Stopping the Bomb

The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy

Nicholas L. Miller

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781501717826
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is an intense and meticulously sourced study on the topic of nuclear weapons proliferation, beginning with America's introduction of the Atomic Age... His book provides a full explanation of America's policy with a time sequence necessarily focusing on the domino effect of states acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and the import of bureaucratic decisions on international political behavior.â• Choice

Stopping the Bomb examines the historical development and effectiveness of American efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Nicholas L. Miller offers here a novel theory that argues changes in American nonproliferation policy are the keys to understanding the nuclear landscape from the 1960s onward. The Chinese and Indian nuclear tests in the 1960s and 1970s forced the US government, Miller contends, to pay new and considerable attention to the idea of nonproliferation and to reexamine its foreign policies. Stopping the Bomb explores the role of the United States in combating the spread of nuclear weapons, an area often ignored to date. He explains why these changes occurred and how effective US policies have been in preventing countries from seeking and acquiring nuclear weapons. Miller's findings highlight the relatively rapid move from a permissive approach toward allies acquiring nuclear weapons to a more universal nonproliferation policy no matter whether friend or foe. Four in-depth case studies of US nonproliferation policy—toward Taiwan, Pakistan, Iran, and France—elucidate how the United States can compel countries to reverse ongoing nuclear weapons programs.

Miller's findings in Stopping the Bomb have important implications for the continued study of nuclear proliferation, US nonproliferation policy, and beyond.

CHAPTER 1

Theorizing the Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy

How effective has the United States been at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons? And what explains the evolution of US nonproliferation policy over time? This chapter proposes theories on both the sources and effectiveness of US nonproliferation policy. On the sources of US policy, the theory emphasizes expectations of nuclear domino effects, the level of government attention to nonproliferation, and political openings for nonproliferation advocates, all of which can be heightened by tests by new nuclear states. Expectations of domino effects are crucial because they lead policymakers to prefer across-the-board rather than selective nonproliferation policies, since domino effects imply that proliferation cannot reliably be contained to friendly countries. Meanwhile, greater government attention to nonproliferation and political openings for non-proliferation advocates—generally members of Congress and arms control advocates in the bureaucracy—facilitate translating these preferences into actual policy changes.

On the effectiveness of US policy, the theory emphasizes the credible threat of US sanctions, established through congressional action in the mid-1970s, in deterring states from pursuing nuclear weapons. Because of the United States’ preeminent economic and military power and its internationalist foreign policy, many countries depend on Washington for economic resources or for their security. By credibly threatening to cut off economic and security support, the United States can make proliferation so costly for countries with high dependence on the United States that it deters them from even starting nuclear weapons programs. Because countries highly dependent on the United States are likely to be rationally deterred from starting nuclear weapons programs by the threat of sanctions, those countries that seek nuclear weapons and endure the imposition of US sanctions are likely to have low dependence on the United States. As a result, they will be unlikely to concede since they have little to lose from the sanctions. This rationalist framework implies that sanctions are likely to succeed against ongoing nuclear programs only when states underestimate the risk of sanctions, for example because they started their nuclear programs prior to the establishment of US sanctions policies, or face unexpectedly stiff multilateral sanctions. In tandem, these two theories suggest that predictions of nuclear domino effects may to a large extent be a self-defeating prophecy, as these predictions have motivated US officials to put in place policies that have succeeded in limiting the extent of proliferation.

Before turning to the theories, this chapter begins by reviewing the literature on proliferation and nonproliferation. For organizational purposes, I divide the literature into (1) works that focus on the causes of US nonproliferation policy and (2) the much larger literature on the causes of proliferation and nuclear reversal.

Causes of US Nonproliferation Policy

There are five main perspectives in the literature on the causes of US nonproliferation policy, each of which prizes a different motivational variable to explain US efforts. These explanations suggest that the US government pursues nonproliferation in order to (1) preserve its conventional power-projection advantages; (2) reduce the risk of nuclear war; (3) maintain influence over allies; or (4) selectively benefit its liberal, Western, or democratic allies while constraining its enemies. An additional theory holds that Democratic administrations support strong nonproliferation policies while Republican administrations do not. This section will discuss each explanation in turn, highlighting gaps in existing explanations that motivate a new theory of the sources of US nonproliferation policy.

