Minilateralism, effective multilateralism and the global nuclear order

How can minilateralism better complement effective multilateral institutions, particularly in the global nuclear order where multilateral stagnation and deadlock have become such pressing challenges? In the wake of the 2023 report by the High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, this new article by Megan Dee argues that minilateral groupings can complement effective multilateralism, but only when they are willing and able to proactively integrate their activities within established wider membership multilateral institutions, and when they, in turn, are perceived as legitimate.

According to the 2023 report of the High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism [HLAB] global nuclear weapons governance is associated with ‘deadlock in multilateral processes’ and ‘stagnation’ in the pursuit of denuclearization. Interestingly, the HLAB report particularly highlights that for multilateralism to be effective it must be flexible, ‘allowing sub-groupings of states to explore, innovate, and implement new approaches to global problems for broader deliberation and adoption’. In short, minilateralism, or the “bringing together of the smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on solving a particular problem”, is called for.

Yet both the concept of minilateralism, and how complementary it actually is to effective multilateral institutions remains under studied and uncertain. While considered an efficient, and pragmatic solution to overcoming transnational problems, minilateralism has also raised pressing questions – and concerns – over its exclusivity, lack of transparency, equity, and accountability.

Important to highlight is that minilateralism is above all a relational concept – we can only ever really understand minilateralism as it relates to established wider membership multilateral institutions and their efforts to tackle transnational problems. Minilateralism may be pursued by groups of states exclusively inside established multilateral institutions, being integrated into the deliberative and negotiation processes of that institution, or exclusively outside of those institutions, operating as separate deliberative and decision-making forums which then essentially bypass multilateralism institutions. Minilateralism is also a fluid praxis. Groups of states may shift their positioning and activities away from an established multilateral institution (inside-outside) or toward it (outside-inside). Which type of minilateralism groups of states will then pursue is largely conditional on how they continue to perceive the effectiveness and legitimacy of established wider membership multilateral institutions, and the extent to which they will seek to uphold or bypass those institutions as a primary focal point for tackling transnational problems.

Minilateralism in the global nuclear order

Within the global nuclear order, most outside minilateral groupings – such as the NSG, PSI, GICNT etc – are initiated and led by nuclear weapon states apart from multilateral institutions. Members are then either hand-picked by the US or other nuclear weapon states, or are states willing to endorse the rules and principles already established by them. Such groupings then face a legitimacy deficit when they do seek to advance their solutions and ideas within wider membership multilateral institutions, however, because they are perceived as US-dominated, exclusive and untransparent.

Inside minilateral groupings – such as the VG10, NAC, NPDI or Stockholm Initiative – by contrast tend to be pursued predominantly by non-nuclear-weapon states. These groups seek out cross-regional members and proactively integrate and publicize their activities within the negotiation and deliberation processes of wider membership multilateral institutions such as the NPT. They therefore face fewer legitimacy challenges when they do present minilateral ideas or solutions because they are already embedded within established multilateral processes.

Lessons can also be drawn from those outside-inside minilateral groupings – such as the Zangger Committee or Quad Nuclear Disarmament Verification Partnership – who, while operating as outside groupings, do also seek to integrate their activities within NPT review cycles, highlighting their willingness to proactively engage in multilateral deliberation and negotiation processes.

Meanwhile, examples of inside-outside groupings, such as the G16/Humanitarian Initiative, and the CEND Initiative, highlight how groups of states may originally be conceived and function inside of multilateral institutions, but then shift their activities outside of those institutions when they become dissatisfied due to the perceived effectiveness or legitimacy deficit within that institution. In both cases the result has been the formation of new forums and a new regime -in the form of the TPNW – and an increasingly contested multilateralism within the global nuclear order.

Complementary – not contradictory – minilateralism

What is clear is the minilateralism is only going to become more important and utilized as states seek to deliver a world without nuclear weapons amidst the inefficiencies and challenges of multilateral efforts. Minilateralism can only truly complement, rather than contradict, effective multilateralism, however, when groups are willing and able to contribute to the negotiation and deliberative processes of wider membership multilateral institutions. The US particularly has shown that it can ‘go it alone’ by establishing outside minilateral forums, but such efforts invariably meet with resistance when trying to integrate back into multilateral institutions due to their perceived lack of transparency and legitimacy. As inside, and some outside-inside, minilateral groupings, have shown, minilateral groups can ensure their discussions and proposals are open for broader deliberation by proactively – and regularly – submitting working papers, making formal statements, submitting reports, and hosting side-events inside multilateral institutions like the NPT.

While minilateralism may demand exclusivity for the sake of more efficient decision-making, groups must also remain mindful of their perceived representativeness. While it is important that minilateral groupings remain closed to allow for states to move beyond entrenched positions and actively and creatively advance proposals to address problems, they must also remain transparent. At a minimum minilateral groupings should publicize their meeting dates and locations and provide regular reporting on their deliberations, and outputs so that non-participating governments and civil society are not left in the dark. Some transparency of process may be facilitated through dedicated group websites, following the example of the NSG, IPNDV, Quad and Zangger Committee. Multilateral institutions might also look to establish group sections on their websites, including a group filter in their public calendar of events.  In so doing, minilateralism can serve to uphold and promote the continued relevance, legitimacy and significance of multilateral institutions and their wider membership.

China’s nuclear expansion and the increasing risk of an arms race

Why is China expanding its nuclear arsenal? In his new article, Henrik Stålhane Hiim argues that concerns about the vulnerability of its nuclear forces is the main driver – and that there is little evidence of a change in China’s nuclear strategy.

In the summer and autumn of 2021, researchers revealed that China had started building more than 300 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in three different fields. The silo exposure made international headlines, and demonstrated that China had started a significant nuclear expansion. The US Department of Defense now assesses that China will possess over 1000 warheads by 2030, a fourfold increase in a decade. Even though the United States and Russia will continue to possess significantly larger arsenals, there is no doubt that China’s buildup represents a turn away from its traditional approach of maintaining a small nuclear force.

