Relinquishing nuclear weapons: identities,networks and the British bomb

Recent analysis on the prospects for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons has tended to focus on a set of largely realist strategic security considerations. Such considerations will certainly underpin future decisions to relinquish nuclear weapons, but nuclear disarmament processes are likely to involve a more complex mix of actors, issues and interests. The article examines this complexity through a sociological lens using Britain as a case‐study, where relinquishing a nuclear capability has become a realistic option for a variety of strategic, political and economic reasons. The article examines the core ideational and organizational allies of the UK nuclear weapon ‘actor‐network’ by drawing upon social constructivist accounts of the relationship between identity and interest, and historical sociology of technology analysis of Large Technical Systems and the social construction of technology. It divides the UK actor‐network into three areas: the UK policy elite's collective identity that generates a ‘national interest’ in continued deployment of nuclear weapons; defence–industrial actors that support and operationalize these identities; and international nuclear weapons dynamics that reinforce the network. The article concludes by exploring how the interests and identities that constitute and reproduce the ‘actor‐network’ that makes nuclear armament possible might be transformed to make nuclear disarmament possible. The purpose is not to dismiss or supplant the importance of strategic security‐oriented analysis of the challenges of nuclear disarmament but to augment its understanding by dissecting some of the socio‐political complexities of nuclear disarmament processes.     

Waiting for Kant: devaluing and delegitimizing nuclear weapons

Expectations of significant progress towards a nuclear weapons‐free world continue to shape global nuclear politics. Progress towards nuclear disarmament will require diminishing the value of nuclear weapons to the point where it becomes politically, strategically and socially acceptable for nuclear‐armed states to relinquish permanently their nuclear arsenals. Key to this are the concepts and processes of ‘devaluing’ and ‘delegitimizing’ nuclear weapons that have steadily coalesced in global nuclear discourse since the mid‐1990s. This article builds on current research by developing three images of nuclear disarmament under the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT): ‘surface’ devaluing, ‘deep’ devaluing, and delegitimizing nuclear weapons. The first represents codification by the nuclear‐weapon states of the transformation of the Cold War environment through reductions in the size and role of nuclear arsenals that leaves the logic of nuclear deterrence and nuclear prestige largely unchanged. Deep devaluing is framed as a reconceptualization of the political, strategic and military logics that underpin nuclear‐weapons policies and practices. Delegitimizing represents a more radical normative project to transform collective meanings assigned to nuclear weapons. The analysis examines conceptions of devaluing nuclear weapons from the perspective of non‐nuclear weapon states and the relationship between devaluing nuclear weapons and the idea of a spectrum of nuclear deterrence. It concludes by highlighting the tension between surface and deep devaluing, the emergence of a delegitimizing agenda, and the political implications for the current NPT review cycle set to culminate in the next quinquennial Review Conference in 2015.     

The US debate on NATO nuclear deterrence

NATO's nuclear deterrence posture has since the late 1950s involved risk‐and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe. Since 1991 gravity bombs, deliverable by US and allied dual‐capable aircraft, have been the only type of US nuclear weapons left in Europe. Although many other factors are involved in the alliance's deterrence posture and in US extended deterrence—including intercontinental forces, missile defences, non‐nuclear capabilities and declaratory policy—recent discussions in the United States about NATO nuclear deterrence have focused on the future of the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe. The traditional view has supported long‐standing US and NATO policy in holding that the risk‐ and responsibility‐sharing arrangements based on US nuclear weapons in Europe contribute to deterrence and war prevention; provide assurance to the allies of the genuineness of US commitments; and make the extended deterrence responsibility more acceptable to the United States. From this perspective, no further cuts in the US nuclear weapons presence in Europe should be made without an agreement with Russia providing for reductions that address the US—Russian numerical disparity in non‐strategic nuclear forces, with reciprocal transparency and verification measures. In contrast, four schools of thought call for withdrawing the remaining US nuclear weapons in Europe without any negotiated Russian reciprocity: some military officers who consider the weapons and associated arrangements unnecessary for deterrence; proponents of ambitious arms control measures who accept extended deterrence policies but view the US weapons in Europe as an obstacle to progress in disarmament; nuclear disarmament champions who reject extended nuclear deterrence policies and who wish to eliminate all nuclear arms promptly; and selective engagement campaigners who want the United States to abandon extended nuclear deterrence commitments to allies on the grounds that they could lead to US involvement in a nuclear war.     

