per pound or per weapon, but of course need not be more destructive than bombardment by conventional weapons in the aggregate.
15. For a defense of analytical eclecticism, see Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, "Japan, Asian-Pacific Security, and the Case for Analytical Eclecticism," International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 153-185.
16. See Tannenwald, "The Nuclear Taboo." This earlier article analyzed the role of the taboo in constraining the U.S resort to nuclear weapons in four cases. It focused on the taboo as an independent variable and did not treat the issue of how the taboo arose. The present article, in contrast, focuses mainly on the taboo as the dependent variable and analyzes factors contributing to its rise.
17. Peter J. Katzenstein, Alexander Wendt, and Ronald Jepperson, "Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security," in Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 54.
18. Franz Steiner, Taboo (London: Cohen and West, 1956), p. 21;
19. and Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966).
20. Deterrence analysts commonly refer to the "nuclear threshold." For an analogous nonnuclear example of such a threshold, one might consider the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States. They produced this sense of crossing a bright line and creating a new world from which it is impossible to return.
21. The dual nature of the bomb as both an awesome and awful temptation to leaders is evident in the internal deliberations of almost every country that has thought about acquiring (or has acquired) nuclear weapons.
22. Under article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the declared nuclear states are obligated to pursue complete nuclear disarmament.
23. William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), p. 572.
24. George Bunn, "U.S. Law of Nuclear Weapons," Naval War College Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (JulyAugust 1984), pp. 46-62.
25. The World Court found that the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons is "generally" unlawful, but said it could not " definitively" conclude whether it would be unlawful in extreme circumstances of self-defense if the survival of the state were at stake. Additionally, there are scenarios in which use of nuclear weapons would not necessarily violate the laws of war, for example, on warships at sea or on troops in an isolated location. For an analysis, see Michael N. Schmitt, "The International Court of Justice and the Use of Nuclear Weapons," Naval War College Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Spring 1998), pp. 91-116.
26. Harald Mueller, "The Internalization of Principles, Norms, and Rules by Governments: The Case of Security Regimes," in Volker Rittberger, ed., Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), pp. 361-388.
27. Bunn, "U.S. Law of Nuclear Weapons."
28. For a useful distinction between abstract moral norms and ethical norms of international politics, see Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001).
29. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960);
30. and Schelling, "The Role of Nuclear Weapons."
31. Albert Yee, "Thick Rationality and the Missing 'Brute Fact': The Limits of Rationalist Incorporation of Norms and Ideas," Journal of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (November 1997), p. 1026.
32. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
33. Emanuel Adler, "Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism and World Politics," European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 3, No. 3 (September 1997), pp. 319-363;
34. and Richard Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).
35. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 5.
36. Jeffrey Checkel, "Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1 (March 1999), p. 88.
37. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 17-19.
38. See also Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002);
39. and Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
40. Krasner, Sovereignty.
41. On the role of the moral conscience of individuals, see Robert W. McElroy, Morality and American Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).
42. George I. Mavrodes, "Conventions and the Morality of War," in Charles R. Beitz, Marshall Cohen, Thomas Scanlon, and A. John Simmons, eds., International Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 75-89.
43. Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January/February 1995), pp. 135-152. The March 10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo killed 80,000-100,000 people, and the Hamburg and Dresden bombings killed almost as many as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima is estimated to have immediately killed 70,000-80,000, and Nagasaki 35,000-40,000. Various fatalities estimates are listed in
44. Barton J. Bernstein, "Truman and the ABomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the 'Decision,'" Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 3 (July 1998), p. 565, n. 43.
45. See, for example, the memo by Undersecretary of the U.S. Navy Ralph Bard to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, June 17, 1945, questioning the morality of the decision to use the bomb without warning. Reprinted in Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Random House, 1975), appendix.
46. Paul Boyer, Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), p. 25;
47. and John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973), pp. 172-173.
48. "Statement by the President of the United States, August 6, 1945," in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, April 12 to December 31, 1945 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), pp. 198-199.
49. Boyer, Fallout, p. 20.
50. Boyer, Fallout, Ibid., pp. 20-23, 26. On the racist aspects of the war,
51. see John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York : Pantheon, 1986).
