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The emergence of cooperation: national epistemic communities and the international evolution of the idea of nuclear arms control
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
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An American epistemic community played a key role in creating the international shared understanding and practice of nuclear arms control. In the absence of nuclear war, leaders' expectations of nuclear war and of its control were affected by causal theories and abstract propositions and models which, given their “scientific” and technical nature, were developed by an epistemic community. This study, which emphasizes the roles played by epistemic communities in policy innovation and in the diffusion of understandings across nations and communities, analyzes how the theoretical and practical ideas of the arms control epistemic community became political expectations, were diffused to the Soviet Union, and were ultimately embodied in the 1972 antiballistic missile (ABM) arms control treaty. In contrast to those studies that have concentrated primarily on the workings of international epistemic communities, this study stresses the notion that domestically developed theoretical expectations, which were worked out by a national group of experts and selected by the American government as the basis for negotiations with the Soviets, became the seed of the ABM regime. Moreover, by suggesting that the arms control epistemic community was really an aggregation of several factions that shared common ground against various intellectual and policy rivals, this study sheds light on the question of how much coherence an epistemic community requires. The political selection of new conceptual understandings, followed by their retention and diffusion at national and international levels, suggests an evolutionary approach at odds with explanations of international change advanced by structural realism and approaches based on it.
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References
For their comments and insights, I am grateful to the members of the review committee of International Organization; to the other contributors to this special issue, especially Peter Haas and M. J. Peterson; to my colleagues at the Center for Science and International Affairs, especially Joseph Nye; and to Hayward Alker, Stephen Graubard, Joseph Grieco, Ernst Haas, and Thomas Schelling. Research funds were provided by the Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, and by the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 1988.
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107. In November 1964, the Soviets first paraded what appeared to be an ABM system. The system, called Galosh, “was believed to be composed of a network of radars and a two- or three-stage, solid-fueled interceptor missile designed for long-range, ex-atmospheric interception of incoming ICBM s.” See Yanarella, Ernst J., The Missile Defense Controversy: Strategy, Technolog, and Politics, 1955–1972 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1977), p. 118.Google Scholar
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112. Sentinel was a light area missile defense system set to be deployed in fifteen sites in the continental United States, one site in Hawaii, and one in Alaska. The system consisted of various radars and either a Spartan missile or a Sprint missile, depending on the site. See Adams, , Ballistic Missile Defense, p. 177.Google Scholar
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123. The Soviet-American Disarmament Studies Group, referred to as the Doty group, started to meet in 1965 and met for ten years. The first conference of the Darmouth group took place in 1959. An official collaboration between the American and Soviet academies of sciences has taken place under the guidance of W. Panofsky and S. Sagdeev.
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148. Ibid., p. 66.
149. Other reasons that led the Soviet leaders to sign a Soviet–U.S. strategic arms control treaty included the following: they perceived that the Americans held a strong edge in the technological race; they realized that multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV s) were entering into the strategic equation; they wanted to institutionalize parity with the United States and, if possible, improve their strategic situation in areas unrestricted by SALT; they wanted to project power; they wished to strengthen detente with the West; and they hoped that the resulting economic savings could be directed back to the civilian sector.
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151. The faces refer to complementary and mutually reinforcing processes. They are ideal types, and “the distinction between ‘faces’ tends to break down at the margin.” See James, Scott C. and Lake, David A., “The Second Face of Hegemony: Britain's Repeal of the Corn Laws and the American Walker Tariff of 1846,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), p. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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156. This awareness of the value of cooperation for national security was essential. According to Davis, “As the naive type of unsafeguarded arms control of the 1920's became clearly inappropriate to the problems of the next three decades, there developed a relatively harmless tradition in politics of paying it lip service, so as not to offend the gentler elements of public opinion, and of ignoring it in practice. This tradition of the white lie [was] carried over into the nuclear age. … For several critical years the habit of pretending to work for disarmament served to mask the fact that the political leadership of the United States did not want disarmament. More specifically, those in Washington who considered arms control undesirable or impractical clearly had the upper hand in the process of making and administering policy, with the help of others who thought the Russians would never sign anyway, or would sign and cheat.” See Davis, , “Recent Policy Making in the United States Government,” pp. 379–80.Google Scholar
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