By Jayita Sarkar

Despite coming into force in 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) continues to lack universal adherence.  At present, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and newly-independent South Sudan are non-signatories. Although Iran is a signatory state, it has been found in violation of its safeguards obligations since 2005. While South Sudan does not have nuclear weapons, the remaining four countries do, and Iran is suspected of developing them. India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and Iran today constitute a group of nuclear dissidents who actively oppose the global non-proliferation regime. Since little is known about the nuclear arsenals of these countries, the efficacy of an operational nuclear deterrence is impossible to estimate. Deterrence being a numbers game, as the superpower rivalry during the Cold War had revealed, non-transparency of state arsenals makes it complicated to predict state capacities for massive retaliation, second strike capability, and flexible response. Furthermore, the high degree of mistrust that prevails between the regime and its dissidents only augments their mutual threat perception. This leads to two fundamental questions: are poor relations between the nuclear dissidents and the regime representative of a conflict of paradigms[1]? Can consensus be attained in such a situation?

The Regime as a Power Relationship

The nuclear non-proliferation regime is oriented towards preventing horizontal rather than vertical proliferation[2] by the five recognized nuclear weapon states or N-5, and subjects the non-N-5 states to continuous surveillance in order to ensure that they are not developing nuclear weapons. Where there is an asymmetrical power relationship, opposition emerges from those at the receiving end of this relationship. States that take a counterposition to the nuclear non-proliferation regime are those that are discontent with the status quo. While they may not have the means to overturn the power asymmetry, their opposition to the regime enable them to define the scope of their nuclear dissidence.

The paradigm of nuclear dissidence is in opposition to the regime’s nuclear fatalism, which revolves around the notion that if a state possesses the capacity to build nuclear weapons, then it will do so. As a result, potential proliferators must be placed under the surveillance and control of the regime. Nuclear fatalism is based on the plausibility of nuclear war, the rationality of deterrence, and the sanctity of testing as a means of ascertaining operational nuclear capability. Conversely, nuclear dissidents oppose surveillance and control as constraints on their national sovereignty. Nuclear dissidence, unlike nuclear fatalism, prioritizes capacity over capability.

While all five nuclear dissidents consider nuclear weapons fundamental to their self-preservation, the secrecy surrounding the nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea and the ambiguity about Iran’s nuclear program make nuclear deterrence indeterminable.  Although the nuclear fatalist paradigm calls for continuous nuclear testing as a means of ascertaining operational nuclear capability, none of these states have continuously tested to improvise their nuclear explosive devices.[3] The fact that these states justify their opposition to the regime in terms of national security, yet are not attentive to the necessities of nuclear warfare, demonstrates that they subscribe to a paradigm that is contradictory to the nuclear fatalism of the regime.

 The Need for a New Nuclear History

According to Benoît Pelopidas, an incomplete reading of history has led policy makers, notably in the United States, to overplay the threat of proliferation and attenuate nuclear rollbacks and reversals.[4] South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons in 1994 with the end of the apartheid regime. Argentina and Brazil both abandoned nuclear weapons development in the 1990s. Sweden and Australia briefly considered the possibility of developing nuclear weapons in the 1970s, but signed the NPT after U.S. security assurances.  The Cold War superpower rivalry engendered the overrepresentation of the nuclear bomb as a weapon in a war that can be fought and won, instead of a technological artifact whose real utility in times of conflict is suspect. This has engendered a lacuna between politics and history in the nuclear domain, which must be corrected.[5] Fortunately, the “myths of nuclear necessity”[vi]  are gradually being exposed. As more and more archival documents are being declassified across the world, different perceptions are emerging that tend to question the nuclear fatalist paradigm. The conflict of paradigms between the regime and its dissidents may therefore be resolved by a new international nuclear history that would use the latest available primary sources in order to revisit various long-held assumptions regarding nuclear proliferation.

About the Author

Jayita Sarkar is a Gallatin Fellow at Yale University’s Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, and pursuing her PhD in the Department of International History at the Graduate Institute Geneva. She is History and Public Policy Scholar for the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. for summer 2013.

Endnotes

1. Historian and philosopher Thomas Kuhn defined paradigm as the underlying assumptions and intellectual structure upon which research and development in a field of inquiry is based. These assumptions are of a fundamental nature and are generally not subject to question. It is this concept that has been used here. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970). See also Benoît Pelopidas, “The Oracles of Proliferation: How Experts Maintained a Biased Historical Reading that Limits Policy Innovation,” The Nonproliferation Review 18 (March 2011): 298.

2. Spread of nuclear weapons amongst non-nuclear weapon states is called horizontal proliferation, while increase in the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the N-5 is termed as vertical proliferation.

3. India had tested its first nuclear device in May 1974 and then again in May 1998 after a 24 year hiatus. Pakistan had tested only in May 1998. Secrecy prevails high in the Israeli case such that it is impossible to determine tests conducted by Tel Aviv. North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests so far in 2006, 2009 and 2013 – all of them underground. Iran is suspected of enriching weapons-grade uranium but is not known to have conducted any nuclear explosion till date.

4. Benoît Pelopidas uses the term ‘proliferation paradigm’ to define this one-sided view of history. See Benoît Pelopidas, “The Oracles of Proliferation: How Experts Maintained a Biased Historical Reading that Limits Policy Innovation,”The Nonproliferation Review 18 (March 2011): 298 and “Du fatalisme en matière de prolifération nucléaire: Retour sur une représentation opiniâtre,” Swiss Political Science Review 15 (Summer 2009): 282.

5. See Francis J. Gavin, “Politics, History and the Ivory Tower-Policy Gap in the Nuclear Proliferation Debate,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35 (2012): 573-600 and Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, “Political Scientists and Historians in Search of the Bomb,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36 (2013): 143-151.

6. Ward Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Necessity,” New York Times, January 13, 2013, accessed February 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/opinion/the-myth-of-nuclear-necessity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0