There is less agreement about why China is expanding its arsenal. In my article, I argue that there is still little evidence to suggest to that the expansion represents a change in China’s nuclear strategy. Chinese leaders have traditionally thought of nuclear weapons as having two functions: Deterring nuclear attacks from others, and countering nuclear blackmail or coercion. The buildup could enable later shifts in strategy, but there are still few signs of Chinese leaders fundamentally rethinking the purposes nuclear weapons serve in their defense policy.

I further find that the main driver of China’s expansion is concerns about US capabilities such as missile defense and highly precise nuclear and conventional weapons. Chinese sources indicate that worries about US nuclear policy have increased in recent years. Many in China fear the combination of weapons that can target its nuclear forces, and defenses that can intercept any surviving Chinese missiles. In tandem, they argue, such capabilities pose a major threat to China’s nuclear deterrent.

To be clear, other factors may also have influenced China’s buildup. Some analysts point to prestige and status concerns as a possible explanation. Others have indicated that the purpose of the expansion is to create a stronger “shield” to enable conventional aggression against Taiwan, which is possible, but not directly discussed in Chinese sources. Nevertheless, my findings indicate that concern about the vulnerability of its arsenal is likely to be the main driver. In particular, the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review was seen as alarming in China and contributed to increasing worries about the future strategic stability.

Towards an arms race?

My findings have implications for the debates about US nuclear policy. There is increasing discussion in the United States about whether to respond to China’s buildup through a similar expansion and by deploying new weapons systems. In October, the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States published its final report. The commission recommended to prepare to upload some or all of the warheads currently held in reserve. It further stated that the United States should deploy additional theater nuclear weapons with variable yield (or so-called tactical nuclear weapons) to the Indo-Pacific region. Similarly, a study group convened by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently argued that “The United States should plan and prepare to deploy additional warheads and bombs from the reserve.”

Unfortunately, my article indicates that such responses are very likely to lead to major arms race pressures. For example, influential US experts have argued that the United States should attempt to maintain a so-called damage limitation capability – that is, the ability to destroy or intercept as many Chinese nuclear weapons as possible in the event of an all-out war. The problem of this approach, however, is that Chinese leaders are no longer willing to live with a vulnerable arsenal. China is very likely to respond if its leaders and experts believe the United States is attempting to maintain a damage limitation capability.

Similarly, if the United States deploys new tactical nuclear weapons in Asia, the likelihood of China developing such weapons may increase. As experts from the Federation of American Scientists highlight, there is still no evidence that China plans to field a new low-yield warhead. However, my article highlights that Chinese experts are debating whether there is a need for such weapons as a response option vis-à-vis the United States.

Different nuclear schools of thought

As other scholars have also highlighted, the competing readings of China’s nuclear intentions, and of how the United States should respond, is in no small part informed by different assumptions and theories about nuclear strategy. Scholars who believe the balance of terror is delicate – and that states have incentives to pursue superiority – are likely to see China’s expansion as alarming. These scholars, whose views also appears to be at least partly shared by U.S. officials, fear China might be opting for a first-strike capability. Moreover, they argue that the United States should attempt to maintain its superior position.

My research demonstrates, however, that fears of China opting for nuclear superiority and a first-strike capability are overblown. Instead, China’s expansion aligns with the so-called nuclear revolution theory. A key tenet of this school of thought it that states should strive for a secure second-strike capability, but that pursuit of superiority is meaningless. So far, China appears to be acting like a good nuclear revolutionary. If it continues to do so, an arms race may still be at hand, albeit one less intense than the Cold War race.

Read the article “The last atomic Waltz: China’s nuclear expansion and the persisting relevance of the theory of the nuclear revolution” here

What drives states to join universal WMD treaties

Our understanding of WMD treaties is largely based on what we know about the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a new article, Jan Karlas studies state participation in all 10 universal treaties. He finds that states ratify those treaties for a variety of reasons.

Currently, there are 10 universal treaties that were adopted since the end of the Second World War and regulate weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These treaties limit the possession or testing of nuclear weapons (nuclear weapons treaties), prohibit chemical and biological weapons (CBW treaties), and ban the deployment of WMD in Antarctica and outer space, and on the seabed (zonal treaties). Almost all of them came into being during the second half of the 20th century as a result of the convergence in the interests of the two nuclear superpowers, represented by the USA and the USSR, and the majority of the other states.

To be effective and legitimate, WMD treaties need be truly universal and involve ideally all sovereign states. However, they only hardly manage to reach this goal. Typically, a certain number of countries ratify a WMD treaty relatively quickly, others wait to ratify for a longer time, and some even do not become parties to it. For the example, the Biological Weapons Convention joined together more than 75% states only 31 years after its adoption, and at this moment, only 41% of states ratified the Seabed Treaty.

It is important to understand when states enter WMD treaties, and when they do so only with a considerable delay, or even stay outside a treaty. The neorealist theory of international relations would, in this regard, differentiate states on the basis of their security situations and capabilities. Those that face security threats and have the necessary capabilities to develop WMD should be more likely to keep their autonomy and postpone the ratification of WMD treaties. Those that are not confronted with security threats, or do not have the necessary capabilities, are more likely to join these treaties quickly. Several scholars used these ideas to explain the ratification of the most prominent WMD treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In my paper, I go beyond the NPT, seeking to explain what drives ratification decisions generally, in relation to all the categories of WMD treaties. I reconsider the costs and benefits from participation in the different categories of treaties, and formulate a new explanation for this participation. A statistical analysis that maps the ratification behaviour of 204 states during the years 1960-2022 confirms this explanation.

The findings of the paper show that there are four specific factors that determine propensity of states to commit to WMD treaties. First, the possession/pursuit of WMD delays participation in treaties that completely ban these weapons, or they testing (CBW treaties and the majority of nuclear weapons treaties). This finding has two non-trivial implications. The first of them is that by far not all states that live in insecure environments necessarily postpone the ratification of WMD treaties. At the same time, the majority of states that possess or pursue WMD do not immediately destroy them, or stop the effort to acquire them, once there is a new treaty that calls for it. They sometimes join such a treaty, but after a relatively long time.

