Making of the Seventh NWS: Historiography of the Beginning of the Nuclear Disorder in South Asia

ABSTRACT

Efforts to explore Pakistan's nuclear weapons options had been underway since 1972 alongside Pakistan's quest for nuclear energy. However, the American concerns about Pakistan developing a nuclear weapons capability did not surface until after the Indian test in May 1974. The Indian nuclear test marked the beginning of the nuclear disorder in South Asia and paved way for Pakistan's nuclearization. This article assesses US non-proliferation policy towards Pakistan under the Gerald Ford administration from 1974 to 1977. The administration attempted to curb Pakistan's latent proliferation potential by pressuring France and Pakistan to cancel their plutonium reprocessing agreement. Though it remained unsuccessful in its attempts to restrain Pakistan's nuclear development, the administration tried to develop a quid pro quo with Pakistan by pushing the country to choose military aid over bomb. Pakistan chose the bomb for it felt that US non-proliferation policy in South Asia was skewed in favor of India.     

Ethics and Energy

Abstract

Moral judgements are not easy to make in an age of technological complexity particularly if it is difficult to know all the facts accurately. However, it is possible to state the ethical considerations underlying the global energy problem and to point to possible solutions in the short, medium and long term. The nuclear option is considered in some detail and it is concluded that the procedures of deciding risks should be based on dialogue and mutual education.     

Atomic structures: the architecture of nuclear nationalism in India and Pakistan

Abstract

A half-century after their completion, India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) stand out as unchallenged architectural advertisements for ‘nuclear nationalism’. Elsewhere, Atoms for Peace reactors made no pretence to architectural refinement. In the right hands, however, ‘Cold War Modern’ could express the hard power of the nuclear age. For India and Pakistan, these nuclear laboratory complexes became the public faces of the peaceful atom that held out the promise, and masked the peril, of the atomic age at home and abroad, and deliberately deflected attention away from clandestine nuclear weapons programmes. BARC and PINSTECH, envisioned as cornerstones for self-confident and self-reliant programmes of nuclear physics, embodied the paradox of postcolonial science, necessarily borrowing from the West but determined to break the cycle of dependency, in defiance of Western expectations.     

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.     

Institutions,informality, and influence: explaining nuclear cooperation in the Australia-US alliance

ABSTRACT

Nuclear cooperation has been a consistent feature of the Australia-US alliance. In the 1950s and 1960s, Canberra explored transferring US nuclear weapons to Australian forces operating in Southeast Asia. Since the 1960s, Australian governments have supported hosting joint facilities that contribute to America’s ability to execute global nuclear operations. And Australia has regularly invoked the nuclear umbrella as part of the alliance. We explain the key sources of nuclear cooperation in the alliance by leveraging realist and institutionalist theories of alliance cooperation. While realism explains limits to US nuclear commitments in the 1950s, institutional explanations are more relevant in pinpointing the sources of nuclear cooperation and in explaining why Australia has often achieved its policy preferences as the junior partner.     

Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity: US Planning,Intelligence Analysis,Weapons Innovation and the Search for a Qualitative Edge 1969–1976

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that between 1969 and 1976 US policy-makers actively sought to transcend nuclear parity. The Nixon and Ford administrations demonstrated increasing uneasiness toward nuclear parity and yet, proved unwilling to match the Soviet Union quantitatively. In the search for an answer to the question of what strategic superiority was in the age of parity, they came to understand it in distinctly qualitative terms, adopting a number of decisions related to nuclear planning, intelligence analysis of the nuclear balance, and nuclear weapons innovation and modernization, aimed at securing a qualitative edge over the USSR.     

Risks and Consequences in Energy Production

Abstract

The word risk is often used in association with energy production and in some case it is equated with consequences. The distinction is important and has implications for the study of energy system. Failure in a given energy system, such as nuclear power or hydroelectric dams, can give rise to human consequences, such a deaths, injuries or disease. The extent of these consequences varies from one system to another. Furthermore, the probability of such failures is a characteristic of the given system. For example, a nuclear reactor or hydroelectric dam may have a probability of one catastrophic failure in x years of operation where x is a large number. The probability multiplied by the number of deaths, injuries and illnesses caused by the failures—the consequences—can be taken as a measure of the risk, or risk index.     

Anti-Utopianism Among Arms Controllers

Abstract

[T]he President's embrace of the goal, both utopian and dangerous, of a world without nuclear weapons will inevitably weaken support for the strategy of nuclear deterrence upon which the defense of the West continues to rest.     

I Quindici Giorni di Scanzano: identity and social protest in the New South

Abstract

This paper examines the dramatic events of ‘I Quindici Giorni di Scanzano’, the vast popular uprising in Basilicata in November 2003 that thwarted a government decree to create a consolidated national nuclear waste dump at Scanzano Jonico. The struggle cut across lines of locality, age, social class and political affiliation, mobilizing the populace with various symbols, including references to brigandage, postwar struggles for land, and the Madonna of Loreto. Solidarity for the protest came from all quarters of the South, especially the neighboring regions of Apulia and Calabria. Although government representatives and some of the media portrayed the Lucanians in recognizably anti-Southern tropes of ‘uncivicness’, this paper argues that this remarkable moment in Basilicata's history created a new sense of public identity and action that in many ways reflected recent intellectual discourses on the South.     