52. "Special Message to Congress on Atomic Energy, October 3, 1945," in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, pp. 362-366.
53. See Alice Kimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945-47 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965);
54. and Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953, Vol. 1: The Struggle against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993).
55. It was only with the 1952 development of the hydrogen bomb, many times more powerful than the atomic bomb, that nuclear weapons were viewed as decisive weapons.
56. One early study of the bomb's role concluded, "The atomic bomb has not altered our basic concept of the strategic air offensive but has given us an additional weapon." The Implications of the Atom Bomb for the Size, Composition, Organization, and Role of the Future Air Force [Spaatz report], October 23, 1945, p. 29,
57. quoted in Samuel R. Williamson and Steven L. Reardon, The Origins of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, 1945-1953 (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), p. 29.
58. Bret J. Cillessen, "Embracing the Bomb: Ethics, Morality, and Nuclear Deterrence in the U.S. Air Force, 1945-55," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (March 1998), pp. 96-134.
59. "Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Project 'Metallurgical Laboratory,'" University of Chicago, June 11, 1945 (Franck report), http://www.dannen.com/ decision/franck.html.
60. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Statement Warning the Axis against Using Poison Gas," June 8, 1943. For a detailed recounting of the effort to suppress evidence on radiation effects,
61. see Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), pp. 40-64.
62. Draft by Harvey Bundy, "Notes on the Use by the United States of the Atomic Bomb," September 25, 1946, in Record Group 77, Groves Top Secret Docs. 20,
63. quoted in Barton J. Bernstein, "Doing Nuclear History: Treating Scholarship Fairly and Interpreting Pre-Hiroshima Thinking About 'Radioactive Poisoning,'" SHAFR Newsletter, September 1996, p. 17.
64. Bernstein suggests that this statement is probably not true, however, because officials gave little thought to radioactivity before Hiroshima, and the main factor determining blast height was blast effects. It is more revealing of their anxieties after Hiroshima. Bernstein, "Doing Nuclear History," pp. 17-36.
65. Daniel Lang, "A Reporter at Large," New Yorker, June 8, 1946, p. 62.
66. David Alan Rosenberg, "The Origins of Overkill": Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-1960," International Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Spring 1983), pp. 3-71.
67. Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of Secretary of Defense, Vol. 1: The Formative Years, 1947-50 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), pp. 425-431.
68. Quoted in John Morton Blum, ed., The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), pp. 473-474. In defending his decision not to turn custody of the bomb over to the military, Truman explained, "I don't think we ought to use this thing [the atomic bomb] unless we absolutely have to. It is ⋯ so terribly destructive ⋯ this isn't a military weapon. ⋯ It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that."
69. Quoted in David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 391.
70. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry. S. Truman (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 304.
71. UN General Assembly resolution 1(1), January 24, 1946, in Documents on Disarmament, 19451959, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, August 1960), p. 6.
72. The United Nations and Disarmament, 1945-1970 (New York: United Nations, 1970). The phrase is awkward, but many nonnuclear states oppose nuclear weapons yet remain interested in nuclear power. On the collective legitimization role of the United Nations,
73. see Inis L. Claude Jr., "Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations," International Organization, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 1966), pp. 367-379.
74. John W. Spanier and Joseph L. Nogee, The Politics of Disarmament: A Study of Soviet-American Gamesmanship (New York: Praeger, 1962);
75. and Alva Myrdal, The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (New York: Pantheon, 1976).
76. See, for example, "Reply to Russian Proposal on Atomic Armaments," study by Policy Planning Staff, April 23, 1954, in FRUS, 1952-54, Vol. 2, Pt. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), pp. 1389-1392.
77. "Declaration on Atomic Energy by President Truman and Prime Ministers Atlee and King," November 15, 1945, United States Treaties and Other International Acts Series, No. 1504, http:// www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/ post-war/451115b.html.
78. See also William Safire, "On Language: Weapons of Mass Destruction," New York Times Magazine, April 19, 1998, p. 22.
79. Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (New York: William Morrow, 1970), pp. 297-298.
80. UN General Assembly resolution, 1(1).
81. "Resolution of the Commission for Conventional Armaments: Definition of Armaments," August 12, 1948, in Documents on Disarmament, 1945-1959, Vol. 1, p. 176.
