RUPP

IFL
DIS

WHY DO STATES BUILDING

NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
COURE: IS409 CLASS: E4.1
LECTURER: NBR GROUP: 6
2020-2021
 CONTENT
01 AN OVERVIEW

02 THE SECURITY MODEL

- Explaining Nuclear Restraint
- Policy Implications of The Security Model
- Problems and Evidence

03 THE DOMESTIC POLITIC MODEL

- Addressing The India Puzzle
- South Africa Revisited
- Policy Implication of The Domestic Politics Model

04 THE NORMS MODEL

- French Grandeur and Weapons Policy
- The NPT and The Ukraine Case
- Policy Implications of the Norm Model

05 CONCLUSION
 Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?

States will seek to develop nuclear weapons

when they face a significant threat. If they
don’t face such threat, they will willingly
remain non-nuclear states.

Conventional Wisdom

Nuclear weapons are more than just tools for

national security.

KANYA
 Three Models in Search of a Bomb

1 The Security Model: Nuclear Weapons and International

Threats

2 The Domestic Model Politics: Nuclear Pork and Parochial Interest

3 The Norm Model: Nuclear Symbols and State Identity

 The Security Model

Increase national security Balance of power: self- Deterrent or Coercive

against foreign threats sufficient or join alliance

States actually build nuclear weapons in a EXAMPLE:

response to emerging nuclear threat from their - A threat from the U.S to USSR
main rival. - A threat from the U.S to China
 The Security Model: Explaining Nuclear Restraints

Growing Soviet Expansionist

Threat to Southern Africa

Nuclear restraints occur as a

result of the radical change Develop 6 Atomic Weapons
Mid-1970s
to Serve as a Deterrent
in external security threats. Against Soviet

Destroyed its Own Nuclear

Arsenals in 1991 as the Threat
From Soviet Eliminated

Case Study: South Africa

 Policy Implication of the security model

Negative
Ensure nuclear states will not use
Security
Assurances
weapon against non-nuclear states

Permitting non-nuclear states to NPT

overcome a collective action problem

• What is wrong with article VI of NPT?

• Realist logic on security model

TONY
 Problems and Evidence

A major problem concerning the evidence for the relist history

depends on:

The statements of motivation by the key decision-makers.

The correlation in time between the emergence of a

plausible security threat and a decision to develop
nuclear weapons.

TONY
The Domestic Politics
Model
 Nuclear weapon as a political tool to serve the
parochial bureaucratic or political interests.

 Three kinds of actors:

- The state’s nuclear energy establishment
- Important military units
- Politicians

 Actors form coalitions

HAKSENG
The Domestic Politics Model (Con’t)

-
• Bureaucratic Actors • Scientific-Military • Political Coalition
x
Industrial Comple
 Not seen as passive recipients  Builds broader political
loped
 Initial ideas deve support within executive
tories
 Create the conditions that inside state labora or legislative branches.
favor weapons acquisition ate
 Scientists find/cre onal
si
sponsors in profes
military.

 Realists recognize the domestic political actors have parochial interests and that interests have only a marginal
influence on crucial national security issues due to bureaucratic battles determine whether a state to builds 500 or
1000 ICBMs.

HAKSENG
 Proliferation Revisited: Addressing the India Puzzle
 
 No consensus among officials in New Delhi to have a nuclear
deterrent as a response to the 1964 Chinese nuclear test.

 Prime Minister Gandhi developed an alliance to fabricate a

nuclear device in 1971.

 Domestic Political Concerns:

- Decision to test was made in a very small circle
Ex: Defense and foreign affairs officials were not involved
- Absence of a systematic program for nuclear weapons
- Domestic support for Gandhi was at an all time low

India Case
HAKSENG
Development and Denuclearization

- Security Model: Destroyed its Own Nuclear Arsenals as the

Threat From Soviet Eliminated
- Domestic Politics Model: Decided to Dismantle the existing 6
Nuclear devices because of Internal Political

- Security Model: Decided to give up on Nuclear Competition to

Cooperation restraint
- Domestic Politics Model:
• Argentina defeated in Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982 by a
Nuclear Weapon from Great Britain.
• The emergence of Liberalizing Domestic Regime

MOUYGECH
 Policy Implication of the Domestic Politics Model

Domestic Politics Model m e s tic P o li ti c M o d el emerges a

Do
approach both cautions modest c e p e rs pe c tiv e o n the role of
differen
expectations about US influence the NPT.
and calls for a broader set of
diplomatic efforts.

MOUYGECH
The Norms Model
 Focus on norms concerning nuclear decisions as serving important symbolic
function, both shaping and reflecting a state’s identity.
 The ‘new institutionalism’ literature suggests that modern organizations and
institutions often come to resemble each other, not because of competitive
selection or rational learning but institution mimic each other.
 Military organization and their weapons, flags, airlines, Olympic teams: they are
part of what modern states believe they have to possess to be legitimate.
 Nuclear symbols are often contested and that the resulting norms are spread
by power and coercion, not by the strength of ideas alone.

MARADY
Proliferation Revisited: French Grandeur and Weapons Policy
• In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was a grave military threat to
French national security, reliance on the United States' nuclear
guarantee to NATO.
• The soviet development of a secure second strike capability
reduced the credibility of any U.S. nuclear first-use threats.

French nuclear policy does not well against existing logic and
evidence:
• Great Britain also withdrew from the intervention in Egypt under
US and Soviet pressure, despites its possession of nuclear
weapons.
• French decision to build nuclear weapons emerges when one
focus on French leader’s perceptions of the bomb’s symbolic
significant.

MARADY
Restraint Revisited: The NPT and The UKRAINE case

1991: Soviet Union collapsed

Independent Ukraine “ born nuclear state”

1994: Join NPT as non-nuclear state

1996: All Weapons were removed

KANITHA
NPT non-proliferation norm and Ukraine’s decision

NPT membership  recognized as

independent state

Enhancing international prestige through

NPT

Economic sanction from the US and NATO

Economic inducement offers by the US

KANITHA
 Policy implication of the norm model

ore
Norm can influence state Norm model produce m
otential
behavior optimistic vision of the p
n
 US nuclear future of non-proliferatio
policy : permanent o rt - te rm : n u c le a r re a c tions
 Sh
at
CTBT “ to emerging security thre
ed.
Comprehensive can be avoided or delay
Test Ban Treaty” n g -t erm : th e fu tu re o f NPT
 Lo
mistic
regime will be more opti
e m e rg in g o f no rm a g ainst

all nuclear weapon
possession.

KANITHA
Thank You