The first explanation for nonproliferation policy suggests that the United States strictly enforces nonproliferation—both against allies and enemies—in order to maintain the conventional military advantages derived from its unparalleled power projection capabilities. Kroenig argues that power-projecting states incur high costs from proliferation, since it is more difficult for them to threaten force against nuclear-armed states and their offers of security guarantees are less valuable to nuclear powers. Moreover, proliferation is likely to trigger regional instability in areas that power-projecting states care about.¹ In a related vein, Gavin notes that the United States has worried that nuclear states might become emboldened to act more aggressively, making them more difficult to deter or contain.²

This “power projection theory” is deductively compelling and certainly helps to explain why the United States and Soviet Union were two of the strongest advocates of nuclear nonproliferation: because they had so much to lose from its effects. What it cannot explain, however, is why there has been such temporal change in US nonproliferation policy—why it became so much stronger in the 1964–1968 and 1974–1980 periods. Nor can it explain why US policymakers at times perceived strategic benefits to proliferation in particular cases, or why the United States reacted strongly against proliferation even in countries where Washington had neither a strong alliance relationship nor any desire to use military force.

The second explanation holds that US policy has been motivated largely by fears of nuclear war. Sokolski develops this explanation in its most systematic form, examining five specific US nonproliferation initiatives: the Baruch Plan, Atoms for Peace, the NPT, export control regimes, and military counterproliferation. According to Sokolski, each of these policies was a response to a feared nuclear war scenario.³ Gavin likewise argues that US officials have worried about accidental or intentional nuclear wars, including being entrapped in a nuclear war initiated by allies.⁴

Like a focus on power projection, the emphasis on fears of nuclear war contains an important element of truth: It is certainly the case that US officials have worried about proliferation increasing the risk of nuclear conflict, in addition to constraining America’s conventional military power. Just as with the “power-projection theory,” however, this explanation cannot account for why American nonproliferation efforts were particularly intense in the 1964–68 and 1974–80 periods, nor can it easily explain that the United States opposed proliferation even in countries where US officials did not perceive a significant risk of nuclear war.

A third argument suggests that the United States became strongly committed to nonproliferation in 1960s because of the realization that the acquisition of nuclear weapons would allow US allies to become more independent. This argument, advanced by Coe and Vaynman, purports to explain both US and Soviet nonproliferation behavior. They argue that both superpowers originally saw the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a way to balance against the rival bloc. However, once they realized it could undercut their leadership of their respective alliance systems, they decided to cooperate and develop a nonproliferation regime.⁵

Unlike the arguments that focus on US power projection and fears of nuclear war, Coe and Vaynman usefully note that the United States did not always strongly support nonproliferation across the board. Instead, they identify an important turning point in the 1960s—the US experience with a nuclear France—which taught US policymakers that nuclear weapons make allies less pliable. This argument is not without its shortcomings, however. In particular, the historical evidence presented in this book suggests that it was Chinese (and not French) acquisition of nuclear weapons that was the key trigger for strengthened US nonproliferation efforts. Moreover, this argument cannot explain why the United States tightened its nonproliferation policy further following the nuclearization of India, an unaligned country.

A fourth explanation for US nonproliferation policy suggests that the motivation for US efforts is to protect the interests of its liberal, democratic allies while constraining its enemies. Chafetz, for example, argues that psychological in-group biases lead the US government to selectively enforce nonproliferation policies in a way that benefits friends of the United States while keeping US enemies down.⁶ Maddock offers a similar argument, suggesting that US nonproliferation policy has fostered a situation of “nuclear apartheid,” whereby NATO allies and Israel were allowed access to nuclear weapons while non-Western states were constrained.⁷ This explanation fits with what Peter Lavoy calls the “political relativism” approach to nuclear proliferation, which holds that proliferation is dangerous only when unfriendly or aggressive states undertake it. Or, as he puts it, “bad states do bad things; bad states armed with nuclear weapons will do dreadful things.”⁸ Hayes likewise makes the case that the United States has viewed the Iranian nuclear program as more threatening than the Indian nuclear program because Iran is nondemocratic whereas India is democratic.⁹

At first glance there may appear to be a correlation between alliance, regime type, and Western identity on the one hand, and the firmness of US nonproliferation policy toward particular countries on the other. However, the over-aggregation of distinct time periods confounds this correlation. The fact that US nonproliferation efforts toward adversary nations like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are harsher than prior efforts toward France and the United Kingdom is not solely because the latter countries are US allies but also because they proliferated at different times. As this book will demonstrate, US nonproliferation policy was greatly strengthened in the late 1960s and 1970s. In other words, US policy toward the French and British nuclear programs was more lenient because these countries proliferated when US nonproliferation policy was weaker. Indeed, US allies that were engaged in proliferation after US policy tightened experienced quite harsh pressure, as subsequent chapters will document.

