Thinking about 'Enlightenment' and 'Counter-Enlightenment' in Nuclear Policies || Enlightenment in the Second Nuclear Age

Enlightenment in the Second Nuclear AgeAuthor(s): Michael RühleSource: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 83, No. 3,Thinking about 'Enlightenment' and 'Counter-Enlightenment' in Nuclear Policies (May, 2007),pp. 511-522Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Institute of International AffairsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4541756 .

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Enlightenment in the second nuclear age

MICHAEL RUHLE*

Is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) part of an 'enlightenment' project meant to achieve a better, nuclear weapon-free world? Has this project now come under threat from a 'counter-enlightenment' movement led by an ever more unilateralist United States? William Walker makes a cogent case for looking at the nuclear non-proliferation regime through such a unique philosophical prism, thereby adding an interesting new dimension to the debate. Ultimately, however, his narrative of an 'enlightenment' project and the rise of countervailing forces remains off the mark. Too much rests on a rather arbitrary, and highly subjective, interpretation of the NPT and what the NPT-based nuclear non-proliferation regime is supposed to mean. Indeed, even Walker's implicit division of people into 'enlightened' arms controllers and less enlightened sceptics is questionable. If enlightenment is defined as an emphasis on 'the use of reason to scrutinise

previously accepted doctrines and traditions',' then the jury may still be out on who is actually enlightening whom. In this author's view, at least, the evidence is mounting that the belief in the existence of a universal non-proliferation norm enshrined in and promoted by the NPT is in itself an act of faith rather than a

scientifically established fact. To put it differently, to argue that the NPT represents a case of 'nuclear enlightenment' is in essence a normative claim, a maximalist

interpretation of a treaty that, for reasons that will be described below, is far more modest in its original meaning, and far less central in coping with current and future challenges, than the 'enlightenment' argument would have one believe.

The crisis

There is little disagreement that the non-proliferation regime is in crisis. The failure of the NPT review conference in 2005 is one clear indication of this, along with the perennial debate on North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the ongoing controversy over Iran's nuclear programme. The non-proliferation regime has also come under attack from yet another angle. While several leading powers remain determined to deny Iran, a non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT, the right

* The author writes in a private capacity and the views expressed here do not represent those of NATO. As defined in the online glossary www.german.leeds.ac.uk/RWI/2003_o4project3/Glossary.htm, accessed 20 March 2007.

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to enrich uranium, the United States has concluded a civil nuclear cooperation deal with India, a country that has always remained outside the NPT and thus is not eligible for such cooperation under NPT auspices. Is the NPT, frequently hailed as a textbook example of a wise and far-sighted policy, on the brink of collapse? Some commentators think so.2 Yet even if some publications on the state of the NPT read like obituaries, there is little to suggest that the non-proliferation project is over. In this author's view, that project will continue, albeit in very different ways than hitherto pursued.

Current and future proliferation challenges cannot be dealt with solely by applying traditional means. Nor can the regime be saved by attributing almost mythical qualities to it. On the contrary, as will be argued below, the tendency to exaggerate the importance of the NPT is part of the regime's crisis. What might have been intended as an attempt by the liberal arms control community to salvage an important pillar of the global order has been turned into a myth-making exercise that generates its own 'facts' and stands in the way of an 'enlightened' approach to a complex issue. Hence, a critical appraisal of the state of the non-proliferation regime requires first and foremost doing away with the three central myths that have come to dominate the non-proliferation debate.

The 'enlightenment' myth One such myth holds that the NPT epitomized a new kind of project, an attempt to construct a new international order. This myth, eloquently argued by William Walker, can be sustained only by either disregarding or reinterpreting the treaty's origins. A look at the NPT's negotiating history makes it quite clear that, while in many respects ambitious and innovative, it wasjust a treaty like any other. Contrary to the 'enlightenment' thesis, the NPT was at its core a mundane bargain-and one with considerable structural flaws.

