Return to unfinished business: Re-energizing U.S. nuclear arms policy (original) (raw)
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The United States currently has some 10,000 nuclear weapons in its stockpile. 1 They are there because of a long chain of technical and political decisions made in the past. Although current U.S. nuclear weapons policy may be understood in light of this history, it should be assessed in the context of present international security risks. These risks include dangers left over from the cold war era, challenges posed by states that are newly growing in power, and the dramatic new presence of nonstate actors. The salient features of this new environment, the context of technology and international politics in which nuclear weapons decisions must now be made, are the subject of this chapter.
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The historical echoes continued as discussion of non-extension of the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms treaty, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) accord on strategic (long-range) nuclear forces, quickly followed the INF withdrawal announcement. These events recalled the collapse of negotiations on the first START accord in December 1983, mere weeks after the TV movie aired. 3
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Міжнародні відносини, суспільні комунікації та регіональні студії, 2020
The article analyzes the US strategy in the nonproliferation field during three decades (in 1990s – 2018) and during the presidency of four US presidents (Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump). The author considers the key guidelines of US nonproliferation strategy that are described in four Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR) issued by each post-Cold War presidential administration. These documents describe the US nuclear policy in general, but the author focused on analysis of those their sections that were devoted to dealing with the risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons. The National Security Strategies of 1996 and 2002 were also analyzed in the article to clarify the nonproliferation aspects of US strategy that were not explained well in the published excerpts of the first two Nuclear Posture Reviews of presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush. As George Bush faced with the new challenges that required developing updated nonproliferation strategy like he terro...
Countering Nuclear Proliferation
2011
The threat of nuclear proliferation is no longer being adequately contained by the original nuclear non-proliferation regime with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at its heart. As of 2001, the United States (US) administration has adopted new measures to counteract the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This paper proposes that the new measures adopted by the US are not effective in ensuring security from nuclear proliferation or protecting against nuclear attack It is argued that the US approach is paradoxically driving nuclear proliferation and increasing the security risk to the US, its measures acting to undermine the nuclear non-proliferation regime without replacing it with an improved regime.It is proposed that the nuclear regime for all of its failings is a necessary bedrock for a world where nuclear non-proliferation is a norm. This regime, and the treaty, is reliant on multilateral buy-in. A constructive way forward would be to fix the NPT and then build new mecha...
The world became a very different place after the devastating attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001. Without a doubt it was a much more dangerous place to live in as it open the eyes of the world to the dangers faced by terrorist groups. I will argue that this change was not adequately reflected in U.S. nuclear weapons policy which remained fixated on deterring inter-state war under the Bush Administration. Although this policy changed under the Obama Administration, it still remains dangerously reliant on nuclear weapons. I will argue that U.S. policy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to attack is ineffective and irresponsible. This thesis shows that nuclear weapons policy under President Bush was highly flawed and created a more dangerous world to live in. While admittedly the Obama Administration negotiated new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which actively encouraged the safe storage and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, his rhetoric and actions are at odds with each other. The Obama Administration, while envisioning a world free of nuclear weapons, acted to ensure this will not become a reality in the foreseeable future by committing the U.S. taxpayer to a long and expensive process of modernisation of the nuclear arsenal. I believe that this commitment to extend the life of the nuclear weapons programme is a step in the wrong direction and will argue that non-proliferation is the only safe option available to the U.S. to counter the new threat it faces.
Given the destabilising effects of a new nuclear power, the risks of reactive proliferation and the reduction of its freedom of actions, the United States has always been concerned about nuclear proliferation and has always tried to curb the spread of nuclear weapons both among its allies and its enemies. With the end of the Cold War, the demand for nuclear weapons has seen a renewed increase. Countries previously under the Soviet nuclear umbrella or those already entangled in regional conflicts with the US, found themselves in a new precarious security situation. At the same time, the United States - as the sole remaining superpower - together with the international community, acquired the capacity to intervene and actively constrain proliferation (both militarily and diplomatically) even in hostile countries previously under Soviet influence. This evolution of the international system put proliferation and counterproliferation in a whole new dimension, centred around the complicated relations between the new proliferators, their neighbouring countries, the US and the other Great Powers of the international community. Consequently, the very interactions between these actors’ conflicting domestic politics and geopolitical interests became crucial. This work analyses the evolution of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, two countries traditionally hostile toward the United States, and the various counterproliferation strategies that the different American administrations have implemented, since the end of the Cold War to constrain them. The main focus will be on the Obama presidency in order to understand the reasons that motivated two opposite counterproliferation strategies toward the two regimes and to compare the consequent different outcomes.
Foreign Policy - Assignment No 2 Can Nuclear Proliferation Enhance Regional and Global Security
To describe the matter of the ‘nuclear club’ expanding, Kenneth Waltz uses the word ‘spread’ instead of proliferation. The spread has been slow, even regressed, and is unlikely to gain much pace in the future. (Sagan & Waltz 1995) Therefore, with nuclear weapons limitations talks recently conducted between America and Russia, reducing the vertical proliferation, nuclear weapons escalation is not a major problem as it was during the Cold War era. It is the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology that is significantly today’s concern. Reduction of the nuclear spread can be largely due to the work of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which serves three mutually reinforcing aims: it is an agreement to forgo nuclear weapons, to pursue disarmament and to put peaceful nuclear facilities under international safeguards while promoting access to technical co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear power generation. (Holum 1995) The 1968 NPT was initially signed by the USA, USSR, UK and fifty-nine other countries. China and France acceded as late as 1992. As of June 2010 the NPT HAS 189 signatories. The only non-signatories are the declared but unauthorised Nuclear Weapon State (NWS) OF India and Pakistan; the undeclared but assessed NWS, Israel and North Korea, a signatory until it withdrew in 2003. (Source: Federation of American Scientists) Despite these four states being non-signatories, the NPT is broadly effective and respected globally.
2006
More than 60 years after the dawn of the nuclear age, the governance of nuclear weapons is an issue that is ripe for revisiting. In this chapter the term ‘governance’ encompasses not only the functions of those who possess the power to make decisions of various kinds regarding nuclear weapons, but also the functions of those who have the practical means and the physical opportunity to execute these decisions. Nuclear weapons continue to hold a prominent place in the security concerns of both nuclear weapon states and nonnuclear weapon states, despite the end of the cold war and the indefinite prolongation of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT).2 This chapter focuses in a broader way, and with a governance rather than a security perspective, on the whole spectrum of political oversight and control mechanisms that may apply within and, to some extent, between nuclear weapon states. Drawing on the notions of civilian control and o...