Conclusion: Reflections on the Nuclear Order

ABSTRACT

The papers in this special issue examine the nuclear order that began to emerge in the 1970s after the entry into force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreements in 1972. Several general themes are discussed: the international economy and the nuclear order; strengthening the non-proliferation regime; reactions to US non-proliferation policy; the East–West arms race; the nuclear order in 1980; the international system and nuclear order. The argument is made that the changes in the international system in the 1970s had important effects on the nuclear order, creating a North–South axis alongside the existing East–West axis; provoking disagreements and disputes over the transfer of nuclear technology; and giving greater prominence to nuclear power in a period of energy crises. This is still an order of states in which transnational and international NGOs play a secondary role. There were a variety of responses to the new order: acceptance; resentment; attempts at modification; independence; evasion and circumvention. The constitution of the order was a matter of great interest to a good number of states and the focus of many debates and much political conflict.     

‘We are not a rich country to waste our resources on expensive toys’: Mexico’s version of Atoms for Peace

Abstract

The Atoms for Peace initiative was announced by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953. The ways in which Eisenhower’s proposal was interpreted, adapted and reshaped by different countries allows us to understand the various meanings and uses of nuclear technologies, particularly in Third World countries. Mexico’s version of the initiative was related to its modernizing nationalism, a distaste for overt geopolitical alignment and nuclear weapons, and an intermittent commitment of the federal government with nuclear technologies. These ingredients eventually led to the promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco (TT) signed in Mexico City in 1967. The TT made Latin America the first nuclear weapons-free populated region in the world, thus positioning Mexico in the new geopolitical nuclear order through a denuclearization discourse and a policy of non-engagement with nuclear technologies.     

A baffling experience: Technology transfer,Anglo-American nuclear relations,and the development of the gas centrifuge 1964-70*

The development of the gas centrifuge in the 1960s revolutionized the production of enriched uranium. More simple and efficient than gaseous diffusion, the centrifuge offered countries a means of producing enriched uranium independently of America. For Britain, the centrifuge possessed political as well as economic advantage. It provided the opportunity for Britain to share nuclear knowledge with its European partners, so improving the prospect of successful admission to the European Common Market. In Washington, the prospect of a joint European centrifuge project received an ambivalent response. The State Department, keen to foster a strong Europe as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism, welcomed collaboration. In contrast, the Atomic Energy Commission, charged with maintaining US nuclear security, sought to block the venture on the grounds that it infringed US law. This paper reviews this debate, examining Anglo-American nuclear relations in the context of Britain's entry into the European Common Market. It argues that Britain was determined to establish a purely European solution to the question of uranium supply even if this led to a breach in Anglo-American relations.     

Nuclear Energy: Beliefs,Values and Acceptability

Abstract

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in public concern about nuclear energy. As a consequence, it has become recognised that the future of nuclear energy will not only depend on technical and economic factors, but that public acceptability of this technology will play a crucial role in the long-term future of nuclear energy. Research has shown a considerable divergence in public and expert assessment of the risks associated with nuclear energy. Qualitative aspects of risks play a dominant role in the public's perception of risks, and it seems necessary for experts to recognise this in order to improve relations with the general public. It is also clear, however, that differences in the perception of risks do not embrace all the relevant aspects of the public's assessment of nuclear energy. Public reaction is also related to more general beliefs and values, and the issue of nuclear energy is embedded in a much wider moral and political domain.     

Technology and textiles globalization

Post 9/11 discourse has important origins in Cold War technopolitical hierarchies that equated "nuclear" with colonizing nations and "non-nuclear" with colonized peoples. This paper gives examples of such equations in order to illuminate the place of nuclearity in current global technopolitics.     

Family Burial,Family Structure,and The Urbanization of Herodian Jerusalem

Abstract

Epigraphic, archaeological, and historical data indicate that most of the population in Herodian Jerusalem was buried in family caves. In several cases, however, Diaspora Jews and proselytes were buried together, replacing the family by an alternative reference group of other immigrants or proselytes. Furthermore, the Qumran sectarians, and perhaps also some early Christians and pharisaic haverim, chose to withdraw from their families and to be buried in the sphere of the sect. This distinctive burial practice results from the ideological tension between the sect and the family (of the sectarian member).

Analysis of the number of niches in 306 burial caves (presumably familial caves) in light of the skeletal remains from some of these caves leads to a tentative reconstruction of the family structure in Herodian Jerusalem. Most prevalent were the nuclear and the small extended families, whereas hamulas were distinctively rare. It seems that the average family became smaller during the Herodian period. It is suggested that this process was due to the urbanization of Jerusalem, and that the change in family structure accelerated the growth of individualism in Jerusalem society.     