The NPT's intellectual roots lie in the Cold War. It was inspired first and foremost by the common interest of the nuclear rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to prevent the emergence of new nuclear powers beyond the then current five (themselves, plus the UK, France and China). In the early to mid-196os, there was a widespread concern that without a far-reaching arms control regime many more states would seek to acquire nuclear status-including key western allies such as Germany or Japan.3 Hence, a way had to be found to freeze the number of existing nuclear weapon states (NWS) by persuading the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) to forgo the nuclear military option. In order to ensure this unabashedly 'unequal' outcome, the NPT was cast as a complex bargain. First,

2 See Richard Falk and David Krieger, 'After the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty', 27 April 2006, on www. openDemocracy.net, accessed 20o March 2007. A useful overview of the literature is provided by Jim Walsh, 'Learning from past success: the NPT and the future of non-proliferation', paper prepared for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Stockholm, Oct. 2005.

3 As John F. Kennedy stated in 1963, 'personally I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are success- ful, there may be Io nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, 15 or 20': press conference, 21 March 1963, available online at: www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Press+Conferences/ oo3POFO5Pressconference52_o32II963.htm, accessed 20 March 2007.

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the NNWS would stand to benefit from a predictable strategic environment. The NWS would not pass on to others nuclear technology that was militarily relevant, they committed themselves to negotiations on nuclear disarmament, and they pledged not to threaten or attack a non-nuclear weapon state with nuclear weapons. Second, the NNWS would get support for the civilian use of nuclear power-a highly attractive option in an era in which this was seen as the cutting edge of technological progress. Finally, the duration of the NPT was limited, and the treaty included the option of withdrawal if superior national interests were at stake.

This complex deal provided the basis for the NPT, which was signed in 1968. Right from the beginning, however, its structural problems were obvious. For example, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provided an instrument to verify compliance with the treaty's provisions, no sanctions were foreseen in case of a violation. The limited duration of the treaty represented some degree of compensation for its implicit inequality, yet it also made the treaty vulnerable to changes in the international environment. The true Achilles' heel of the NPT, however, was its energy dimension. In a nutshell, the NPT sought to prevent military proliferation while promoting civilian proliferation. However, since civil and military nuclear technologies are almost indistinguishable, some experts were concerned that a situation might arise such as that which transpired in North Korea and may now be at hand in Iran, whereby a country could use its civilian nuclear programme to advance right to the threshold of becoming a military nuclear power. Only the final steps to produce nuclear weapons were prohibited-steps that a determined regime could take immediately after it had withdrawn from the treaty.4

Despite these well-known weaknesses, the NPT gained extensive support. Over a period of 30 years, most countries signed up. Yet even this almost global membership of the NPT does not imply the existence of a universal moral non- proliferation norm. If the vast majority of countries never sought to acquire nuclear weapons, and if some bridled their erstwhile nuclear ambitions, they did so not because of the NPT or the moral pressure it exerted, but because their political cost-benefit calculus made it appear reasonable to do so. Simply put, achieving nuclear-armed status was not a worthwhile goal for most countries, as the political and economic opportunity costs of a nuclear military programme exceeded its immediate security benefits. Moreover, when the NPT was forged, nations that wanted to keep their nuclear options open, notably Israel, India and Pakistan, stayed outside that new framework. Later on, however, several countries with clear-cut nuclear ambitions, such as Iran and Iraq, adhered to the NPT, calculating that they could pursue their objectives within the treaty. Nothing could illustrate more clearly the limits of the treaty's norm-setting quality.

4 See Albert Wohlstetter, 'Spreading the bomb without quite breaking the rules', Foreign Policy 25, Winter 1976- 7, pp. 88-96 and 145-79.

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In sum, to claim that the NPT represents a case of'nuclear enlightenment' appears far-fetched. Even if the treaty has sparked the establishment of supplementary regimes and institutions, like the Nuclear Suppliers Group, its underlying bargain continues to reflect the specific circumstances of its drafting period, i.e. the i96os.s To claim that the treaty has a different and more far-reaching meaning requires a deliberate over- or reinterpretation. Alas, this is exactly what has happened.