Deterrence dogma? Challenging the relevance of British nuclear weapons

In December 2006 the British government released a White Paper announcing its intention to begin the process of replacing its current Trident nuclear weapons system, thereby allowing it to retain nuclear weapons well into the 2050s. In March 2008 the government released its National Security Strategy that stressed the long‐term complexity, diversity and interdependence of threats to British security with a clear focus on human rights, justice and freedom. This article asks how the threat to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people with British nuclear weapons fits into the National Security Strategy's world view and questions the relevance of an instrument of such devastating bluntness to threats defined by complexity and interdependence. It argues that the government's case for replacing the current Trident system based on the logic of nuclear deterrence is flawed. First, Britain faces no strategic nuclear threats and the long‐term post‐Cold War trend in relations with Russia and China—the two nuclear‐armed major powers that could conceivably threaten the UK with nuclear attack—is positive, despite current tensions with Moscow over Georgia. Second, the credibility and legitimacy of threatening nuclear destruction in response to the use of WMD by ‘rogue’ states is highly questionable and British nuclear threats offer no ‘insurance’ or guarantee of protection against future ‘rogue’ nuclear threats. Third, nuclear weapons have no role to play in deterring acts of nuclear terrorism whether state‐sponsored or not. Fourth, British nuclear threats will be useless in dealing with complex future conflicts characterized by ‘hybrid’ wars and diverse and interdependent sources of insecurity. The article concludes by arguing that the government's fall‐back position that it must keep nuclear weapons ‘just in case’ because the future security environment appears so uncertain, makes no sense if British nuclear threats offer no solution to the causes and symptoms of that uncertainty.     

Rethinking the NPT's role in security: 2010 and beyond

As the states parties to the nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT) plan for the May 2010 review conference, they are faced with recurring political challenges that call into question the long‐term sustainability of the presently constituted non‐proliferation regime, notwithstanding the important role the NPT and its related institutions have played in slowing the pace of proliferation for four decades. Even if the review conference is deemed a success, its outcome is unlikely to address the regime's core structural weaknesses and normative contradictions. Frustration with the continuing status and benefits accorded to nuclear‐armed states outside as well as within the NPT, will continue to diminish confidence in the effectiveness of traditional non‐proliferation and deterrence practices. The progressive reframing of security in terms of creating a world without nuclear weapons may be little more than rhetoric for some leaders, but it has widespread public support. A growing number of governments are now expressing interest in new approaches and steps, including consideration of a nuclear weapons convention as a practical objective to work towards. The article discusses the challenges and options for the non‐proliferation regime and concludes that efforts to halt future proliferation will increasingly focus on reshaping the norms and rules to pave the way for negotiating a new nuclear security compact, based on a verified process to prohibit and eliminate the possession as well as the use of nuclear weapons.     

Analysing international nuclear order

William Walker's article, ‘Nuclear enlightenment and counter‐enlightenment’, raises fundamental questions about the history of efforts to construct order in international politics in relation to nuclear arms and weapons‐related capabilities. However, Walker's ‘enlightenment’ and ‘counter‐enlightenment’ tropes are clumsy and unsatisfactory tools for analysing contemporary policies concerning nuclear deterrence, non‐proliferation and disarmament. Walker holds that in the 1960s and 1970s most of the governments of the world came together in pursuit of ‘a grand enlightenment project’. This thesis cannot withstand empirical scrutiny with regard to its three main themes—a supposed US‐Soviet consensus on doctrines of stabilizing nuclear deterrence through mutual vulnerability, a notion that the NPT derived from ‘concerted efforts to construct an international nuclear order meriting that title’, and the view that the NPT embodied a commitment to achieve nuclear disarmament. Walker's criticisms of US nuclear policies since the late 1990s are in several cases overstated or ill‐founded. Walker also exaggerates the potential influence of the United States over the policies of other countries. It is partly for this reason that the challenges at hand—both analytical and practical—are more complicated and dif cult than his article implies. His work nonetheless has the great merit of raising fundamental questions about international political order.     