82. For the history of the antinuclear weapons movement, see Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970, Vol. 2: The Struggle against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997);
83. April Carter, Peace Movements: International Protests and World Politics since 1945 (London: Longman, 1992);
84. and Frances B. McCrea and Gerald E. Markle, Minutes to Midnight: Nuclear Weapons Protest in America (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1989).
85. The activities of these groups are documented in detail in Wittner, Resisting the Bomb;
86. Carter, Peace Movements, chap. 3;
87. and Richard Taylor, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement, 19581965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
88. Joseph J. Mangano, Ernest J. Sternglass, Jay M. Gould, Janette D. Sherman, Jerry Brown, and William McDonnell, "Strontium-90 in Newborns and Childhood Disease," Archives of Environmental Health, Vol. 55, No. 4 (July/August 2000), p. 240.
89. See Carter, Peace Movements, chap. 3;
90. and Wittner, Resisting the Bomb.
91. Thomas Graham, American Public Opinion on NATO, Extended Deterrence, and the Use of Nuclear Weapons, Occasional Paper No. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1989), pp. 13-14.
92. On the activities of the scientists' Pugwash group, which held its first conference in 1957, see Joseph Rotblat, Scientists in the Quest for Peace: A History of the Pugivash Conferences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972). In 1995 Pugwash was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work to address the threat of nuclear war.
93. Milton S. Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 19571985 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986), p. 116.
94. Quoted in Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, p. 31.
95. Taylor, Against the Bomb, pp. 36-42.
96. Quoted in Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, p. 47.
97. Reprinted in Katz, Ban the Bomb, p. 27.
98. See also Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, chaps. 6-8, 15-17;
99. and Jeffrey Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chaps. 4, 5.
100. NSC meeting, October 7, 1953, in FRUS, 1952-54, Vol. 2, Pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 533.
101. Tannenwald, "The Nuclear Taboo."
102. Memo for the Executive Secretary of the NSC from the Acting Secretary of State, Custody of Atomic Weapons, appendix 6, statement by the Department of State, April 22, 1953. White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, box 1, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.
103. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space Age, p. 265;
104. and Saki Dockrill, Elsenhower's New-Look National Security Policy, 1953-61 (New York: St. Martin's, 1996), pp. 48-71.
105. This was the theme of numerous high-level meetings on nuclear weapons policy throughout this period. See memo, NSC meeting, October 13, 1953, in FRUS, 1952-54, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, pp. 546-547;
106. and memo, NSC meeting, October 7, 1953, in FRUS, 1952-54, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, pp. 532-34.
107. "NSC 162/2," October 29, 1953, in FRUS, 1952-54, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, p. 593.
108. See Robert Osgood, NATO: The Entangling Alliance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), chap. 5.
109. "Strategic Concept," State Department press release, December 21, 1954, box 332, Dulles Papers, Vol. 3, E, Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton, New Jersey.
110. The Law of Land Warfare, Department of the Army Field Manual FM 27-10 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, July 18, 1956), http://faculty.ed. umuc.edu/?nstanton/FM27-10.htm, sec. 3, no. 35.
111. John Foster Dulles, "Challenge and Response in United States Policy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 1 (October 1957), pp. 31, 33.
112. NIE 100-05-55, "Implications of Growing Nuclear Capabilities for the Communist Bloc and the Free World," June 14, 1955, in FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 19 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), p. 85.
113. NSC meeting, May 17, 1957, in FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 19, p. 500.
114. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, pp. 116, 361-370.
115. For an extensive discussion of government secrecy and mendacity regarding nuclear weapons, see Stephen Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1998).
116. NSC meeting, May 27, 1957, in FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 19, p. 500.
117. Quoted in Gaddis, "The Origins of Self-Deterrence," p. 145.
118. NSC meeting, May 27, 1957, in FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 19, p. 501.
119. Quoted in Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, p. 182.
120. NSC meeting, July 9, 1959, NSC Series, Ann Whitman Files, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.
121. William Kaufman, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row, 1964);
122. and Philip Nash, "Bear Any Burden? John F. Kennedy and Nuclear Weapons," in John Lewis Gaddis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 120-140.