The disarmament myth A second myth centres on the disarmament obligation of the nuclear weapon states. In order to make the treaty attractive for the nuclear 'have-nots', the NWS were obliged to negotiate in good faith towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. At the time of the treaty's signing, this obligation, enshrined in article VI, seemed of little significance. The treaty was widely understood as a freeze on the number of existing NWS, not as a means of disarming them. To put it bluntly, the treaty was supposed to perpetuate nuclear inequality indefinitely (or at least until 1995), and article VI was a way of making this fact a little easier to bear.6 However, article VI has since become the central plank of what can only be described as a massive effort to reinterpret the NPT and transform it from a non-proliferation pact into a disarmament treaty. Over the past years, some NNWS and many commentators have used article VI to contend that the NWS, because of their unwillingness to engage in more extensive nuclear disarmament efforts, are in fact violating the NPT. According to this argument, the NWS bear a considerable amount of blame for the current proliferation crisis and need to re-engage in serious disarmament efforts to rejuvenate global non-proliferation.7

Even if one were to leave aside the treaty's origins and initial meaning, the reinterpretation of the treaty through over-emphasis on the significance of article VI remains a dubious approach at best and a counterproductive one at worst. First, the causal link between disarmament and proliferation is far less clear than the argument implies. For example, the massive cuts in the US and Russian arsenals since the end of the Cold War have had no apparent effect on the spread of nuclear

5 Ironically, this point was reinforced by the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Contrary to Walker's sympathetic reading, this decision has done more harm to the treaty than any other single event. Getting agreement for this extension required the adoption of a series of political commitments intended to allevi- ate the NPT's inequality. Although these political commitments were formally accepted, disagreements over their meaning and implementation predictably occurred, and continue to this day. In retrospect, the indefinite extension of the NPT appears to have been an act of political folly, precisely because these associated political commitments sought to do away with the treaty's constructive ambiguity and replace it with a precision that would have changed the treaty's bargain in a way that the NWS were unwilling to concede. Simply put, the attempt to change the I960s deal failed.

6 See Joachim Krause's contribution in this issue of International Affairs. Arguing that the NPT 'envisioned the end of all nuclear weapons', that the treaty consisted of a two-part bargain, with the article VI obligation being one part, or that '[e]very president of both parties since Richard Nixon has reaffirmed these treaty obligations', are just some of many disingenuous aspects of a widely quoted article by several prominent US politicians: see George P. Shultz, WilliamJ. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, 'A world free of nuclear weapons', Wall StreetJournal, 4Jan. 2007, p. AI5.

7 See e.g. Harald Miller, 'WMD crisis: law instead of lawless self-help', study prepared for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, no. 37, Stockholm, 2005.

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weapons. This does not diminish the political and psychological desirability of further cuts; yet such steps are unlikely to have any discernible impact on the speed or magnitude of nuclear proliferation.8

Furthermore, the overinterpretation of article VI has recast the debate in a way that may ultimately do further damage to the NPT. Portraying the lack of complete nuclear disarmament as a treaty violation hands actual or prospective violators like North Korea and Iran a convenient argument to justify their behaviour. In this respect, the liberal arms control community has indeed achieved a dubious success: by giving vertical and horizontal proliferation equal weight, it has postulated a kind of moral equivalence between NWS that retain their status and NNWS that are cheating. To argue, as some have done, that the NWS had no moral authority to address other nations' treaty violations unless they re-engaged in more comprehensive nuclear disarmament efforts is to turn the NPT's meaning on its head. It also puts the responsibility for the NPT's crisis squarely on the NWS, as it makes their disarmament a precondition for progress. Yet how much nuclear disarmament would have to occur before the critics are satisfied and doubts about the NWS' 'good faith' removed? If the true goal of 'enlightenment' is nuclear abolition, there will be no intermediate point at which the pressure on the NWS to go further would cease.9