Enlightenment and nuclear order

Applying the method of enlightenment correctly to the area of nuclear non‐proliferation would require a major effort to critically evaluate ideologies. Liberal arms control—despite its many successes and merits—has devised over the years a whole set of ideological tenets and attitudes. Some of them have been transformed into beliefs that could be termed myths. The most prominent ideological myth of the liberal arms control school is the notion that the Nuclear Non‐proliferation Treaty of 1968 (NPT) was in essence a disarmament agreement, not a non‐proliferation treaty. To depict the negotiations as a premeditated effort of enlightenment, where the governments of this world came together to solemnly decide that some of them would be allowed to have some nuclear weapons for an interim period while the others would renounce their possession immediately, is pure. It would be equally wrong to qualify the ‘grand bargain’ as one between the nuclear haves and the nuclear have‐nots. Another myth of the liberal arms control school is the notion that—in order to gain support for the NPT—the superpowers had altered their nuclear weapons strategy in the 1960s. Again, this contention is not borne out by the development of nuclear strategies and doctrines. The third myth is the contention that there was an abrupt shift in US non‐proliferation policy as George W. Bush came into power. The major changes in US non‐proliferation policy had already started during the Clinton administration and some of them can be traced back to the tenure of President George W. H. Bush senior. They all reflected the changed international environment and represented necessary adjustments of the non‐proliferation strategy. The Clinton administration left some of the traditional paths of arms control and rightly undertook some changes that were necessary because traditional instruments of arms control were no longer adequate. The Bush administration continued that policy, but in a more radical way.     

The inconsequential gains and lasting insecurities of India's nuclear weaponization

India's nuclear breakout in 1998, foreshadowed as early as 1974, may have been understandable for reasons of global nuclear politics, a triangular regional equation between China, India and Pakistan, and domestic politics. Yet the utility of India's nuclear weapons remains questionable on many grounds. Nuclear deterrence is dubious in general and especially dubious in the subcontinent. Nuclear weapons are not usable as weapons of compellence or defence. They failed to stop the Pakistani incursion in Kargil in 1999 or the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. They will not help India to shape the military calculations of likely enemies. And India's global status and profile will be determined far more crucially by its economic performance than nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, they do impose direct and opportunity costs economically, risk corrosion of democratic accountability, add to global concerns about nuclear terrorism, and have not helped the cause of global nuclear non‐proliferation and disarmament. Because the consequences of a limited regional war involving India could be catastrophic for the world, others have both the right and a responsibility to engage with the issue. For all these reasons, a denuclearized world that includes the destruction of India's nuclear stockpile would favourably affect the balance of India's security and other interests, national and international interests, and material interests and value goals.     

Nuclear fears,hopes and realities in Pakistan

In the four decades since Pakistan launched its nuclear weapons program, and especially in the fifteen years since the nuclear tests of 1998, a way of thinking and a related set of feelings about the bomb have taken hold among policy‐makers and the public in Pakistan. These include the ideas that the bomb can ensure Pakistan's security; resolve the long‐standing dispute with India over Kashmir in Pakistan's favour; help create a new national spirit; establish Pakistan as a leader among Islamic countries; and usher in a new stage in Pakistan's economic development. None of these hopes has come to pass, and in many ways Pakistan is much worse off than before it went nuclear. Yet the feelings about the bomb remain strong and it is these feelings that will have to be examined critically and be set aside if Pakistan is to move towards nuclear restraint and nuclear disarmament. This will require a measure of stability in a country beset by multiple insurgencies, the emergence of a peace movement able to launch a national debate on foreign policy and nuclear weapons, and greater international concern regarding the outcomes of nuclear arms racing in South Asia.     

Rebels without a cause: North Korea, Iran and the NPT

Unchecked nuclear weapons development in North Korea and the incipient nuclear weapons programme in Iran currently pose seminal challenges to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The disposition of these cases may determine the future of the NPT and will shape non-proliferation and disarmament efforts for the next decade or more. This article assesses these two challenges, focusing on the actions concerned European states might take to leverage and guide the inevitably central US role. The article concludes that, by smoothing the sharper edges of US nuclear and strategic policies, European states can promote political conditions more favourable to non-proliferation solutions in both critical cases and help reduce reliance on nuclear weapons threats in global security relations more broadly.     

