Iran's Nuclear Program and the Global South

The Foreign Policy of India, Brazil, and South Africa

M. Onderco

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349698400, 9781137499066
• eBook ISBN: 9781137499073
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book studies the reactions of India, Brazil, and South Africa the three main non-proliferation actors of the Global South to Iran's nuclear program. Their responses are explained and situated in wider foreign policy context.

1

Introduction

Abstract: The introductory chapter starts with the argument about why we should look at the IBSA countries and Iran’s nuclear program. Much of the analysis of Iran’s nuclear program has focused on the bilateral relations between the United States and Iran. For the countries of the Global South (and IBSA as their most prominent representatives), the dispute was important too – it combined nuclear politics (which these countries felt strongly about), economic interests and seeking a place in international politics in an era of change.

Subsequently, this chapter reviews what has been written about the change and rising powers in international politics, and finds that the main problem is the existing literature cannot account for diversity in rising powers’ preferences.

Lastly, the introduction outlines the volume, and advances briefly arguments made in each of the chapters.

Onderco, Michal. Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Global South: The Foreign Policy of India, Brazil, and South Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137499073.0003.

‘Why do you guys want to treat this resolution as if it’s written by God or has the wisdom of God in it?’ That was the reaction of South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, to the failure of his country to remove a number of firms linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from the sanctions list discussed by the United Nations Security Council (UPI, 2007). It was March 2007, and the United Nations Security Council was debating imposition of further sanctions on Iran in response to its noncompliance with the Security Council’s earlier resolution. The rotating presidency of the Security Council was held by South Africa, a country whose international reputation is strongly anchored in non-proliferation.

Iran’s nuclear program occupied the international community in the era of upheaval of the architecture of global governance. Numerous Global South countries became, suddenly, ‘rising powers’. Questions of how the advent of new powers will affect international politics started occupying scholars, think-tank researchers and policy makers alike. Iran’s nuclear program provides one of the most salient questions of contemporary international security, highly relevant for policy and academic debates alike. The international community’s extensive engagement with Iran’s program meant that adopting a policy position on Iran’s nuclear program meant adopting a position on international institutions, the tools of enforcement of global governance. If we see the Iranian program as a study in noncompliance with international norms,¹ the positions of rising powers can be used as case studies analysing their engagement with global norms. It provides a potential fertile ground between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’: it combines highly normative questions of how the international community should deal with norm-breaking, but also about the relevant interpretation of important international legal rules and norms.

South Africa’s reaction to the international community’s attempt to rein in Iran’s nuclear program can be surprising for many students of non-proliferation. One could reasonably expect that a champion of non-proliferation, which South Africa undoubtedly wants to be, would be more critical of Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, South Africa’s reaction is in many ways illustrative of the reaction of Global South countries to both Iran’s nuclear program and the international community’s engagement with it. The Global South has from the outset had a special place in the dispute surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. Countries of the Global South are prominently represented in global institutions, such as the United Nations or the IAEA Board of Governors. The Non-Aligned Movement, to which a majority of Global South countries belong, also forms the majority of the membership of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). At the same time, the Global South became an important battlefield for cajoling between the West and Iran. Western countries – principally the United States – tried to sway the countries of the Global South in an attempt to isolate Iran. India’s ‘ability to lead’ was questioned on the basis of its policy towards Iran (The Times of India, 2012). The Tehran Declaration, agreed jointly by Brazil and Turkey, was shot down by the UN Security Council, and US Secretary of State Clinton accused Brazil (and Turkey) of trying to dissipate the pressure on Iran (Dombey et al., 2010). Iran, fully aware of the power of the numbers and their associated legitimacy, attempted to sway these countries to counter the attempts of the United States and other Western countries (Posch, 2013).

Though the Global South provides an important voice in global non-proliferation, it was excluded from the forum where the most prominent discussions about the international community’s reactions towards Iran were conducted. Most of the debates about Iran’s nuclear program were taking place within ‘P5+1’, a group consisting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and Germany, with or without Iran’s attendance. None of the Global South countries were members of P5+1, and their membership in the UN Security Council was limited and temporary. Unfortunately, the Global South has been similarly overlooked by scholars studying negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program.

It has become customary to equate ‘rising powers’ with the BRICS nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Of course, this is an unorthodox group – there is little that obviously ties these countries, their economic growth is not identical, and their economic or military power not comparable. Two members of this group – China and Russia – are permanent members of the Security Council and more established powers. For the purposes of this book, I have chosen the other three members – India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA). While still vastly different in terms of size, these three are very similar – they are liberal democracies, without permanent seats in the Security Council, regional leaders, non-nuclear-weapon states, in the spirit of the NPT. All three support the global non-proliferation norms, and all three of them are latecomers to the appreciation of global non-proliferation – whereas South Africa and Brazil embraced the regime in the early 1990s, India only recently came to agree with it (Raja Mohan, 2009).