The 'counter-enlightenment' myth The third myth of the current non-proliferation debate concerns the role of the United States. For the liberal arms control community, it has become the central credo that most of the blame for the erosion of the non-proliferation regime lies with the selfish and contradictory policy adopted by the United States. For critics favouring this school of thought, the US refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the obsession with 'rogue states', the war against Iraq, the alleged search for new nuclear military options and, not least, the nuclear agreement with India have pushed the non-proliferation regime into a grave crisis of credibility, which has made dealing with the few violators particularly difficult. In the view of this school, only a fundamental reversal of US policy, away from its 'counter- enlightenment' instincts, offers a chance to repair the damaged non-proliferation regime.

The charge that American 'double standards' are the major cause of the proliferation crisis is easy to make. After all, no country can seriously claim to conduct a foreign and security policy that is entirely free of contradictions, least of all a country that carries most of the burden of maintaining international order. Moreover, if one assumes that the United States, as the world's strongest military power and the initiator of the NPT, should act as a kind of trustee of the non-

8 For a comprehensive discussion see Bruno Tertrais, 'Saving the NPT: past and future non-proliferation bargains', paper prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Washington DC, 29 Jan. 2005, http://www.npec-web.org/Essays/Essayo5so29%2o, accessed I9 April 2007.

9 Moreover, if nuclear weapons are also meant to provide deterrence against other weapons of mass destruction, it follows that there is a certain-though undefined-limit to nuclear disarmament.





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proliferation regime, contradictions in American policy have far-reaching implications. Yet one does not have to agree with all aspects of current US policy to conclude that much of the criticism directed against the Washington administration is unfair. If US non-proliferation policy today is different from that of 40 years ago, it is not because the US has become more fundamentalist, but because the problems it confronts have fundamentally changed. US non-proliferation policy may have its flaws;'0 yet this policy is not the cause of, but rather a reaction to, a disconcerting series of developments that constitute a 'second nuclear age'." One by one, these developments have challenged the basic assumptions underlying the traditional non-proliferation regime.

One major tenet of the non-proliferation regime that came under attack from post-Cold War reality was the notion that nuclear weapons were essentially a category of their own, largely separate from other (chemical and biological) weapons of mass destruction. While it had always been widely understood that the nuclear deterrence postures of the NWS were also intended to provide protection against chemical and biological weapons threats (as well as nuclear and conven- tional military threats), the Cold War standoff had made such considerations largely academic. The Gulf War of I990o-99I changed this. Immediately before the war, when the United States had to expect the Iraqi use of chemical weapons against coalition forces, Washington warned Saddam Hussein that such an action would mean the end of his regime. This implicit nuclear threat did not amount to an abrogation of the so-called negative security assurances, by which NWS promise not to threaten NNWS with nuclear weapons. However, it did underline that in the post-Cold War era the role of nuclear weapons in deterring regional powers armed with biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction was bound to gain in prominence. The Iraq episode thus qualified the widespread notion that the end of the Cold War would diminish the salience of nuclear weapons.

The next disappointment followed quickly. Soon after the Gulf War of 1990- 1991 the UN Special Commission discovered that Iraq had been working on a comprehensive military nuclear programme that had been only a few months away from detonating a nuclear device. For the IAEA, which had not uncovered this programme despite its regular inspections, this revelation constituted a fiasco. In response, many governments agreed on an additional protocol to the NPT, which extended the authority of the IAEA to conducting surprise inspections. Yet doubts about the reliability of the verification measures of the non-proliferation regime persisted, especially as the crucial question of how to deal with treaty violations remained unanswered.

The Middle East was not the only region where proliferation acquired a new significance. In the 199os Asia emerged as a new hotbed of proliferation, featuring a combination of regional rivalry, aggressive nationalism and nuclear arms that had

'o For a balance sheet of the Bush administration's non-proliferation policy, see Henry Sokolski, 'Nonprolifera- tion, by the numbers', Journal of International Security Affairs 7:12, Spring 2007, pp. 41-50.