Second, the attitudes of countries to the US-led, liberal hegemonic order influences their decisions on participation in nuclear weapons treaties. My findings show that when countries are satisfied with this order, they generally join nuclear weapons treaties quickly. This can be explained by the fact that the nuclear order, which most of these treaties support, is closely linked to the liberal hegemonic order. The preliminary data also shows that the countries that have critical views of the US-built order have been entering the recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which, unlike other nuclear weapons treaties, challenges the hegemonic nuclear order, considerably more quickly than the states that are content with this order.

Third, economically developed states commit more quickly than less developed states to CBW treaties and zonal treaties. These treaties stipulate that states take necessary domestic legal and policy measures to regulate the use of biological and chemical materials, or set-up the basic rules for economic, scientific, and other activities taking place in Antarctica and outer space. The large biotechnological and chemical industries, and the resources needed for the exploration and exploitation of remote international spaces, increase the stakes that developed states have in the CBW and zonal treaties.

Fourth, the probability that a state will ratify any of the three categories of WMD treaties raises when a certain number of its regional peers joined it. When observing the positive ratification decisions of their peers, state representatives become more convinced that a given treaty represents a useful policy tool to strengthen national and international security. And they also react to the ratification decisions of their peers to act in line with the dominant preferences within their regional political community.

All these findings also imply that WMD treaties do not perform particularly well at identifying the states that comply with their provisions, simply because many countries join them with delays, or stay out of them, unless they have some benefits from participation. Due to this, these treaties do not work as ideal screening devices that would provide accurate information about states complying with the international rules on WMD. The lack of universal membership also limits their authority to provide legitimization to these rules.

Scholars suggested several ways that can ensure the widespread participation of states in WMD treaties and regimes. They argue that the most powerful states must act as leaders and provide incentives to smaller states, or that strong verification mechanisms must support treaties so that the participating states have information about the (non-)compliant behaviour. My paper identifies two additional important aspects. First, WMD treaties have a greater chance to reach a widespread membership if their functions provide substantial benefits to the different groups of states. Second, the existence of certain minimal numbers of states that support a WMD treaty in the individual world regions is another crucial precondition for its widespread ratification.

Jan Karlas is the author of “Explaining state participation in ten universal WMD treaties: A survival analysis of ratification decisions”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Disarmament and the production of less violent and more responsible nuclear states

Nuclear weapons states regularly underline their commitment to disarmament. Building on feminist scholarship, Carolina P. Panico argues in a recent article that this renders nuclear possession actually more acceptable.

On March 16, 2021, the UK announced changes to its nuclear weapons policy, significantly increasing its overall nuclear stockpile cap. While the previous self-imposed cap set a target of no more than 180 warheads in the stockpile by the mid-2020s, the new limit now sits at 260. The announcement comes with the reassurance that the UK remains committed to a world free of nuclear weapons and continues to support the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the rules that come with it. What is interesting, however, is that the UK invokes its commitment to disarmament at the very moment it seeks to expand and modernize its nuclear arsenal.

Although the NPT establishes that the five nuclear states must take steps to disarm in good faith, the disarmament discourse must not be taken for granted. One may think that the scenario outlined above is nothing but a reflection of the rules-based order in operation. After all, the NPT sets disarmament as an end goal. However, this position fails to appreciate how the system of thought revolving around disarmament can modify our perception of what is right and wrong in the context of nuclear politics. Article VI, the disarmament proposition of the NPT, is usually seen with great enthusiasm and described as a focal point for collective responsibility towards nuclear disarmament. In a recent article, I present a different story about Article VI. I argue that it makes possible the very thing it is supposed to prevent; it renders nuclear possession more acceptable.

The article advances three core points. First, I examine the ideas accompanying our understanding of disarmament, such as peace, non-violence, anti-war, and explain that these meanings change the way we see the act of possessing nuclear weapons. I compare the nuclear case to feminist critiques of ethics, arguing that invoking disarmament adds a layer of responsibility and peaceful purposes to the nuclear discourse, producing less violent and more responsible possessors.

Second, the disarmament principle allows the nuclear powers to justify possessing their weapons on the grounds of responsibility. To support this claim, I compare the disarmament principle to the norms around non-combatant immunity, which allow states to justify killing civilians in war based on the “good” intentions of “not targeting” or “not intending to harm them.” Under the laws of war, killing is acceptable so long as soldiers follow the prescriptions of the Geneva Conventions accordingly. In nuclear politics, the continued possession and rebuilding of nuclear arsenals is justified if one demonstrates a commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, which reiterates responsible behavior.

Third, I draw attention to how the persistence of nuclear weapons in global politics is associated with a process of repetition and reiteration of responsibility through the disarmament discourse. More importantly, I argue that so long as we have states performing in a way that replicates dominant understandings defining what passes as “normal” in nuclear politics, in which responsibility is key, nuclear possession will remain a more acceptable practice.

While I remain optimistic that it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons, my work sheds light on some obstacles preventing us from moving forward with disarmament initiatives. It encourages thinking disarmament in a way that avoids recycling the tightly controlled requirements that constitute the current nuclear order. It is important to note that despite presenting a critique of the NPT and its normative apparatus, I am not advocating for abandoning the treaty. On the contrary, my article suggests that even though the treaty is at the heart of the nuclear problem, the reworking of power structures that arise from its normative framework will lead to transformation. With the TPNW now in force, the findings presented in the article can help develop implementation strategies while encouraging thinking the TPNW as a tool to shift dynamics rendering possession a more acceptable practice.

Uncovering stories that help us understand what makes nuclear weapons such a persistent feature of global politics is an integral part of the process of disarming. It is only through a deepened understanding of the origin and structure of nuclear order that one will be able to grasp and seize possibilities for change, therefore, reorganizing such knowledge as effective sites of resistance.