123. By prohibiting missile defenses, the ABM treaty required each side to leave itself completely vulnerable to attack by the other (i.e., a situation of mutual assured destruction). Such an agreement was only possible with a high level of mutual understanding that both sides were rational, and neither side intended to attack the other first.
124. Alexander L. George, Philip J. Farley, and Alexander Dallin, eds., U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Lessons, Failures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
125. Bruce Russett, "The Real Decline of Nuclear Hegemony," in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau, eds., Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 188.
126. General Assembly resolutions on this topic include 1653 (XVI) of November 24, 1961; 33/71 B of December 14, 1978; 34/83 G of December 11, 1979; 35/152 D of December 12, 1980; and 36/92 I of December 9, 1981.
127. Telegram from the Department of State to the U.S. embassy in Korea, October 31, 1966, in FRUS, 1964-68, Vol. 11: Arms Control and Disarmament (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), pp. 399-400.
128. Carter, Peace Movements.
129. Eric Mlyn, The State, Society, and Limited Nuclear War (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1995).
130. "A Report to the President by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation [Gilpatric committee]," January 21, 1965, in FRUS, 1964-68, Vol. 11, pp. 181-182;
131. and Trevor Findlay, Nuclear Dynamite: The Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Fiasco (Sydney: Brassey's Australia, 1990).
132. Scheiling, "The Role of Nuclear Weapons," p. 110.
133. NSC meeting, April 22, 1964, in FRUS, 1964-68, Vol. 1:
134. Vietnam, 1964, p. 258.
135. Dean Rusk, as told to Richard Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), pp. 248,252.
136. Marc Trachtenberg, "The Berlin Crisis," in Trachtenberg, ed., History and Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 220;
137. and Robert McNamara, with Brian Van De Mark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995);
138. and Rusk, As I Saw It, p. 248.
139. Peter Stein and Peter Feaver, Assuring Control of Nuclear Weapons: The Evolution of Permissive Action Links (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1987).
140. F. Dyson, R. Gomer, S. Weinberg, and S.C. Wright, Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia, Study S-266, Jason Division, report to the Army, DAHC 15-67C-0011, Washington, D.C., March 1967.
141. White House tapes, April 25, 1972, Executive Office Building Tape 332-25, Nixon Presidential Materials Project (NPMP);
142. and memo for the president's files (Top Secret-Eyes Only), "National Security Council Meeting," May 8, 1972, NPMP, NSC Files, box 998, Haig Memcons (JanuaryDecember 1972), p. 10.
143. Stanley Hoffmann, Duties beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1981), pp. 75-76.
144. See Sherri Wasserman, The Neutron Bomb Controversy: A Study in Alliance Politics (New York: Praeger, 1983). The neutron bomb, or "enhanced radiation weapon," is small in size and has reduced blast and heat but releases more radiation.
145. Lawrence Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Move_ment, 1971 to the Present, Vol. 3 of The Struggle against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 47-50.
146. Lawrence Weiler, "No First Use: A History," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 39, No. 2 (February 1983), pp. 28-34.
147. John Lofland, Polite Protesters: The American Peace Movement of the 1980s (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993);
148. Robert Kleidman, Organizing for Peace: Neutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993), chap. 6;
149. and Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation, chap. 7.
150. McGeorge Bundy, Robert S. McNamara, Gerard Smith, and George Kennan, "Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Spring 1982), pp. 753-768;
151. and National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, a pastoral letter on war and peace, May 3, 1983 (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983).
152. George W. Ball, "The Cosmic Bluff," New York Review of Books, July 21, 1983, pp. 37-38.
153. David S. Yost, "The Delegitimization of Nuclear Deterrence?" Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 487-508;
154. and Edward Luttwak, "An Emerging Post-Nuclear Era?" Washington Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 5-15.
155. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, pp. 28-29.
156. The use or even the threat of use of nuclear weapons would hardly have been consistent with the Soviet public campaign, starting about 1977, for a joint pledge of no first use. Honore M. Catudal, Soviet Nuclear Strategy from Stalin to Gorbachev (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities, 1989), pp. 112-118.