" See Paul Bracken, 'The second nuclear age: how much has changed, how much remains the same?', Yale

University, 17 Nov. 2002, http ://www.nautilus.org/gps/scenarios/BrackenSecondNuclearAgeCEIP2002.pdf, accessed I9 April 2007.

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been absent in Cold War Europe. In 1994 the United States managed to pressurize North Korea into freezing its plutonium-based weapons programme, yet the crisis sparked by Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions continued, culminating in the discovery of a secret uranium enrichment programme and, finally, North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT in 2003. In the spring of 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, two of the few states that had not joined the NPT, dealt another heavy blow to the non-proliferation regime. At the same time, these developments raised the question of how to deal with states that remained outside the NPT. Should they be isolated in order to emphasize the importance of the non-proliferation norm? Or should they be recognized as official nuclear powers, in order to bring them into the NPT? To this very day, these questions remain controversial.'2

The attacks on America of 11 September 2001 highlighted yet another dimension of the non-proliferation conundrum: nuclear terrorism. The emergence of non-state actors posed new challenges to the interstate nature of the non- proliferation regime. States, even so-called 'rogue states', can be assumed to have an instinct of national self-preservation that will induce nuclear restraint. However, such assumptions do not apply to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations that are trying to obtain nuclear material. Rationality and the will to survive-the two essential ingredients of a stable deterrence system-are absent. Worse, even the assumption that it is too difficult technically for terrorists to acquire a fully operational nuclear device has now been called into question. The debate about a possible 'Talebanization' of Pakistan that emerged in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 offered a frightening scenario: rather than stealing a nuclear weapon from existing arsenals, extremists could take over a nuclear weapon state and thus gain control over an entire nuclear infrastructure.

Against the backdrop of 9/II it becomes particularly clear why the US perception of the proliferation problem is so severe. Objectively, 9/11 may have changed little or nothing in terms of proliferation; yet US tolerance of certain proliferators has decreased dramatically (as seen in the condemnation of the 'axis of evil'). It is for this reason that well-meant suggestions that attention be concentrated on the political roots of terrorism remain without resonance. Such an approach will take decades to succeed: time that is no longer available, given the urgency of the threat

I2 There is widespread agreement that the US-India nuclear deal, which provides India with access to US civil nuclear technology even though it has not adhered to the NPT as an NNWS, constitutes a major challenge to the traditional non-proliferation regime. It is likely that even the Bush administration would have preferred to achieve its strategic goal of a rapprochement with India by means less delicate than nuclear cooperation. However, India, for its own perfectly logical reasons, insisted that this rapprochement should be reflected on the nuclear level. Given the strategic importance of India as an emerging global player, the US finally conceded. In the strategic calculus of the Bush administration, as well as most US law-makers, the value of closer rela- tions with India outweighed any potential repercussions. However, the debate about the pros and cons of the US-India deal, and in particular on whether it will live up to (overblown?) American expectations, will continue for some time. It also remains to be seen whether the special status that the deal grants to India will indeed make dealing with Iran and other proliferators more difficult. See Ashton B. Carter, 'How Washington learned to stop worrying and love India's bomb', Foreign Affairs Online, ioJan. 2007, http://www.foreignaffairs. Org/2007zoIIfaupdate86I75/ashton-b-carter/how-washington-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-india-s- bomb.html, accessed i9 April 2007. It is indicative of the ambivalent character of the deal that that almost all international non-proliferation experts were opposed to it, with the notable exception of the director of the IAEA: see Mohamed ElBaradei, 'Rethinking nuclear safeguards', Washington Post, I4June 2oo6, p. 23.