Carolina P. Panico is a Doctoral Candidate and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland, Department of Politics and International Relations. She is the author of “Making nuclear possession possible: The NPT disarmament principle and the production of less violent and more responsible nuclear states”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here. Her Twitter account is: @CarolPantoliano

The Paradox of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is often labelled as a cornerstone of non-proliferation and one of the main factors curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. In a recent article, however, Orion Noda argues that the NPT is a nuclear proliferator; not of nuclear weapons per se, but of their symbolic value. 

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is often labelled as a cornerstone of non-proliferation and one of the main factors curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. Its pillars – non-proliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful uses of nuclear technology – were designed by the nuclear powers to counter a perceived immediate threat at the time (nuclear proliferation), whilst promising to disarm in good time.

I argue, however, that the NPT is a nuclear proliferator; not of nuclear weapons per se, but of their symbolic value. Drawing from different fields, such as Anthropology, Linguistics, and International Relations, I suggest a theoretical model to study nuclear weapons and the NPT focused on symbolism and I reach two major conclusions.

Firstly, despite the shrinking nuclear arsenals, we are no closer to “general and complete disarmament” – one of the goals of the NPT. The treaty focuses exclusively on quantitative forms of nuclear proliferation, that is, how many nuclear devices a given state has. In that sense, the NPT overlooks a series of proliferation forms, such as qualitative and, more importantly, symbolic. Qualitative proliferation is linked to the modernization of nuclear arsenals or delivery vehicles, for instance. What I call symbolic proliferation, on the other hand, relates to the proliferation of the symbolic values of nuclear weapons. These values are often connected to ideas of power, status, prestige, modernity, and civilization. In that sense, nuclear weapons evoke and symbolize these ideas, making them valued items.

Secondly, the NPT not only fails to account for non-quantitative forms of nuclear proliferation, but also acts as a proliferator of these symbolic values of nuclear weapons. The way this works is through two mechanisms: historical and conceptual entrapment. Historical entrapment relates to the fact that the values and idea of nuclear weapons contained in the NPT was that of that specific point in time when the NPT was being negotiated. The NPT was negotiated in the 1960s, during a time when the symbolic perceptions of nuclear weapons were strongly associated with positive features, not only material (such as their unparalleled destructive power), but also subjective (such as status and prestige). In that sense, the idea of nuclear weapons brought into the NPT was that of the 1960s, an idea and a set of values unchanged until today, given the few alterations the treaty suffered.

Conceptual entrapment, on the other hand, alludes to how the NPT funnels most – if not all – discussions on the topic of non-proliferation and disarmament and, as a consequence of the historical entrapment, the NPT proliferates the values of nuclear weapons it carries within. In other words, given that the NPT embodies a specific set of Cold War-era values of nuclear weapons and the centrality of the NPT (the ‘cornerstone’ of the non-proliferation regime), most of the discussions on the topic, which goes through the NPT, are tainted with the NPT’s interpretation, perception, idea, and values of nuclear weapons.

In that sense, the NPT has, so far, failed to fulfill its promise of more than 50 years ago. There are some who argue that we should probably abandon the NPT, whilst some argue that the NPT is a stalwart of non-proliferation. In the middle, there are those who argue that although the NPT has major flaws, we would not be better off without it.

In my new article, I have shown that the NPT, in fact, has not done everything it was supposed to do: whilst the curbing of the spread of nuclear weapons may be counted as a positive NPT influence, disarmament cannot, despite the decreasing numbers. In order for the NPT to survive and function properly, it must broaden its definition of proliferation beyond the quantitative realm and, more importantly, acknowledge and reverse its position of symbolic proliferator by engaging with the debate on the immaterial values (or lack thereof) of nuclear weapons.

Orion Noda is with the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, and the International Relations Institute, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of “A wolf in sheep’s clothing? The NPT and symbolic proliferation”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here.

The Erosion of the Global Nuclear Order

Starting early in the atomic age, states developed international arrangements intended to reduce the danger of nuclear war. In a recent article, Jeffrey W. Knopf describes the international nuclear order, identifies signs of erosion in that order, and proposes some short-term measures to help arrest these adverse trends.

The global nuclear order developed organically. It was not planned. And with some exceptions, most notably the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), major aspects of the nuclear order were not formally negotiated. Instead, they involve tacit understandings that are shared, to varying degrees, by elites in key countries.

The nuclear order rests upon three major strands: strategic stability, the nuclear taboo, and nonproliferation. The current order does not give similar priority to nuclear disarmament. Although nuclear abolition receives occasional rhetorical support and is listed as a goal in Article VI of the NPT, the governments of nuclear-armed states and their allies do not support pursuing global zero as a near-term objective. This is because these states still see value in the continued possession of nuclear arsenals. Hence, the purpose of the global nuclear order is to minimize the chances, while nuclear arms continue to exist, that they are ever used in ways that would kill people — and specially to ensure there is never a large-scale nuclear war.

Strategic stability, the nuclear taboo and nonproliferation

All three strands contribute to this goal. Strategic stability refers to efforts to minimize incentives for any state to feel pressure to be the first to launch a nuclear attack. Strategic stability can be enhanced by arms control, confidence-building measures, strategic dialogues, and anything else that contributes to restraint in policies and actions related to nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo involves normative inhibitions against threatening or using nuclear weapons.

There is reason to question whether a genuine taboo exists or the current situation is better described as a tradition of non-use. Either way, however, there is a sense that any state that uses nuclear weapons would be crossing a major threshold. Finally, nonproliferation comprises a variety of measures intended to prevent the spread of nuclear arms to additional states. In the last two decades, nonproliferation has been supplemented by the goal of nuclear security, which aims to ensure that bomb-making materials do not fall into the hands of a non-state, terrorist actor.

The strategic stability and taboo strands of the nuclear order peaked in the early 1990s and have eroded since then. In contrast, the nonproliferation strand continued to get stronger into the early 2010s, but in the last decade positive trends in the nonproliferation regime have also started to unravel.