If we accept the view of IBSA countries as ‘rising powers’, a study of their behavior provides new material for international relations scholarship, applying theories developed in Western scholarship to a study of non-Western countries (Lemke, 2003; Johnston, 2012). The majority of scholars have been interested in the phenomenon of rise and fall, the main aspect of so-called ‘rise and fall realism’ (Elman, 2007). These analysts attempt to predict the shape of the future global system: either they predict the rise of China (Jacques, 2009) or the emergence of a leaderless world (Kupchan, 2012; Bremmer, 2012), or they predict the renaissance of regionalism in a multi-polar world (Acharya, 2014). Yet, analysis of the actual foreign policies of these countries is lacking, certainly in the comparative sense. But it is essential to understand the drivers of their foreign policies, given their increasing prominence in global governance.

Unlike most theorists’ studies, this book takes an in-depth look at both sources and consequences of the foreign policies of rising powers. Its main aim is to explain the origins and drivers of these policies through a study of their responses to Iran’s nuclear program. In doing so, the book goes beyond work that has previously been done by ‘rising powers’ scholars. It takes the existing theoretical literature within the field of international relations seriously, and mixes it with a strong empirical component. This approach differs from existing literature, which has been strongly focused on either theory or empirics, providing a cross between the two.

Explaining why ‘Rising Power X’ made a certain move last Tuesday

Scholars who study how ‘rising powers’ affect the international system usually find their inspiration in ‘rise-and-fall’ realism. This stream of realism comprises hegemonic transition theory (Gilpin, 1981), power transition theory (Organski and Kugler, 1980; Organski, 1968), and neo-classical realist theories (Schweller, 1994; 1998).² In a nutshell, the hegemonic transition theory assumes that war over systemic leadership will follow, once there is a change in the distribution of power within the international system. This is so because states seek the ability to shape the system according to their own preferences (which belongs to the most powerful entity within the system). The power transition theory argues that industrialization-induced changes in the relative wealth of nations lead states to challenge the status-quo leader, thus leading to war.

These two theories assume that rising powers are always revisionist. Partially, they derive such expectations from the logic of offensive realism (Mearsheimer, 2001; 1994), arguing that states always strive for more power, because they are driven by uncertainty about the future. In face of such uncertainty, the only policy option they have is to maximize their security by maximizing their power.

Part of the reason why neither hegemonic transition theory nor power transition theory do correctly capture the preferences of ‘rising powers’ is that they ignore the origins of these states’ foreign policies. While foreign policy is not identical with international relations, international relations are made up of the foreign policies of states (Elman, 1996). As with other countries, the foreign policy of ‘rising powers’ cannot be reduced to the maximization of security, for states’ pursuit of what they see as the national interest is importantly influenced by other factors, such as culture, identity and commerce (Rynning and Ringsmose, 2008; Schweller, 2011; Brooks et al., 2012; Katzenstein, 1996b). These aspects are especially relevant in the study of ‘rising powers’, whose historical experience, culture and civilization might have been different (Johnston, 2012; Lemke, 2003; Acharya and Buzan, 2007; Katzenstein, 1996a).

This is why the third theory – neo-classical realism – bears so much promise. Neo-classical realists argue that ‘rising powers’ have three essential choices – challenge the hegemon, free-ride on the system or behave as a kind of status-quo powers (Schweller, 2011).³ Why ‘rising powers’’ preferences differ and what the origin of these differences is, is a different question. Power and interests would be an intuitive answer to this (Zakaria, 1998; Kahler, 2013), but neo-classical realists understand that how actors react to pressures (both external and internal) depends on how their various pre-existing domestic structures (mostly material, but also ideational) frame their perceptions of these pressures.⁴

In my analysis, I go deeper to study the drivers of state action and its underlying ideas. I aim to explain the foreign policy of rising powers vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program, in a way explaining why a ‘rising power’ ‘X made a certain move last Tuesday’, to borrow from the title of an outstanding article by Anders Wivel (2005). My research asks how states go from policy puzzles to policy responses. Explaining this ‘transmission belt’ (to use the language of Toje and Kunz, 2012) requires a mix of ideational and material factors. Material factors – membership in institutional bodies, economic strength, resources that can be mobilized – influence the scope of possibilities. But ideas shape what is seen as the right response (Ruggie, 1982; Carlsnaes, 2013), and combinations of ideas provide a formidable challenge for most of the realist theorizing in the study of international relations and foreign policy, given realism’s focus on material factors and the difficulty of systematically including ideational factors (Wivel, 2005; Legro and Moravcsik, 1999).