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of nuclear terrorism. This threat perception accounts for much of the current US political activism-an activism that climaxed in the pursuit of 'regime change' in the nuclear threshold country, Iraq. Notions of bargaining or competitive risk- taking, as immortalized in Thomas Schelling's 'threat that leaves something to chance', may have been applicable to a binary US-Soviet nuclear relationship."3 In the 'second nuclear age', however, nothing must be left to chance.

The uncovering of the nuclear smuggling network of A. Q. Khan in early 2004 has dealt yet another heavy blow to the non-proliferation regime. The 'father of the Pakistani atom bomb' had traded in nuclear knowhow, helping North Korea, Iran, Libya and many other states towards realizing their nuclear ambitions. This quasi-private trafficking has eroded another fundamental assumption of the non- proliferation regime: the assumption that a state with nuclear ambitions would be dependent on the assistance of the established nuclear powers. The Khan network demonstrated that proliferation is increasingly proceeding outside the classical interstate regime. Since some new nuclear powers are likely to seek finan- cial benefits through exports of technology and materials (if not actual weapons), each new nuclear power thus increases the risk of a further acceleration of proliferation. This tendency is reinforced by the existence of large numbers of nuclear physicists and other experts educated in the West and the former Soviet Union, as well as by the trade in 'dual-use' goods, which many industrialized countries continue to supply irrespective of export controls. Thus, even if the number of declared nuclear weapon states has remained remarkably small to date, the number of 'turnkey states', able rapidly to convert their civilian nuclear programmes into military ones, will continue to increase.

These developments have been exacerbated by the proliferation of ballistic missile technology, a proliferation that has also entered a 'second phase'. Whereas in the past a customer would buy a fully completed missile system from the seller, several nations, notably North Korea and Iran, have been cooperating in the development, production and testing of improved types of missiles. This reduces testing needs, as testing data are supplied by others; speeds up development, as errors that were previously made by others do not have to be repeated; and thus cuts cost. Finally, some nations have started to test long-range ground-to-ground missiles by using them as space launch vehicles within a 'peaceful' space programme.

The growing demand for fossil energy is yet another factor that exerts pressure on the traditional non-proliferation regime. Iran is a case in point. As an important supplier of oil to China and a close business partner of Russia, Iran enjoys a degree of protection that makes far-reaching sanctions against Tehran appear rather improbable. The case of Iran may thus mark the paradoxical reversal of the equation that once underpinned the NPT. Rather than assisting a country in meeting its (nuclear) energy needs in return for its forgoing the nuclear arms option, the issue now is whether to tolerate Iran's nuclear ambitions in exchange for continued access to its fossil energy supplies.

"3 See Thomas C. Schelling, The strategy of conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, I960), ch. 8.


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Once again, the image of the non-proliferation regime as a set of norms that transcend national interests is being exposed as a myth. The regime remains highly dependent on-and vulnerable to-specific political and economic developments. Thus, it should be no surprise if the United States comes down on the side of the

'proliferation pessimists'. After all, Washington is expected to 'handle' the difficult cases. By contrast, neither China nor Russia has thus far demonstrated a similar

willingness to engage in an active non-proliferation policy. The EU, for its part, has laid out its non-proliferation policy in various documents; yet Iran provides the first difficult proliferation challenge where the EU seeks to play an active role.

The way ahead At the end of the Cold War, Tom Clancy, the well-known US author on the military, argued that the dawn of a new era of proliferation was breaking. He advised arms controllers to take their cues from the work of immunologists and cancer researchers, as these scientists were trained to find new solutions to

constantly changing threats.'4 Clancy's advice remains topical. The moral outrage of the liberal arms control community about the declining non-proliferation regime is accompanied by a striking lack of intellectual curiosity about most of the developments that account for the 'second nuclear age'. Hence, the casual reader of the output of the liberal arms control community will find an infinite number of articles warning of the follies of US nuclear strategy, yet very few

analyses of the A. Q. Khan network, the regional implications of a nuclear-armed Iran, or trends in ballistic missile proliferation. Most non-proliferation experts appear content to blame the United States for its alleged assault on multilater- alism. In this respect, the liberal arms control school has become a fully fledged ideology: its handling of the facts selective, its arguments designed to immunize its own set of beliefs against any outside intrusion. The intellectual dynamism and agility of cancer research that Clancy prescribed is woefully missing.