International Affairs and ‘the nuclear age’, 1946–2013

The article reflects on the distinguished record of publication, in around 130 articles over nearly seventy years, on nuclear politics in International Affairs. Although constituting a small drop in the torrent of writings on nuclear matters since 1945, it can fairly be regarded as the most significant contribution to nuclear discourse by any journal outside the United States. The articles published in International Affairs have covered a wide range of issues including nuclear deterrence and strategy, arms control, non‐proliferation and disarmament, and the policies—and drivers of policy—of countries, in particular the UK and US. Authors have included P. M. S. Blackett, Wyn Bowen, Alastair Buchan, Hedley Bull, Pierre Hassner, Michael Howard, Rebecca Johnson, Michael MccGwire, Michael Quinlan, Nick Ritchie, John Simpson and David Yost. The discussion concludes with Ian Smart's article of 1975 in which he contemplates the nature of the ‘nuclear age’ and its persistence or passing, and comments on governments’ ‘fatuous’ attachment of prestige value to nuclear weapons.     

Nuclear enlightenment and counter‐enlightenment

Given the apocalyptic nature of nuclear weapons, how can states establish an international order that ensures survival while allowing the weapons to be used in controlled ways to discourage great wars, and while allowing nuclear technology to dif use for civil purposes? How can the possession of nuclear weapons by a few states be reconciled with their renunciation by the majority of states? Which political strategies can best deliver an international nuclear order that is effective, legitimate and durable? These have been central questions in the nuclear age. This article suggests that the effort to construct such an order displayed the characteristics of an enlightenment project, with its emphasis on balance and rationality, the quest for justice and trust among states, the feasibility of instrumental regulation, and the attachment to hope and progress. With the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty at its heart, it necessarily gave precedence to diplomacy and containment over preventive war. The reasons why this conception of nuclear order was discarded by its erstwhile champion, the United States, in favour of one bearing traits of counter‐enlightenment, are explored. Its alternative strategy can now be declared a failure. Avoidance of a greater disorder depends on recognition that the problem of nuclear order is more than the problem of proliferation, or of non‐compliance, and on recovery—whatever the difficulties—of the cooperative yet pragmatic sensibility that lay behind the prior approach to order.     

It's time to scrap the NPT

Due to persisting demand-side factors and crumbling supply-side controls, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will probably be unable to prevent a likely proliferation rate of one or two additional nuclear weapons states per decade into the foreseeable future. Beyond being ineffective, I argue that the NPT will make this proliferation much more dangerous. The NPT is a major cause of opaque proliferation, which is both highly destabilising and makes use of transnational smuggling networks which are much more likely than states to pass nuclear components to terrorists. However, abandoning the NPT in favour of a more realistic regime governing the possession of nuclear weapons would help put transnational nuclear smuggling networks out of business and stabilise the inevitable spread of nuclear weapons.     

The future of the NPT1

Despite the 2005 NPT Review Conference ending problematically, there remains no real alternative to that regime for controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. Any replacement of the current regime would only compound existing problems and challenges. We cannot afford to live in a world where ‘more nuclear weapons are better’. To do so would be to avoid disarmament and create a divisive security environment. A better approach would be for the global community to strive for a true partnership in achieving non-proliferation goals.     

Russia,nuclear leakage,and the non-proliferation regime

Abstract

Russia inherited from the Soviet Union vast holdings of nuclear weapons and of the fissile materials necessary to build them. These nuclear assets have been in the possession of a Russia in the midst of an extraordinarily difficult and turbulent political, social, and economic transformation. Never before have such enormous inventories of nuclear weapons and fissile materials existed in such circumstances of political instability and uncertainty and economic distress. The economic struggles and financial crisis experienced by Russia since it emerged as an independent state in 1991 have placed enormous stress on its society. The Russian military and the Russian nuclear complex have not been exempt from these pressures. This reality has led to concerns that the Russian state is not in a position to provide adequately for the safety and security of its nuclear assets. If true, this would raise the risk that these assets could leak out of Russia and into the hands of those who wish to acquire nuclear weapons –the so called nuclear leakage problem.     