The Chemical Heat Pipe EVA and ADAM

Abstract

The interdisciplinary system described, for the transport of energy over long distances, has been under active investigation on a pilot plant stage for some years. Heat from a high temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor is proposed as an energy source to convert methane and steam, an endothermic chemical reaction, into carbon oxides and hydrogen – the EVA proces. The resulting gases can be pumped through pipes over long distance and, at the point of energy requirement, be converted back as an exothermic reaction – the ADAM process. Both reactions have been tested at Jülich with success and could be commercially Introduced at the end of the present century. Additional advantages are described for this closed circuit chemical heat pipe system.     

Between Principles and Pragmatism: India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in the Post-PNE Era, 1974–1980

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that even when India had posited its peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) of May 1974 as a mark of resistance against a prejudiced nuclear order based upon the NPT, India's policies in the post-PNE period confirmed with many aspects of the emerging non-proliferation consensus. India's response was guided by two major factors. On one hand, were its long-held principles such as the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy (including PNE's) and the right to nuclear technology cooperation for peaceful purposes. On the other hand, were the pragmatic policy choices it had to make as advanced nuclear states worked towards a stricter non-proliferation regime. In this struggle between India's principles and its necessities, India's nuclear behavior was guided much more by pragmatism rather than by its normative preferences. Yet, even when India made major compromises on its nuclear principles in private, in public India stuck to the rhetoric of its principled opposition to the NPT regime. These tensions between India's actual practice and its public policy are evident on three major non-proliferation issues: nuclear safeguards, export controls and the danger of nuclear proliferation in its neighborhood.     

Soviet official critiques of the resource scarcity prediction by limits to growth report: the case of Evgenii Fedorov’s ecological crisis rhetoric

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on official Soviet attitudes towards ‘ecological crisis’ and the rhetoric developed to address it. It analyses in particular the discussions in the Soviet Union that followed the publication of the Club of Rome report Limits to Growth (1972). It contributes to the better understanding of the debate around resource scarcity in a framework of so-called ‘ecological crisis’ as it was conceptualized in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. It is based on the analysis of writings by the Soviet geophysicist Evgenii Fedorov (1910–81) who was among the few Soviet members of the Club of Rome and thus had direct access to contemporary Western scholarship. The paper explores how such rhetoric accepted and reconceptualized the notion of crisis for use in both domestic and international environmental politics and the associated advancement of technology as the most effective remedy against resource scarcity. Fedorov largely built his ideas on Soviet Marxism and Vladimir Vernadsky’s concepts, which preceded the current notion of the Anthropocene. In addition, his experience in nuclear projects and weather modification research –– both more or less successful technocratic projects – gave him some kind of assurance of the power of technology. The paper also provides some comparison of the views of the problem from the other side of the Iron Curtain through a discussion of the thoughts of the left-wing American environmentalist Barry Commoner (1917–2012), which had been popularized for the Soviet public by Fedorov.     

Negotiating Nuclear Control: The Zangger Committee and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group in the 1970s

ABSTRACT

In the 1970s, the Zangger Committee and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group published guidelines on nuclear trade that drew a line between peaceful and dangerous nuclear technology, defining what was sensitive enough to require safeguarding and what was not. Given the ambivalence of nuclear technology, how was that line drawn? Historically, the understanding of whether a nuclear item is benign, sensitive, or especially sensitive has changed in response to the shifting balance between political, commercial and non-proliferation interests. The 1970s, however, merit special attention; they saw an unprecedented codification of nuclear sensitivity in the form of the published trigger lists that are still used today. In the absence of clear technical criteria, what interests and perceptions determined the sensitivity of specific nuclear items by the nuclear suppliers in the 1970s? Archival sources provide a unique insight into how the trigger lists and guidelines were negotiated and with what aims and considerations. This paper finds that nuclear sensitivity was driven by commercial interests in ensuring a level, and open commercial playing field, political interests in securing co-operation and practical interests in implementation and reputation, all of which outweighed technical considerations of how nuclear technology exports might assist a nuclear weapons programme.     

Selling the Iran Nuclear Agreement: Prospect Theory and the Campaign to Frame the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Abstract

This paper examines the Obama administration’s arguments for ratifying the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities and whether these claims encouraged U.S. senators to approve the agreement. The analysis relies on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) prospect theory in which more risk is taken to avoid certain loss and improve conditions when options are framed in terms of losses rather than gains. We argue that the Obama administration was able to persuade Democratic senators to support the JCPOA by arguing the agreement had the potential to curb the development of nuclear weapons by the Iranian regime. But more importantly, the administration was able to frame the status quo as a certain loss, and thus, the risk associated with the JCPOA was acceptable in comparison to not adopting the agreement. Our analysis of the Obama administration’s lobbying efforts and the Democratic senators' statements in support of the agreement demonstrate the value of applying prospect theory to understanding decision making with respect to American foreign policy formulation.