If the cherished myths of the liberal arms control school become the conven- tional wisdom, the current acrimonious non-proliferation debate is likely to remain stuck in its trenches. Worse, the tendency deliberately to hype the NPT into something that it is not rules out the possibility of exploring new approaches. Such approaches do exist, however. Developments of the last few years reveal the emergence of a new set of rules that might supplement the traditional regime. While it may be too soon to talk of a new 'regime', some elements of such a struc- ture can already be discerned.

First, despite its flaws, the NPT will remain the central framework for identifying unwelcome behaviour and initiating appropriate responses. Moreover, the inspections by the IAEA provide a degree of transparency that is widely regarded as indis- pensable. By contrast, initiatives to adapt the treaty by modifying its language-for example, making withdrawal more difficult-have not yet met with international

'4 Tom Clancy and Russell Seitz, 'Five minutes past midnight and welcome to the age of proliferation', National Interest 26, Winter 1991-2, pp. 11-12.

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consensus. It remains to be seen whether proposals to internationalize uranium enrichment or to limit access to enrichment and reprocessing technologies will fare better. Thus far, the discriminatory character of such approaches appears too obvious to make them an attractive solution.

Second, dealing with proliferators will follow individual rather than 'universal' approaches. This has already been demonstrated in the case of Libya's volun- tary disarmament, the recent deal with North Korea, the Iraq war and the US- India deal. Each case was handled differently, with a variable set of 'carrots' and 'sticks'-and outcomes likewise varied. It is obvious that the implicit distinction between 'good' and 'bad' proliferators, which lies at the heart of these approaches, runs counter to the very logic of universal arms control regimes. Yet this will not change the fact that the character of the political regime will play an increasingly important role in how the leading powers will treat individual proliferation cases. Simply, if irreverently, put: a nuclear-armed democracy is preferable to a nuclear- armed dictatorship.Is

Third, the UN Security Council will become the focal point of non-proliferation. Although much of the arms control literature depicts the NPT as an objective set of rules transcending national interests, the treaty is, in essence, a mechanism administered by the United Nations, with the Security Council at the top. It is this body that ultimately decides how the treaty should be interpreted and if and how violators should be punished. And it is the balance of power in the Security Council that determines the policy of the UN's sub-organizations, including the IAEA and its board of governors. Hence, building a consensus among the UN Security Council, particularly among its members, remains the foremost challenge of any effective non-proliferation approach.

Fourth, the non-proliferation regime will increasingly evolve by way of UN Security Council resolutions, with the US-inspired UNSCR 1540 of April 2004 as the point of departure. This resolution builds on the non-binding declaration of 1992, which characterized nuclear proliferation as a threat to international peace and security in the context of chapter VII of the UN Charter. UNSCR 1540 enables the Security Council to take chapter VII measures against a proliferator, even if that state is not a signatory of the NPT. The Security Council's tougher stance against Iran and North Korea indicates that this logic is being acted upon. Despite continuing differences among the members of the Security Council, notably with respect to the energy implications laid out above, UNSCR 1540 may indeed have opened a new chapter in the history of non-proliferation. 16

Fifth, enhancing the effectiveness of the new non-proliferation approaches will require preventive coercive measures, such as the interdiction of maritime smuggling, as foreseen in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), or the enforce- ment of economic sanctions against certain proliferators. Predictably, large parts of

'S The liberal arms control school's unwillingness to make distinctions between the natures of specific regimes was one of the reasons for its marginalization at the end of the Cold War: see Michael Riihle, 'Order and disorder in the second nuclear age', Internationale Politik (transatlantic edn) 7:4, Fall 2006, pp. 18-24.