Erosion and unraveling

Strategic stability has suffered notable erosion. The end of the Cold War enabled remarkable progress in nuclear arms reductions by the United States and Russia. Now, only one nuclear arms control agreement, the New START treaty, remains in effect. And the prospects for a follow-on agreement appear daunting. Traditional approaches to stability also took a blow when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. All of the nuclear-armed powers are now engaged in nuclear modernization efforts involving new weapon systems that could further undermine stability. More broadly, U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations have both deteriorated, adding to the chances of inadvertent escalation. In addition, India and Pakistan openly joined the nuclear club following nuclear tests in 1998. The two countries have since experienced multiple crises, adding a new source of instability to the global nuclear order.

Both the rhetoric and nuclear postures of nuclear-armed states suggest declining respect for the taboo as well. The United States has never been willing to embrace a no-first-use posture, and in 1993 Russia abandoned a no-first-use posture that had been adopted earlier by the Soviet Union. Successive U.S. Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPRs) have envisioned roles and missions for U.S. nuclear weapons that extend beyond deterring nuclear attacks. These include, in the Trump NPR, hints that the United States would consider nuclear retaliation to deter a large-scale cyber-attack. In 2017, an escalating war of words – and tweets – between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un suggested neither felt any normative inhibition against nuclear saber-rattling. And, in 2018, Russia’s President Putin gave a national address in which he unveiled several proposed new nuclear weapon systems. The speech was accompanied by a video simulation that showed a Russian nuclear warhead on a course to strike what appeared to be President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Until recently, despite occasional setbacks, nonproliferation could be seen as an area of dynamism and innovation. In the 1980s and 1990s, several key countries joined the NPT and renounced nuclear weapons. In 1995, a review conference made the treaty permanent. Just as important, the NPT is now part of a multifaceted nonproliferation regime. Other elements of the regime include several regional nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs), multilateral export control regimes, cooperative threat reduction (CTR) programs developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a variety of measures meant to strengthen nuclear security.

In the past several years, however, forward momentum has halted. The 2015 NPT Review Conference collapsed amid unprecedented acrimony among states parties. The 2020 conference was postponed until 2022 due to Covid, but none of the frictions that doomed the 2015 conference have been resolved. In addition, the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and despite the desire of the Biden administration to restore the deal, prospects for rescuing it do not appear good. Hopes for adding new NWFZs are even less promising, as a long-sought zone in the Middle East appears dead in the water.

Some ideas to halt erosion

What can be done? Getting the nuclear weapon states to recommit to the goal of nuclear disarmament would help. As a reflection of frustration over the slow progress on this goal, in 2017 the UN General Assembly adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This “ban treaty” has been opposed by all of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, so it appears unlikely to provide a vehicle that in the short term could generate new progress toward nuclear abolition. Efforts outside of (or perhaps alongside of) the ban treaty to persuade the nuclear weapon states of the importance of reinvigorating movement toward nuclear disarmament would be helpful.

Given that nuclear disarmament remains a long-term endeavor at best, however, we also need short-term steps to shore up the existing nuclear order. One approach would be to focus on the cognitive foundations of nuclear peace. It is important for national leaders and their advisors to have a deep understanding of the consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and a belief that nuclear dangers require states to act with caution. Several steps could help reinvigorate an appreciation of nuclear dangers.

First, new works of popular culture could draw attention to ongoing risks. In the Cold War, books and movies like “On the Beach” and “Dr. Strangelove” helped educate the public. Today, there are interesting efforts to utilize social media to alert people to nuclear dangers. So far, however, none have achieved extensive reach. Public awareness could be raised further if there was a breakthrough novel, movie, or TV show like the 1983 TV movie “The Day After.”

Second, it would help to have a policy proposal around which to mobilize people. An effort is already underway to multilateralize the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia and the United States recently reaffirmed this statement, and there have been multiple calls for the other nuclear-armed countries to endorse it. A broad campaign to support this goal could provide a vehicle for reminding the world about how catastrophic a nuclear exchange could be.

Third, it is time to reboot the Humanitarian Initiative. This effort, launched at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, sought to educate diplomats about the consequences of nuclear weapons use. The initiative was primarily used to build support for negotiating the ban treaty. Now that the TPNW is in place, a Humanitarian Initiative 2.0 could be used to educate a broader audience of political and military leaders and the world public.

At a time when all the strands of the global nuclear order are getting weaker and the prospects for new treaties or major initiatives are not good, it is vital to halt further erosion of the existing order. Efforts to remind the world of the danger of nuclear war and encourage cautious behavior by states would be one place to start.

Jeffrey W. Knopf is a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). He is the author of “Not by NPT alone: The future of the global nuclear order”, Contemporary Security Policy, forthcoming, which can be accessed here. This post first appeared on the Global Governance forum.

Strategic cooptation and India as nuclear power

Patrick Frankenbach, Andreas Kruck, and Bernhard Zangl show how India was strategically coopted into the existing non-proliferation regime. Their recent article in CSP holds lessons for all international institutions that need to adjust to changes in the global order.

Shifts in the global distribution of power put the international order and its underpinning institutions under stress. As powers such as China and India rise and powers such as the US or the UK decline, international institutions such as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) come under pressure to adapt to new power realities.

The prevailing view is that the adjustment of international institutions to a changing distribution of power is a highly conflictual process of power bargaining. (So far) dominant preservers of the status quo wrestle with rising revisionists, exchanging threats and trying to force the other side to give in. If anything, this power game is assumed to be particularly conflictual in security (institutions).

Our recent article on India’s inclusion into the nuclear non-proliferation regime belies this conventional narrative. Instead, it underlines the relevance of a different mode of institutional adaptation, namely strategic cooptation. In 2008, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a major component of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, terminated the three-decades-long embargo on nuclear trade, which it had imposed after India’s nuclear tests in 1974. India turned from a nuclear pariah of the international community into a de facto recognized nuclear power.

The NSG waiver constitutes a cooptation deal in which NSG member states – led by the US, but supported by other nuclear powers – traded institutional privileges in return for India’s increased institutional support of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The US and the other nuclear powers offered India the privilege of being recognized as nuclear power and taking part in international nuclear trade. In return, India promised to support the nuclear non-proliferation regime by shoring up its nuclear export controls and making the majority of its nuclear sites subject to IAEA safeguards.

