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This book provides an introduction to the technical aspects of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. It considers nuclear weapons from varying perspectives, including the technology perspective, which views them as spillovers from nuclear energy programmes; and the theoretical perspective, which looks at the collision between national and international security involved in nuclear proliferation. The book aims to demonstrate that international security is unlikely to benefit from encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons except in situations where the security complex is already largely nuclearised. The political constraints on nuclear spread as solutions to the security dilemma are also examined in three linked categories, including a discussion of the phenomenon of nuclear-free zones, with particular emphasis on the zone covering Latin America. The remarkably consistent anti-proliferation policies of the United States are debated, and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty itself, with special attention paid to the International Atomic Energy Agency's safeguards system, is frankly appraised.
5 Nuclear safety As pointed out in Chapter 1, the threats posed by the nuclear complex of Northwestern Russia have attracted no little attention in recent years, not least from neighbouring Western countries. Thus, the issue of nuclear safety stands forth as the most highly profiled problem area among the three we have chosen to focus on in this study. It also differs from the other two by way of being far more heterogeneous in nature: some of the activities under scrutiny are of a civilian nature; others take place within the military sphere. Partly, the focus
1 Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy This chapter is about nuclear technology and the technical interconnections between commercial and military nuclear programmes. It is also about the spread of nuclear technology and the use to which it has been put by a number of states, both inside and outside the NPT, to bring them close to or even take them over the nuclear weapons threshold. The scope of nuclear energy Nuclear energy has peaceful applications and non-peaceful applications. The centrepiece of all political efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons
4 Understanding nuclear-free zones The purpose of this chapter is to identify the properties of an ideal nuclear-weapon-free zone (nuclear-free zone for short) and then to compare it with actual nuclear-free zones in being or seriously proposed. An ideal nuclear-free zone should first of all be worth having; that means it should do a job of work in solving a multilateral security dilemma, by maintaining a desirable level of international security for the participating states in the face of temptations on the part of individual states within the zone to improve
Chapter 2 Nuclear sharing in NATO: hardware or software? T he question of nuclear sharing within NATO was one of the more seemingly intractable problems confronting Harold Wilson and the in-coming Labour government. The solution that commanded the field in October 1964, having been advanced some four years earlier by the United States as a counter to the increasing number of Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) capable of striking at NATO bases, and as tangible evidence of its commitment to the defence of Western Europe, was for a NATO multilateral
10 Consenting to nuclear war We can’t successfully take the position that [the British] must give us a blank check. They feel that if a strike takes off from their territory there will be one coming back the other way. Dean Acheson, August 1951 From the outset, basing the USAF atomic strike force in the UK raised questions about the circumstances under which an attack might be launched. Until 1948 it was implicitly assumed in London that some form of joint agreement would be required – implicit because of the Quebec agreement of 1943, which provided that the US
the defence of one another. And as far as nuclear weapons cooperation goes, no alliance comes close to rivalling NATO in terms of the breadth, depth, and endurance of commitments. In this chapter, we analyse nuclear weapons cooperation in NATO through the prism of Germany’s experience. The Second World War cast a long shadow across West Germany’s attempts to reintegrate into the international community
2 Nuclear weapons and international security In 2000, almost every state in the world (all except Cuba, India, Israel and Pakistan) publicly subscribed once again to the principle that the spread of nuclear weapons to states not already possessing them is dangerous to international security and that it should therefore be energetically discouraged.1 The occasion was the latest review conference of the 30year-old NPT, the chief international instrument for restricting nuclear proliferation, and for reversing such proliferation as has occurred, if its Article 6
15 India and the global nuclear order: a quiet assimilation Indian nuclear tests of 1998 altered the contours of the security architecture constructed during the Cold War. No doubt, with the end of the Cold War, this security environment was under stress, but Indian nuclear tests were the first open challenge, by a “responsible” as opposed to a “rogue” member of the international community, to this system. Some might argue that surreptitious Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation and clandestine nuclear programs of states such as India, Pakistan, and Israel
Nuclear weapons have been central to US alliance management in the post-1945 world. Successive administrations in Washington have sought to use nuclear weapons as a means of bolstering the credibility of US global security commitments. Yet, rather than simply being passive recipients of US nuclear reassurances, US allies in Europe and Asia have actively bargained with