157. Michael McGwire, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1987), pp. 52-55, 338.
158. Nikolai Sokov, "Why Do States Rely on Nuclear Weapons? The Case of Russia and Beyond," Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 2002), pp. 101-111.
159. "National Security Concept of the Russian Federation, January 10, 2000, excerpts at http:// www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_01-02/docjf00.asp.
160. For analysis, see Nikolai Sokov, "Russia's New National Security Concept: The Nuclear Angle," Center for Nonproliferation Studies, January 2000, rev. July 2004, http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/over/concept.htm.
161. Yuri Fedorov, "No First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Russia's Doctrine on Use of Nuclear Weapons," Pugwash Conference, London, England, November 15-17, 2002, http://www.pugwash.org/reports/nw/federov.htm.
162. Nikolai Sokov, "Russia's Nuclear Doctrine," research report, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, August 2004, http://www.nti.org/e_research/ e3_55a.html.
163. Avner Cohen, "Israel and the Nuclear Taboo," University of Maryland, 1999;
164. and Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
165. "Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine," August 17, 1999, http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/CTBT/ nuclear_doctrine_aug_17_1999.html;
166. and Howard Diamond, "India Releases Nuclear Doctrine, Looks to Emulate P-5 Arsenals," Arms Control Today, No. 29, No. 5 (July/August 1999), p. 23.
167. Jasjit Singh, "Indian Draft Nuclear Doctrine: Some Reflections," September 1999, http:// www.pugwash.org/reports/nw/nw7.htm (emphasis in original). Singh is a member of India's National Security Advisory Board. In 2003, however, India modified its doctrine to allow use of nuclear weapons to deter or respond to attacks with chemical and biological weapons, thus emulating a policy adopted by the United States.
168. Harsh V. Pant, "India's Nuclear Doctrine and Com_mand Structure: Implications for India and the World," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 2-5, 2004.
169. Farah Zhara, "Pakistan's Road to a Minimum Nuclear Deterrent," Arms Control Today, Vol. 29, No. 5 (July/August 1999), pp. 9-13.
170. Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, "The India-Pakistan Conflict-Towards the Failure of Nuclear Deterrence," Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, and Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, September 2002, http://www.gakushuin.ac.jp/∼881791/hoodbhoy/ Deterrence.html, p. 7.
171. Sagan, "Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction," pp. 82, 83.
172. I leave aside here the fact that there is little that is realist about the notion of precedent.
173. Sagan, "Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction," p. 76.
174. I thank Duncan Snidal for discussion on this section.
175. Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction.
176. This point was made by Thomas Schelling in the 1950s in the context of the Korean War. Schelling, Nuclear Weapons and Limited War (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1959).
177. The category of rogue states provides an example of one such social boundary.
178. Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 68-69.
179. For this view, see Steven P. Lee, Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 319-320, 407, n. 42.
180. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo, p. 122.
181. Enforcement could be carried out through sanctions, diplomacy, monitoring, or other mechanisms, not just deterrence. This might be the response to a use of nuclear weapons by a third-party state against a nonnuclear developing state.
182. Beatrice Heuser, The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historic, Strategic, and Ethical Context (London: Longman's, 2000), p. 183. It may also be partly explained by reduced racism toward the Japanese.
183. Bruce Hoffmann, "Terrorists and WMD: Some Preliminary Hypotheses," Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring/Summer 1997), pp. 45-53;
184. and Jessica Stern, "Terrorist Motivations and Unconventional Weapons," in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Planning the Unthinkable: How New Nuclear Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 202-229.
185. Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004), pp. 25-26.
186. Interviews with Osama bin Laden, Time, December 23, 1998, and ABC News, December 24, 1998, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/ edicts.html.
187. Quoted in Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, p. 12.
188. Gary A. Ackerman and Jeffery M. Bale, "Al Qa'ida and Weapons of Mass Destruction," Center for Nonproliferation Studies, December 31, 2002, http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/ alqwmd.htm. For a valuable breakdown of the types of terrorist groups that might pursue nuclear terrorism,
189. see Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter, The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (Monterey, Calif.: Monterey Institute, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2004), pp. 18-23.