India’s cooptation into the nuclear non-proliferation regime reflects a mode of institutional adaptation that is more cooperative than the prevailing narrative of the highly conflictive power-bargaining between rising revisionists and declining preservationists would have it. Cooptors actively pursue limited institutional adaptation desired by cooptees to keep the institutional core intact.

Strategic cooptation is a mutually beneficial mode of cooperation among unequal actors that exchange institutional privileges for institutional support. Cooptation is common and widely studied in domestic political settings, but it is also relevant for institutional adaptation to global power shifts, even in the realm of security. It is particularly relevant for international (security) institutions which provide institutional privileges to some states, while denying them to others.

The general focus in academia and among many policy-makers on conflictive great-power bargaining obscures the importance of strategic cooptation. This is problematic because it comes with the neglect of three important features of institutional adjustments to global power shifts:

First, for some challengers of the institutional status quo, who are willing and able to provide needed institutional support, relying on strategic cooptation (making promises) may be a superior strategy compared to power bargaining (issuing threats). Sometimes strategic cooptation is not only better suited to attain institutional adjustment; it is also less conflictive and allows to nurture cooperative relationships. On the other hand, defenders of the institutional status quo should not simply assume that challengers will engage in power bargaining. After all, policy responses that are adequate for addressing power bargaining are often counterproductive in dealing with strategic cooptation. Starting negotiations with promises rather than threats often leads to better outcomes. The negotiations between the US and India about the latter’s integration into the nuclear non-proliferation regime are a case in point.

Second, a strategic cooptation approach sensitizes observers and policy-makers to important conditions for achieving institutional change that are overlooked in the power bargaining account, namely third-party resistance to power-sharing deals between emerging and established powers as well as institutional opportunities for overcoming it. The nonproliferation regime–India case underlines that it is often third parties that put up strong resistance against cooptation agreements. When the US announced in 2005 its intention to lift the embargo on trade with nuclear material, resistance from non-nuclear “middle powers” was massive: A group of “like-minded states” comprising Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand formed to stop India’s recognition as nuclear power, with New Zealand taking the lead. This group – rather than the nuclear great powers – rejected India’s recognition as nuclear power. For the deal to materialize, it was crucial that proponents could strike the deal within the more exclusive NSG rather than the more encompassing NPT context, thus managing to circumvent the third-party resistance typical of any cooptation deal. More generally, policy-makers should take into consideration the potentially fierce resistance (middle or even minor) third parties might put up against any great power bargain and they should weigh the institutional opportunities for overcoming this resistance.

Third, even then cooptation is not a panacea for stabilizing troubled institutions. The story of India’s cooptation suggests we should not take for granted the medium- and longer-turn effectiveness of cooptation as a means of stabilizing international institutions. The cooptation of India did not silence other critics of the NPT among the “nuclear have-nots” nor did it stabilize the status quo of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Quite the opposite: India’s cooptation further alienated dissatisfied non-nuclear weapons states under the NPT, thus widening the gap between nuclear powers and non-nuclear weapon states. Criticizing the nuclear deal with India at NPT Review Conferences, several non-nuclear weapon states party to the NPT (but not the NSG) took offense with the privileges granted to India. If anything, India’s cooptation created growing resentment and increased criticism of the regime centered around the NPT, which ultimately contributed to the quest for the new Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Thus, academics and policy-makers alike should more seriously consider the option of cooptation as a mode of institutional adaptation. However, they should not simply equate agreement on a cooptation deal with longer-term stability for the institution in question. Expected contributions to institutional stability may not fully materialize or they may provoke unintended consequences – often precisely due to lasting third-party resistance.

Patrick Frankenbach, Andreas Kruck, and Bernhard Zangl are researchers at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany. They are the authors of “India’s recognition as a nuclear power: A case of strategic cooptation”, Contemporary Security Policy, which can be accessed here.

Shaping Public Risk Tolerance During Deterrence Crises

In a recent article, Jeffrey Berejikian and Zachary Zwald use seven survey experiments to analyse how the general public evaluates the risk of military options, such as the number of potential casualties, during an imminent deterrence crisis. Informed by prospect theory, they demonstrate that by simply reframing the language used to describe the possible outcome of military options, the public’s willingness to accept risks changes.

The manipulation of public opinion can determine the likelihood of deterrence success in myriad ways. Surprisingly, neither the academic nor policy communities fully appreciate the importance of domestic politics in shaping deterrence bargaining dynamics—let alone how the public processes risks during immediate deterrence.

To the extent that scholars focus their attention on domestic politics during deterrence crises, they usually depict public opinion as a constraint that can either enhance or undermine deterrence stability—depending upon one’s orientation. Consider, for instance, decades of research on “audience costs,” which highlights the presumed difficulty of committing to escalatory military actions because such commitments may carry domestic political costs if they fail.

In the context of deterrence, we see a similar concern among some policymakers; that public opinion may constrain U.S. leaders at critical junctures during a crisis and subsequently prevent them from communicating credible threats to an adversary. However, the concept of domestically-imposed constraint also suggests that the public will serve as a check on the worst impulses of political leaders. Since the prospect of electoral punishment constrains elites if they fail—in democracies, at least—we may hope that the public serves as a mechanism to prevent our leaders from engaging long-shot gambles, escalating conflicts, or straying too far from the national interest.

By contrast, our research shows that the choice of language alone can shift the public’s preferences in favor of risky military escalation during the opening stage of a deterrence crisis. It follows, therefore, that neither of these views on how the public affect bargaining dynamics is wholly correct.

In our study, we conducted seven survey experiments covering a range of potential deterrence crises, including when the stakes are high and nuclear use is on the table. In each experiment, we presented subjects with a vignette that describes a bourgeoning crisis where an adversary has taken some action that challenges a long-standing U.S. extended deterrent commitment to an ally. Each scenario contained a degree of uncertainty and risk–i.e., the adversary may be preparing to launch a military attack that results in the loss of American and allied lives, or it could be that they are posturing in an attempt to probe the strength of the U.S. commitment.