A fifth and final explanation focuses on the political party of the president as a driver of US nonproliferation policy. Although preventing the spread of nuclear weapons has generally been considered a bipartisan endeavor in the United States, there is some face validity to the notion that Democrats have been stronger advocates for nonproliferation, at least during the Cold War. After all, Kennedy was the first president to strongly emphasize the issue, the Johnson administration concluded the NPT, and Carter made nonproliferation a top agenda item; meanwhile, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan have all been described as adopting laxer, more selective approaches that tended to be less stringent toward allies’ nuclear ambitions.¹⁰ Sokolski, for example, identifies “Reagan-era Hawks” as supporting at least some allies’ acquisition of nuclear weapons technology.¹¹ This alternative explanation therefore overlaps with the selective enforcement argument but argues that it only holds for Republican administrations.

While it may be the case than Democratic administrations have adopted more vigorous nonproliferation policies on average, one obvious limitation of this approach is that it cannot explain variations in policy within a given president’s administration. For example, the Chinese and Indian nuclear tests were followed by changes in nonproliferation policies within Johnson’s and Nixon’s presidencies. Moreover, the argument that Democrats are stronger on nonproliferation than Republicans risks conflating the preferred tools for achieving nonproliferation with the intensity of commitment to that goal. For example, much of the criticism of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan on nonproliferation stems from their preference for using inducements like security assistance and peaceful nuclear trade to induce nuclear restraint, in contrast to Johnson and Carter, who emphasized treaty commitments and sanctions.¹²

Causes of Nuclear Proliferation

The much larger literature on the causes of proliferation explores both what motivates states to pursue nuclear weapons and what enables them pursue or acquire nuclear weapons from a technical perspective. Collectively, this literature suggests four factors that may affect a state’s nuclear decision-making independent of US nonproliferation efforts: the nature of the security environment, domestic regime characteristics, normative commitments, and the supply of nuclear technology.

According to the security model of proliferation, states pursue nuclear weapons in order to ensure their survival against nuclear or overwhelming conventional threats, particularly when these states are isolated and lack allied nuclear umbrellas.¹³ Paul expands upon the security model, arguing that states pursue nuclear weapons for security reasons but may refrain from proliferating in order to prevent costly arms races.¹⁴ Debs and Monteiro argue that a severe security threat is a necessary condition for proliferation, but contend that whether a state successfully acquires nuclear weapons depends on the behavior of its patron (if one exists) and whether there is a credible threat of military force against its nuclear program.¹⁵ The quantitative literature on the determinants of proliferation has provided considerable support to elements of the security model. Studies have found that states in enduring rivalries, those with a recent history of militarized disputes, and those facing major conventional threats are more likely to initiate nuclear weapons programs.¹⁶ Nuclear rivals are associated with the pursuit of nuclear weapons in some studies but only the exploration of nuclear weapons in others.¹⁷ In contrast to pursuit, exploration is defined by Singh and Way as a country “seriously consider[ing] building nuclear weapons, even if they never took major steps toward that end.”¹⁸ The evidence is similarly mixed with regard to the effect of alliances with nuclear powers.¹⁹

While extant research on the security model surely explains a significant portion of the variance in nuclear proliferation behavior, it does not tell the whole story. Put simply, security factors do not explain the changing character of proliferation over time: States dependent on the United States are less likely to pursue nuclear weapons after the mid-1970s even after one controls for measures of security threat, as shown in chapter 5. While Debs and M...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Proliferation Problem
• 1. Theorizing the Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy
• 2. The Sources of US Nonproliferation Policy, 1945–1968
• 3. The Sources of US Nonproliferation Policy, 1969–1980
• 4. Nonproliferation in Action: The United States and Friendly Countries’ Nuclear Weapons Programs, 1964–Present
• 5. The Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy
• 6. The French Nuclear Program (1954–1960)
• 7. The Taiwanese Nuclear Program (1967–1977)
• 8. The Pakistani Nuclear Program (1972–1987)
• 9. The Iranian Nuclear Program (1974–2015)
• Conclusion: Lessons from US Nonproliferation Policy
• Notes
• Index