190. Radiological weapons disperse radioactive material through conventional explosives, fire, or dilution. They are "generally felt to be suitable largely for terror, political, and area denial purposes, rather than for mass killings." Anthony H. Cordesman, "Radiological Weapons as a Means of Attack," Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 30, 2001, http://www.csis.org/burke/hd/reports/radiological.pdf.
191. Nina Tannenwald, "Keeping Weapons from Terrorists: The Urgent Need for Arms Control," Brown journal of World Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 27-36.
192. Walter Pincus, "U.S. Explores Developing Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons," Washington Post, February 20, 2003;
193. and Paul Robinson, president and director, Sandia National Laboratories, "Pursuing a New Nuclear Weapons Policy for the 21st Century," March 22, 2001, http:// www.sandia.gov/media/whitepaper/2001-04-Robinson.htm.
194. Bryan L. Fearey, Paul C. White, John St. Ledger, and John D. Immele, "An Analysis of Reduced Collateral Damage Nuclear Weapons," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 22, No. 4 (October/ November 2003), pp. 304-324. The authors are scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
195. An early seminal article was Thomas W. Dowler and Joseph S. Howard II, "Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed Tyrant: A Modest Proposal for Small Nuclear Weapons," Strategic Review, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 1991), pp. 34-40.
196. As Ambassador Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, stated, "I have a bias in favor of things that might be usable. I think that's just an inherent part of deterrence." Senate Armed Services Strategic Subcommittee hearing, April 8, 2003, http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=451&issue_id=48.
197. Critics argue that so-called earth-penetrating nuclear weapons could not penetrate the earth deeply enough to avoid creating a huge crater above the target and spreading harmful radiation for miles. See Michael Levi, "Nuclear Bunker Buster Bombs," Scientific American, Vol. 291, No. 2 (August 2004), pp. 66-74;
198. and Robert W. Nelson, "Nuclear 'Bunker Busters' Would More Likely Disperse Than Destroy Buried Stockpiles of Biological and Chemical Agents," Science & Global Security, Vol. 12, Nos. 1-2 (January-August 2004), pp. 69-89.
199. Sidney Drell, James Goodby, Raymond Jeanloz, and Robert Peurifoy, "A Strategic Choice: New Bunker Busters Versus Nonproliferation," Arms Control Today, Vol. 33, No. 2 (March 2003), p. 8;
200. and Bruce G. Blair, "We Keep Building Nukes for All the Wrong Reasons," Washington Post, May 25, 2003, p. B01.
201. In 1993 Congress banned the development of low-yield nuclear warheads in what came to be known as the Spratt-Furse law. David Wright, "The Spratt-Furse Law on Mini-Nuke Development," backgrounder, Union of Concerned Scientists, May 11, 2003.
202. U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, January 8, 2002, http://www.globalsecurity. org/wmd/library/ policy/dod/npr.htm.
203. According to an official in George W. Bush's administration, "My ideal number of nuclear weapons states is one." Quoted in Bill Keller, "The Second Nuclear Age," New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2003, p. 94.
204. In my view, the belief that other states would accept the United States as a global hegemon exempt from the rules is implausible.
205. See, for example, Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999);
206. and Richard Price, "Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Landmines," International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Summer 1998), pp. 613-644.
207. George H. Quester and Victor A. Utgoff, "Toward an International Nuclear Security Policy," Washington Quaterly, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn 1994), pp. 5-18.
208. Philip Morrison and Kosta Tsipis, "Rightful Names," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 59, No. 3 (May/June 2003), p. 77. Their opening premise that "the term 'weapons of mass destruction' was long reserved for nuclear explosives" is incorrect.
209. "Bush Sees an 'Urgent Duty' to Act on Iraq," New York Times, October 8, 2002, p. A13.
210. Schwartz, Atomic Audit.
211. Charles L. Glaser, "The Flawed Case for Nuclear Disarmament," Survival, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Spring 1998), pp. 112-128.
212. Alvin M. Weinberg, "The Bell and the Bomb," Cosmos Journal (1997), http://www.cosmosclub.org/journals/1997/index.html;
213. and Alvin M. Weinberg, "The Sanctification of Hiroshima," Oak Ridge Associated Universities, November 1995.