We utilized a Prospect Theory framework to evaluate how the language used to frame the potential outcome of two military options—one defensive and the other offensive—affects the public’s willingness to support a risky offensive act that escalates the crisis.

We asked participants to choose between a conservative defensive course of action (e.g., bolster air and missile defenses in the region) and a riskier pre-emptive military escalation (e.g., deploying special forces to eliminate the specific military capability the adversary threatens to use). Each participant randomly received either the “gains frame” or “loss frame” treatment that only varied the language used to describe the potential outcomes from the two military options. For example, we presented a “Nuclear Blackmail” scenario by framing the possible deaths that may result in terms of either the number of “lives saved” or “lives lost.”

Consistently, we found that simply reframing the exact same “facts on the ground” produces statistically and substantively significant shifts in favor of a riskier military escalation option as a preferred response to a deterrence crisis.

Going forward, these results raise concerns that have not yet received the serious consideration they deserve. First, over the last few years, commentators have downplayed President Trump’s aggressive language toward North Korea as just “loose talk” with little, if any, real effect on the actual course of the crisis at hand. Yet, our research demonstrates how language alone can itself cause deterrence failure—even when a nuclear response by the adversary is on the table. A leader’s bellicose rhetoric may inadvertently produce a loss frame for the public and, thus, create the domestic political incentives for unnecessary, or harmful, military escalation.

Second, U.S. policymakers must now consider the challenge posed by the vulnerability of the public’s risk preferences to manipulation by an adversary in the lead up to, and during, a deterrence crisis. The growing trend towards employing cyber operations to weaponize information, in conjunction with our finding demonstrating the malleability of the public’s risk preferences during a deterrence crisis, suggests that an adversary can manipulate the public’s risk tolerance during immediate deterrence to create political incentives that dictate which options democratically elected leaders support. An effective 21st century U.S. deterrence strategy, therefore, must be able to identify points of public vulnerability and develop counter-framing strategies that stand to prevent foreign manipulation.

Jeffrey D. Berejikian is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. Zachary Zwald is in the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston. They are the authors of “Why language matters: Shaping public risk tolerance during deterrence crises”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

THAAD and South Korea’s alliance dilemma

The July 2016 decision of South Korea to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) triggered unprecedented retaliation from China even though Seoul and Washington conceded that THAAD could not protect the capital region of Republic of Korea (ROK). In a recent article, Yong Sub Choi analyses why the South Korean government decided to deploy THAAD anyway. 

To answer this puzzle, it is necessary to connect the THAAD deployment in South Korea with the U.S. conception of a strategic rebalancing to Asia. Seoul’s THAAD decision was primarily intended to sustain and strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance amid escalating nuclear threats by North Korea and deepening Sino-American rivalry. Placing the current state of the alliance at the center of its investigation into this controversial issue, the article pays particular heed to the ongoing adjustments being made between the two powers to better cope with the rise of China. Thus, by examining the underlying causes of the THAAD decision, it can also contribute to an understanding of the reconfiguration of the alliance amid the growing rivalry between the United States and China.

Conceptually, this article links South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD with contemporary alliance politics in relation to extended deterrence and abandonment and entrapment risks. First, the deployment of THAAD on the peninsula itself may improve the security of South Korea by enhancing the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence through its contribution to the defense of U.S. territories and U.S. forces in East Asia and the western Pacific.

Second, the United States, following its rebalancing strategy, applied increasing pressure on South Korea to install THAAD on its soil, which decided to comply owing to much higher costs of abandonment of the alliance in the face of, most of all, possible nuclear attacks by North Korea. Technically, unlike what the South Korean government has publicly claimed, THAAD has only limited direct utility for the protection of South Koreans from North Korean missile. However, the THAAD deployment can contribute to its national security in a strategic way by reinforcing the U.S.-ROK alliance.  

Once deployed on the Korean peninsula, THAAD can substantially enhance the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence by providing an additional layer of defense for U.S. territories and U.S. forces in East Asia and the western Pacific. The credibility of extended deterrence is determined by a complex mix of factors, where what counts is the degree of contribution by the client state to the national interest of the patron state. The deployment of THAAD in South Korea provides significant benefits for the United States, such that the former offers strategically important advantages to the latter, including enhanced protection of U.S. territories from North Korean and Chinese ICBMs and containing China’s military expansion in the South and East China Seas amid growing tensions between the two superpowers. 

The wide gap in military capability between the United States and South Korea and the existence of North Korea have put the relationship between the two democracies on an asymmetrical footing, which required South Korea to adopt behaviors that were consistent with the former’s strategic interest, to a greater or lesser degree. The United States, following its rebalancing strategy, asked South Korea to side with it as it contained China’s military expansion with THAAD deployment as arguably the most important task for that ally at that moment. In the presence of escalating nuclear threats by North Korea, which heightened the costs of abandonment even further, South Korea decided to deploy THAAD, although it acknowledged that China would likely retaliate against South Korea for the decision. Seoul, showing a nuanced understanding of the alliance security dilemma, made this strategic choice because it believed that the costs of being abandoned by Washington surpassed those of being entrapped in conflicts with Beijing. 

The most important strategic considerations for the United States at the global level involve dealing with or balancing China. By strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance and providing its assistance to the United States to contain China’s military expansion, South Korea can bolster its status as a reliable ally, which is vital for taking the initiative in settling North Korean nuclear issue peacefully.

The growing tensions between the United States and China can bring harm to many countries’ national interests across the world. Nevertheless, it is rare to find countries, such as South Korea, which would so severely suffer both militarily and economically in the event of discord or conflict between the two superpowers. South Korea can contribute to improving strained relations between them only to a limited extent, but it can still minimize them, at least as regards North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles, by pursuing peace on the Korean peninsula in a manner that both sides can agree with. 

If ongoing international efforts to put an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs go awry, the tensions between the United States and China could be exacerbated even further. In that case, in response to U.S. demands, South Korea would not be able to avoid risking entrapment again in strife with China because of the nuclear threat that North Korea poses. Then, the degree of retaliation from China would be more severe than the one it imposed in the wake of South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD in 2016.