6 See Olivia Bosch and Peter van Ham, Global non-proliferation and counter-terrorism: the impact of UNSCR 1540 (Washington and London: Brookings Institution Press/Chatham House/Clingendael Institute, 2007).

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the liberal arms control community have criticized the PSI for its allegedly dubious legal basis and lack of transparency. However, the growing number of participating countries demonstrates that the logic of interdiction is increasingly accepted as a necessary and legitimate supplement of a broader non-proliferation policy-all the more so because the interdiction of a shipment of centrifuges headed for Libya may have contributed to Qadhafi's decision to forgo a nuclear option.'7

Finally, the relevance of nuclear security assurances will grow. In some cases, promising a state protection ('positive' security assurances), or promising not to attack it ('negative' security assurances), may be the 'easiest' and quickest way to stifle regional proliferation dynamics. For example, should a nuclear-armed Iran lead to a nuclear domino effect in the Middle East, US 'extended deterrence' and NATO nuclear sharing arrangements (another favourite target of the liberal arms control school) might well turn out to be the most convenient and non-provocative way to keep geographically exposed alliance members from flirting with their own national nuclear options. This highlights the crucial role that the United States continues to play in preventing proliferation through its security commitments- a role that remains at least as crucial for the maintenance of international order as that of the NPT. The fact that this unique US role remains largely unappreciated by the liberal arms control community is among that school's many self-inflicted wounds. 8

Conclusion William Walker's interpretation of the NPT and its regime as being part of an 'enlightenment' project remains unconvincing-a well-intended, yet ultimately misguided attempt at 'branding' a certain arms control regime. Too much has changed to allow us to go on clinging to the belief that a regime that emerged four decades ago under specific political and military conditions could retain its importance without major modifications, such as bilateral initiatives or military coercive measures. Consequently, there is no point in holding on to the illusion that a more conciliatory, unabashedly multilateral, US policy could somehow rejuvenate the non-proliferation regime. Nor is there much use in exaggerating the meaning of specific clauses of the NPT. Such an ex post facto reinterpretation diverts attention from the real challenge: to grasp the nature of a rapidly changing security environment.

This challenge is far from new. In his acclaimed study of the early nineteenth- century European state system, A world restored, Henry Kissinger argued that even

~7 While the details of the interdiction of the ship BBC China in Oct. 2003 and the operation's formal relationship with the PSI framework are not entirely clear, the basic point about the logic of interdiction should not be lost. For an attempt to lose it anyway, see Wade Boese, 'Key US interdiction initiative claim misrepresented', Arms Control Today, July-Aug. 2oo5, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_o7-o8/InterdictionMisrepresented. asp, accessed 19 April 2007.

18 In Asia, at least, these commitments appear to have been more instrumental in preventing proliferation than any arms control regime. See Michael Riihle, 'Nukleares Domino', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 Feb. 2007. On the crucial US role in maintaining international order see Joachim Krause, 'Making sense of the proliferation debate', Internationale Politik (transatlantic edn) 7:4, Fall 2006, pp. mo-17.

521 International Affairs 83: 3, 2007 © 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation 2oo07 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International



Michael Riihle

a wealth of historical experience is of little use if one does not grasp the nature of the era one is living in. Statesmen at the time were well aware of the potential consequences of a revolutionary situation, yet since they failed to recognize that they themselves were living in one, their experience proved worthless. Thus, according to Kissinger, the foremost challenge of statecraft is correctly to evaluate one's own era.'9 By refusing to accept that the world has changed, and that the golden age of the classical non-proliferation regime and its main intellectual and political-military foundations is past, the 'enlightenment' school fails to meet this challenge.

'9 Henry A. Kissinger, A world restored (London: Gollancz, 1977 [1957]), pp. 331-2.

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International Affairs 83: 3, 2007 O 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International



Documents

Thinking about 'Enlightenment' and 'Counter-Enlightenment' in Nuclear Policies || Enlightenment in the Second Nuclear Age