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Some Conceptual Problems in Nuclear Proliferation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

George H. Quester
George H. Quester*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Abstract

While significant progress has been made in establishing a legal barrier to the further spread of nuclear weapons, some important nations are withholding approval of this Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Political factors are very significant, but agreement is made even more difficult by persistent ambiguities in technological forecasts of “how far we or they are from the bomb.” The time-lag for any crash weapon programs will not remain as extended as one might hope, because civilian technology itself is drawing states ever closer to de facto military capabilities. Yet the length of this time-lag may be crucial to the maintenance of peace if political crises emerge. Since scientists offer widely varying estimates on such time-lags, a graphical formulation is offered to reduce ambiguity. In the end, the effectiveness of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards under the NPT may depend more on their symbolic and political impact than on their technology.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , June 1972 , pp. 490 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1972

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References

1 The text of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as finally presented can be found in United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament: 1968 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 461–465 Google Scholar.

2 A full discussion of the spreading potential for nuclear bomb production, and efforts to control the spread, can be found in Barnaby, C. F., ed., Preventing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (London: Souvenir Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

3 A basic analysis of the costs and problems of inspection appears in Kramish, Arnold, “The Watched and the Unwatched,” Adelphi Papers (Institute for Strategic Studies, London) 36 (06, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 The “satisficing” concept is of course drawn from Simon, Herbert, “A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 69 (02, 1955), 99–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Good basic accounts of the overlap of military and peaceful nuclear technology can be found in Beaton, Leonard, Must the Bomb Spread? (London: Penguin Books, 1966)Google Scholar, and Buchan, Alastair, A World of Nuclear Powers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966)Google Scholar.

6 Comprehensive accounts of the evolution of IAEA practice can be found in Kramish, Arnold, The Peaceful Atom and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1963)Google Scholar, and Scheinman, Lawrence, “Nuclear Safeguards, the Peaceful Atom, and the IAEA,” International Conciliation, 572 (03, 1969)Google Scholar.

7 The reasoning on preemptive and surprise attack is spelled out quite fully in Schelling, Thomas, Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 205–254 Google Scholar.

8 See Prawitz, Jan, “A Nuclear Doctrine for Sweden,” Cooperation and Conflict, 1968:3, pp. 184–193 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an account of the diverting of Swedish nuclear activities from military to purely civilian purposes, in part through the acceptance of foreign (American) assistance.

9 See Jungk, Robert, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958)Google Scholar for a fascinating account of the distribution of nuclear expertise in the 1920s and 1930s.

10 Some of the following argument was made earlier in a broader arms control context by Finkelstein, Lawrence S., “New Trends in International Affairs,” World Politics, 18 (10, 1965), 117–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 This is of course a somewhat speculative extrapolation from the evidence offered by Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns.

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