Lesson: Globalization on Nuclear Proliferation §

Identify and briefly explain the changes in the nature of wars in the contemporary era. §

Nuclear Weapons Technology §

• Since 1945: Nuclear technology (power) has spread across the globe
• 1965: 5 countries with nuclear power (US, USSR, UK, France, China)
  • 1968 Agreed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
• Current Day: 9 possess nuclear weapons (US, USSR, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel)

What Can Nuclear Technology Be Used For? §

1. Generate energy in a nuclear reactor: uses controlled nuclear chain reactions to generate heat for power
2. Produce nuclear weapons: create explosion using fusion or fission

• Challenge to creating nuclear weapons
  • obtaining weapons-grade fissile material: Plutonium and
    • process Uranium-235 through enrichment
    • Plutonium is created as a byproduct of the reactor process and is reprocessed
• Nuclear Weapons cause damage in 3 ways
  • blast
  • thermal radiation (heat) + fire
  • nuclear radiation
  • electromagnetic pulse: disrupt electronic equipment

Does globalization increase or decrease the spread of nuclear weapons? Why? §

Concerns of Nuclear Weapons §

❗ “whether states can maintain control over sub-state actors whose financial or professional interests might be helped by proliferation even if the state’s national interest is not”

• black market selling nuclear weapons
• stealing technology or warheads

Nuclear Proliferation Since 1945 §

• Prevention of nuclear war between superpowers (US & Soviet Union)
  • Nuclear Deterrence & Mutually Assured Destruction
• NATO was scared of USSR’s nuclear weapons, needed US deterrence
  • Counterforce Strkategy: US nuclear weapons silos spread throughout Europe to threaten USSR’s military bases and assets
  • Countervalue Strategy: to threaten USSR’s cities, population, industrial, & social life.
  • Extended Deterrence: threat of nuclear response if one of its allies is attacked (Dilemma: if US willing to trade itself for European countries)
• Challenge of spread of nuclear power to international security and nuclear safety
  • Control of Fissile Material: IAEA is in charge of monitoring who didn’t sign NPT
  • Nuclear Energy Technology is complex and prone to human error with high human and environmental consequences. (Fukushima)

Theoretical Debates on Nuclear Weapons §

• Both nuclear opacity and latent nuclear capacity raise questions about what the definition of nuclear proliferation is.
• States acquire nuclear weapons for a number of different reasons, and they also choose policies of nuclear restraint, nuclear reversal, and providing nuclear assistance to other countries. Strategic factors, culture and ideology, political economy, domestic politics, and leader psychology all play a role in these decisions.
• There is a debate about whether the spread of nuclear weapons will lead to more stability and less conflict, or more accidents, instability, and conflict.
• Rather than existential deterrence, where just one nuclear warhead is sufficient to deter conflict, the effect of nuclear weapons on conflict varies over time, and from country to country.

🔧 In Class Tasks:

• Why states want or don’t want to produce nuclear weapons?
  • Globalization impact on state motivation in producing nuclear weapons
  • Understand the model (Box 24.1)
• Each group is responsible for 2 models
  • Explain the model, what are the motivation?
  • What is the spread of nuclear weapons?

Model 1 §

1. The security model: States build nuclear weapons to increase national security against foreign threats, especially nuclear threats.

   • Potential utility in fighting and winning major international armed conflicts

     💡 Ex: Japan in 1945

   • Cold War: nuclear weapons as strategic deterrence

     • Technological determinism: due to the security benefits possession of nuclear weapons provides, states will pursue and all eventually develop nuclear weapons

   • Consensus on Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

2. The domestic politics model: States build nuclear weapons because these weapons advance parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests.
   • interests of bureaucracies or military organizations in power determines if they want nuclear weapons or not
     • nuclear power production
     • military control over country
   • Maybe pursue nuclear weapons because inward-looking political and economic policies rather than outward integrating with global economy
   • Acquire nuclear weapons for prestige, identity, culture, status & influence and table with the powerful
     • North Korea

• Does Globalization increase or reduce nuclear weapons?
  • Nuclear weapons production is intentional: motivations?
    • Realism: nuclear weapons represents security and survival

Note What are the motivations of a state for acquiring nuclear weapons? [^2]

💡 Models for states’ motivations of nuclear proliferation

1. The security model: States build nuclear weapons to increase national security against foreign threats, especially nuclear threats.
2. The domestic politics model: States build nuclear weapons because these weapons advance parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests.
3. The norms model: States build nuclear weapons because weapons acquisition, or restraint in weapons development, provides an important normative symbol of a state’s modernity or identity.
4. The psychology model: States build nuclear weapons because political leaders hold a conception of their nation’s identity that leads them to desire the bomb.
5. The political economy model: States build nuclear weapons because the nature of their country’s political economy-mostly interest, whether or not it is globally integrated gives their leaders different incentives for or against having nuclear weapons.
6. The strategic culture model: States build nuclear weapons because their strategic culture leads them to hold certain ideas about how valuable the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons will be.