The Budapest Memorandum and Russia's intervention in Ukraine

Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States extended security assurances to Ukraine in December 1994 in an agreement that became known as the Budapest Memorandum. This agreement was part of a package of arrangements whereby Ukraine transferred the Soviet‐made nuclear weapons on its territory to Russia and acceded to the Treaty on the Non‐Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non‐nuclear weapon state (NNWS). Russia's violations of the Budapest Memorandum, notably its annexation of Crimea, could have far‐reaching implications for nuclear non‐proliferation and disarmament because of the questions that Russia's behaviour has raised about the reliability of major‐power security assurances for NNWS parties to the NPT. Doubts about the reliability of such assurances could create incentives to initiate, retain or accelerate national nuclear weapons programs. Moreover, because the Budapest Memorandum included restatements of UN Charter provisions and principles articulated in the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co‐operation in Europe, Russia's disregard for the Budapest Memorandum has raised fundamental questions about the future of international order. The Russians have demonstrated that, despite economic sanctions and international condemnation, they are prepared to disregard longstanding legal and political norms, including those expressed in the Budapest Memorandum, in pursuit of strategic and economic advantages and the fulfilment of national identity goals. Unless Russia reverses its dangerous course, the fate of the Budapest Memorandum may in retrospect stand out as a landmark in the breakdown of international order.     

中国军队大裁军与新时期经济建设

以1975年邓小平领导的军队整顿为发端,中国人民解放军逐步走上一条大裁军之路。30年来,中国军队按照服从和服务于国家经济建设大局的原则,先后进行了6次大规模的精简整编,使军队总员额减少了65％,年度国防费开支在国家财政支出和国内生产总值中所占比例大幅度下降,探索和开创了一条有中国特色的精兵之路,有力地支持和促进了国家经济建设的快速发展,逐步形成国防建设与经济建设协调发展的局面,在正确处理国防和军队建设与国家经济建设的关系方面,创造和积累了宝贵的成功经验。     

Nuclear Order and Disorder

After a decade of great progress in diminishing the risks posed by nuclear weapons, international nuclear relations came unstuck in the late 1990s. Why did this happen? This question is best answered through an understanding of how a ‘nuclear order’ was constructed during the Cold War, how it developed in the early post‐Cold War period, and how confidence in it dissipated as the 1990s wore on. After considering how the nuclear order was founded upon linked systems of deterrence and abstinence, the article explains how both were destabilized in the mid‐ to late 1990s—cause and effect of the United States shifting its ordering strategy towards protection (through missile defences) and enforcement. Can confidence in nuclear order be restored? How should we regard the recent agreement among States Parties to the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Agreement to press for complete nuclear disarmament?     

Nuclear disarmament versus peace in the twenty‐first century*

In his analysis of the continuing necessity for Britain to retain its nuclear capability, the author argues that the purpose of the British nuclear deterrent is what it has always been—‘to minimize the prospect of the United Kingdom being attacked by mass destruction weapons’. His discussion ranges from the ethical paradox surrounding the possession of nuclear weapons, the central problem of their predictability, the problem of new threat and, in his view, the Utopian non‐proliferation obligations. The possession of the deterrent may be unpleasant, he concludes, but it is necessary, its purpose lying‘not in its actual use but in its nature as the ultimate “stalemate weapon”.’     

Humanitarian security regimes

This article introduces a novel concept, humanitarian security regimes, and enquires under what conditions they arise and what is distinctive about them. Humanitarian security regimes are driven by altruistic imperatives aiming to prohibit and restrict behaviour, impede lethal technology or ban categories of weapons through disarmament treaties; they embrace humanitarian perspectives that seek to prevent civilian casualties, precluding harmful behavior, protecting and ensuring the rights of victims and survivors of armed violence. The article explores how these regimes appear in the security area, usually in opposition to the aspirations of the most powerful states. The existing regimes literature has mostly taken a functional approach to analyzing cooperation, lacks a humanitarian hypothesis and does not explore the emergence of new regimes in the core area of security. The author argues that in the processes of humanitarian security regime‐making, it is the national interest that is restructured to incorporate new normative understandings that then become part of the new national security aspirations. This article intends to fill this gap and its importance rests on three reasons. First, security areas that were previously considered to be the exclusive domain of states have now been the focus of change by actors beyond the state. Second, states have embraced changes to domains close to their national security (e.g. arms) mostly cognizant of humanitarian concerns. Third, states are compelled to re‐evaluate their national interests motivated by a clear humanitarian impetus. Three conditions for the emergence of humanitarian security regimes are explained: marginalization and delegitimization; multilevel agency, and reputational concerns.