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Preventing proliferation: the impact on international politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

George H. Quester
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Extract

Nine predictions are advanced on the impact on the international system of a successful effort to contain nuclear proliferation.

The world will see a modest dilution of the prerogatives of sovereignty, very much tailored to the halting of nuclear weapons spread. Some breakthroughs will be achieved in the multinational management of nuclear industry. Current “pariah states” may escape such status, simply through the latent possibility of nuclear proliferation. Nuclear weapons will continue to go unused in combat, just as they have since 1945. Soviet-American cooperation on the nuclear proliferation front will continue. The traffic in conventional arms may by contrast go relatively unchecked, as most countries conclude that this kind of weapons spread is less bad than nuclear proliferation. All of this will be carried through by statements distorted by the normal deceptions of diplomacy. The world will nonetheless generally become more sophisticated in discounting any glamor or political clout in nuclear weapons programs. Most of the barrier to proliferation will come through normal political and economic exchange, rather than through any violent or military interventions.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Winter 1981 , pp. 213 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1981

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References

1 For broad-ranging discussions (mostly pessimistic) of the impact of actual nuclear weapons spread on the international system see Hoffmann, Stanley, “Nuclear Proliferation and World Politics” in A World of Nuclear Powers?, Buchan, Alastair, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966) pp. 89–122Google Scholar; Rosecrance, Richard, ed., The Future of the International Strategic System (San Francisco: Chandler, 1972)Google Scholar; and Wohlstetter, Albert et al. , Swords From Plowshares (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) especially pp. 126–50.Google Scholar

2 For considerably less pessimistic analyses of the impact of actual proliferation, see Waltz, Kenneth N., “What Will the Spread of Nuclear Weapons Do to the World” in International Political Effects of the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, King, John Perry, ed. (Washington: U.S.G.P.O., 1979), pp. 165–97Google Scholar. See also Bull, Hedley, “Rethinking Nonproliferation,” International Affairs, 51, 2 (04 1975): 15, 175–80, 187–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The text of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 can be found in United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament: 1963 (Washington: U.S.G.P.O., 1964), pp. 291–3Google Scholar. The text of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 can be found in Documents on Disarmament: 1968 (Washington: U.S.G.P.O., 1969), pp. 404–9.Google Scholar

4 For a good illustration of such arguments, see Epstein, William, The Last Chance (New York: The Free Press, 1976).Google Scholar

5 See Falk, Richard, “Nuclear Weapons Proliferation as A World Order Problem,” International Security, 1, 3 (Winter 1977): 79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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9 See Clausen, Peter, “Nuclear Conference Yields Potential New Consensus,” Arms Control Today, 9, 6 (06 1979): 1–4.Google Scholar

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19 See Williams, Frederick, “The United States Congress and Nonproliferation,” International Security, 3, 2 (Fall 1978): 45–66, for details of the Congressional involvement in a more explicit approach to halting nuclear weapons spread.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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