With the major focus on material factors, the consideration of ideas has been widely relegated to constructivist scholarship in international relations. Early constructivists elucidated that the broad shapes of ideational frameworks, within which leaders operate, is given by ideas, grounded in domestic society, collectively held among the population (Risse et al., 1999; Katzenstein, 1996b; Owen, 1994). Leaders share some of those frameworks with their electorate; otherwise they would not be elected (Owen, 1994; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Hopf, 2002; Geis et al., 2013). These may have similar shapes (thus permitting the creation of alliances of otherwise unlikely partners), but they are rarely identical between countries. But constructivists focus on how international norms influence domestic policy; or how states act as norm entrepreneurs (Finnemore, 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998; Acharya, 2004). In the field of non-proliferation, such work has been picked up by authors working on the non-use of nuclear weapons, and the later work on justice in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament (Tannenwald, 2002; 2013; Müller et al., 1994; Müller and Wunderlich, 2013). But the work remains largely focused on norm adoption and norm entrepreneurship, and is only of limited utility when explaining the drivers of states’ foreign policy.

Adopting ideas does not mean that one needs to become automatically a constructivist or a ‘first-image’ theorist focusing on individual leaders. Interests and ideas do not exclude one another; rather ideas influence how leaders shape their interests (Kitchen, 2010; Goldstein and Keohane, 1993). The pre-Waltzian classical realists put strong emphasis on how ideas influence how states use their foreign policy (see, for example, Carr, 1939 [2001]; Morgenthau, 1934). But classical realists focused heavily on human nature and found the root of state action in it (Taliaferro et al., 2009). Neo-classical realists picked up on this, but remain largely focused on material factors, with ideational factors remaining on the sidelines (Rose, 1998; Layne, 2006; Taliaferro, 2006; Dueck, 2006; Schweller, 1998). The most recent landmark work on neo-classical realism, too, looks again inside the state, but remains limited to institutional and material factors (Taliaferro et al., 2009). This combination, however, sometimes cannot explain how states react to foreign pressures, especially when material motivations are not strong and domestic institutional limitations provide a wide array of possible action.

The switch is provided by domestically grounded ideas influencing how leaders tune their foreign policies in response to various policy puzzles, as European neo-classical realists later picked up (Kunz and Saltzman, 2012). But the inclusion of ideational variables is still a relatively novel concept for realist theorizing and breaks with much of the existing literature. While realists long ago acknowledged that perceptions matter (Jervis, 1976; Walt, 1987), they largely did not explain the different origins of perceptions. Similarly, the neo-classical realist work on ideas focuses heavily on ideas related to the relationship between the state and society (Kunz and Saltzman, 2012). While benefiting from neo-classical realist integration of ideas into a realist framework, their existing work does not suffice to explain how domestic ideas and ideology influence foreign policy. This is why adopting liberal constructivist insights can be helpful.

How domestic ideas influence nuclear policy making was studied by Maria Rost Rublee (2009), whose work explores the psychological origins of nuclear restraint. In my book, I expand on Rublee’s work, but give it a distinctly foreign-policy analysis twist. My argument is not focused on mechanisms through which individual leaders choose certain policies. Instead, I argue that the ideational frameworks within which the leaders of ‘rising powers’ function influence how they respond to global challenges. In situations when material incentives may give unclear or ambiguous motivations, leaders’ preferences are shaped by ideational frameworks that are grounded in their domestic policy. These ideational frameworks have their origins in a wide array of historical experiences, socialization, and self-perceptions; and they allow leaders to solve policy puzzles in ways that ‘make sense’.

The exact content of these ideational frameworks differs from country to country, but they remain a powerful explanation for how states interpret issues at hand and choose to meet international challenges. These ideas may be often multiple and contradictory, but they powerfully shape states’ foreign policies.

In the rest of the book, I will explain how these ideational frameworks have influenced Indian, Brazilian, and South African attitudes towards Iran’s nuclear program and why it was ideas, and not material motivations, that underpinned their foreign policy. In particular, I will provide an analysis of the ideational frameworks that shape the worldview of the leaders of these countries and explain how they use these frameworks to respond to policy puzzles.

To make this contribution, the book employs process tracing with a data triangulation strategy, combining national and international press reports, official documents, and insights gathered by interviewing relevant officials. Press reports can provide access to relevant empirics, whereas a combination of official documents and interviews provides insights into ideational frameworks guiding the thinking of policy makers. Official policy documents provide deeper justifications for general outlines of policy and are therefore suitable for conducting research interested in the influence of ideas. Interviews help to both elucidate the policy process and understand how certain decisions were made. But they also help to see the ideational frameworks which leaders use to make sense of policy pu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The Global South, Nuclear Politics, and Iran
• 3  India
• 4  Brazil
• 5  South Africa
• 6  Conclusion
• References
• Index