Yong Sub Choi teaches at Seoul National University. He is the author of “Keeping the Americans in: The THAAD deployment on the Korean peninsula in the context of Sino-American rivalry”, Contemporary Security Policy, which is available here.

The Ban Treaty and the Politics of Power

In a new article, Nick Ritchie analyses the power politics behind the recent Ban Treaty. He argues that the Ban Treaty challenges the set of core international social institutions of nuclear order. Whether this challenge is sustained remains to be seen.

We live in interesting times for the global politics of nuclear weapons. The resurgence of deep animosity between the United States, NATO and Russia, concerns about the ability of President Donald Trump to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, and the nuclear threats and insults between the US and North Korea in 2017 all revitalized public fears about nuclear war to an extent not felt since the 1980s. 

Global_Parliamentary_Appeal_for_a_Nuclear_Weapons_BanLess well known is a movement of governments, NGOs and international institutions over the past eight years to galvanize progress towards nuclear disarmament as the only long-term solution to the threat of nuclear violence. This resulted in a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons negotiated at the UN in 2017 to ban nuclear weapons. It was supported by 122 states across the global South but rejected by the nuclear-armed states and their allies. This polarization is symptomatic of the fractious state of nuclear politics.

Given these significant developments, how can or should we understand the messy politics of nuclear weapons in today’s world? In my new article, I argue that the starting point has to be power. This might seem obvious, but it is often missing from serious analysis of nuclear politics and the idea of a ‘global nuclear order’. By taking power seriously we can get a much better understanding of the global politics of nuclear weapons as a ‘global nuclear control order’, one in which the power of the United States is central but not reducible to it. 

I define this as a well-established set of practices (material, institutional and discursive) that legitimizes, regulates, and disciplines the development and use of nuclear technology and knowledge. But it does so selectively and in ways that reproduce a global nuclear hierarchy in general and U.S. power and preferences in particular. This includes the selective regulation and disciplining of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programmes and the selective legitimation of the possession of nuclear weapons and even nuclear attacks.

The United States has played the central ordering role in global nuclear politics as the world’s most powerful state. But my argument that the global nuclear control order is rooted in but not reducible to U.S. power is important because it demonstrates the ways in which the global politics of nuclear weapons is shaped by structures of power that have developed and endured over seven decades.

Three further points are relevant here: first, these power structures are hierarchical and they have enjoyed the widespread support of most of the world’s major powers with the exceptions of Germany and Japan in the 1960s, China until the 1990s, and India on a limited but continuing basis. Second, the United States might be the most powerful state in global nuclear politics, but only within a wider nuclear oligarchy of other nuclear-armed states and nuclear beneficiaries; and third, the nuclear control order is embedded in a broader set of power structures that characterize the post-1945 capitalist ‘international liberal order’.

Screenshot 2019-02-03 at 20.13.06For these reasons, the global nuclear control order should be understood as a hegemonic order. Hegemony, in this sense, refers to a structure of power that is sustained through a combination of coercion and consent between the dominant and dominated. Political scientist Robert Cox argued that coercion and consent are practiced through material power, institutions, and ideas about how political life should be organized. A hegemonic structure describes “a particular combination of thought patterns, material conditions, and human institutions which has a certain coherence among its elements” as Cox put it (p. 135).

Thinking about global nuclear politics in this way means thinking about power beyond traditional notions based on material military and economic power. Instead, we need to think about material power, institutional power, the discursive power of ideas, and structural power. It is the way in which these forms of power are exercised and experienced in global nuclear politics to selectively empower and legitimize that is captured by Cox’s framework. Through this lens, global nuclear politics constitutes a hegemonic structure of control.

Screenshot 2019-02-03 at 20.14.01

This unequal and hierarchical nuclear control order is often framed as universal, normal, and legitimate in ways that conceal its underlying power relations. But the ways in which the ‘ban treaty’ process has actively challenged these power structures has made them more explicit. By taking power seriously and by using Cox’s understanding of hegemony and a more nuanced appreciation of power, a set of core international social institutions, or ‘structural pillars’, of nuclear order can be distilled. These include:

  1. A nuclear weapons and nuclear trade oligarchy centered on the five nuclear weapon states recognised in the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and their positions as permanent members of the UN Security Council;
  2. An understanding of security that requires a permanent operational capacity for strategic nuclear violence for an exclusive ‘club’ justified by an ideology of ‘nuclearism’; 
  3. A bilateral US-Russia institution of competitive, limited, negotiated and verified constraints on their strategic nuclear delivery systems alongside competitive development of advanced strategic weapons and recapitalization of Cold War nuclear weapon systems; 
  4. A Western nuclear security community of alliances that maps on to global wealth and power in the capitalist economic system with the U.S. as nuclear patron at the core;
  5. A system of intrusive and institutionalized nuclear policing led primarily by the U.S. and centered on state and non-state actors and networks, often in the global South, such that it is inadvisable to confront or militarily resist the U.S. and wider West without nuclear weapons; and
  6. A set of formal international institutions that regulate civilian nuclear technologies, knowledge and practices, notably through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The ban treaty has challenged the legitimacy of some (though not all) of these social institutions because of the growing permanence of nuclear inequalities and injustices. It is an expression of collective resistance to those aspects of nuclear hegemony, nuclear hierarchy, and practices of nuclear control that legitimize and perpetuate the existence of nuclear weapons, the practice of nuclear deterrence, and the continuing risk of catastrophic nuclear violence.

What is clear from this analysis is that changing the global politics of nuclear weapons through initiatives like the ban treaty entails confrontation with an embedded historical structure of power and hierarchy. A sustained challenge has the potential to change things at a time when wider power structures and hierarchies in global politics are in a period of flux, but it will need to be sustained. 

Nick Ritchie is a senior lecturer at the University of York, UK. He recently published “A hegemonic nuclear order: Understanding the Ban Treaty and the power politics of nuclear weapons”, Contemporary Security Policy, Advance online publication, available here