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This chapter discusses the political aspects of European security. It focuses on the implications of different interests of Alliance partners for efforts to achieve détente and arms control regimes. It shows how West German policy adapted internationally. The chapter also discusses the ‘Gaullist’ and ‘Atlanticist’ tendencies in West German politics and discusses the consequences of the termination of the ‘Gaullist’ alternative. This chapter also focuses on the efforts of the British in achieving a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at the expense of its relation with the Federal Republic.

This chapter outlines the sustained demands from Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) states, especially those within the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), for security assurances during the last half-century. It also presents a short analysis of the options available to improve existing NPT-related security assurances. The effect of recent changes in the security environment on the demands for NPT security assurances is dealt with. Security assurances entered the NPT review meeting in 2000, but in a way that suggested they were declining in salience. Recently, attempts to improve security assurances have been fought by long-standing pressures in order to enhance the diplomatic atmospherics surrounding the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the NPT. It is suggested that strengthening assurances and ensuring compliance continue to be pursued together, rather than be seen as competitive alternatives.

The field of nuclear non-proliferation is in ferment. The existing regime is under considerable stress, facing challenges it was not designed for, like the threat of nuclear terrorism. The ferment is manifest in tension between traditional approaches to non-proliferation and various ad hoc initiatives that are less universal and depend less on international institutions. This chapter considers three sets of issues that have arisen in the context of the recent ferment: interpretive disputes over key provisions in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); weapons inspections and military action against Iraq, based on Security Council resolutions; and the interdiction of ships suspected of carrying WMD or related material to and from North Korea. The United Nations Security Council has been a central player in all three areas but not a sole practitioner. It is argued that both the management and enforcement of the regime is affected by a diffuse discursive process among a network of actors and institutions struggling to preserve the integrity of a regime that is in jeopardy. While legal considerations may seem tangential in the politics of non-proliferation, the legal discourse has had a significant impact on how the politics play out.

This chapter discusses Anglo-German relations in the context of the negotiations leading to the agreement reached between the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, and ultimately by Germany, on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The negotiations were complex, in that they spilled over into other issues of concern to members of the Atlantic Alliance. Principally, these included the MLF/ANF project and whether moves within the Alliance to create opportunities for greater nuclear weapons sharing would prove acceptable to the Soviet Union. Multilateral negotiations were influenced by the changes of government in Bonn in 1966 and 1969, and the Soviet-inspired invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They also occurred at a time when the British government was anxious to strengthen relations with Germany in support for Britain's commitment to Europe.

This chapter explores the later stages of the British government’s pursuit of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. By 1967, a desire for entry into the EEC had become a major influence on the content and conduct of British nuclear non-proliferation policy. Wilson intentionally embraced a secondary role in the negotiation process, leaving the running to the superpowers, in order to avoid conflict with the countries of the EEC and thereby protect Britain’s application for membership. Although membership was not achieved in 1967, a commitment to future entry continued to influence nonproliferation policy. Indeed, a desire for future membership of the EEC, alongside giving renewed impetus to the NPT, helps to explain the British government’s decision to become the first nuclear weapon state to ratify the treaty.

After more than three years of diplomatic negotiations, India and the United States signed a nuclear pact in October 2008. The agreement, which allows civilian nuclear trade between the two countries, symbolized a turning point in US-India relations after a disagreement on the latter's nuclear weapons programme. This book examines the factors involved in the US-India nuclear agreement, focusing on actors, influences, and processes in international politics. It employs a Levels of Analysis approach to analyse issues and events in international relations at the international, state, and individual levels. It also discusses the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the debate in India over the liability bill, and President Barack Obama's priorities regarding non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

This chapter provides the first complete account of negotiations between Indian and American policy actors in finally agreeing to a historic, unprecedented, and game-changing initiative: the so called US-India nuclear agreement. It looks carefully at every part of the negotiations between 2005 and 2008. The chapter begins with a broad introduction to India’s approach to nuclear weapons and international regimes (like the NPT) regulating proliferation. Rather than a purely technical reappraisal of the ‘deal’, it addresses the strategic, political and technical conditions that led to protagonists in both India (led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) and the US to finally conclude the agreement. Indeed, the chapter revisits the question of tension between ideas and interests and argues why non-alignment is not at all obsolete in understanding Indian motivations and practices of diplomacy in the current milieu. Instead, this chapter shows how and why non-alignment served to guide Indian interlocutors in their charge to engage the US like never before. In turn pushing policy elites like Condoleezza Rice to better appreciate that while India may not have had any aces in a game of nuclear cards, it hardly meant that its representatives would allow themselves to disadvantage themselves in the hard task of international negotiations.

Both India and the United States encountered stiff resistance to their civilian nuclear energy cooperation agreement. For President George W. Bush, the challenge was to reconcile conflicting viewpoints and convincing the nation's various constituencies that the nuclear pact was in America's interest. Most of the negative reactions against the deal had to do with its potential impact on other states with plans of pursuing nuclear weapons. Some members of Congress were initially hostile to the agreement. The pact also drew criticism from non-proliferation advocates because of India's rejection of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This chapter examines how President George W. Bush dealt with the critics of his administration's nuclear agreement with India.

Chapter abstract: Spanning the decline of the US-Iran partnership after Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, this chapter focuses on the failure of negotiations between the shah and the Ford administration from 1974 to 1976 on American nuclear exports to Iran. The shah did not enjoy the same intimate relationship with President Gerald R. Ford as he had with Nixon. Although Kissinger worked hard to defend the US-Iran partnership and secure a nuclear agreement, the shah’s detractors were no longer sidelined, as they had been under Nixon. Ford sought to appease these critics by foisting a nuclear agreement on the shah that included safeguards that went beyond Iran’s commitments under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The shah rejected Ford’s demands, seeing them as a violation of Iran’s sovereignty and a reversion by the United States to treating Iran as a client, rather than a partner of the United States.

Chapter 2 focuses on the impact of China’s first nuclear test, conducted on 16 October 1964, on global and regional nuclear politics. In particular, the chapter considers how the superpowers dealt with China’s entry into the nuclear club, as well as reactions in Japan, India, and Taiwan. It continues an argument outlined earlier in the book, namely that Maoist China helped facilitate—however inadvertently—the emergence of global nuclear order. During this period, a model for nuclear order promoted by the superpowers, and to which China was ostensibly opposed, eventually emerged. Towards the end of the decade, China abandoned previously championed ideas of socialist proliferation and retreated from stances that directly challenged global nuclear order so as to focus on building a credible nuclear deterrent.

This chapter explores the ways in which the nuclear danger has been redefined since the end of the Cold War and the efforts that have been made to strengthen the nuclear order. A global nuclear war is no longer the main worry, but the danger that nuclear weapons will be used in regional conflicts has become more acute. Nuclear proliferation has become the central issue in nuclear politics, with North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya the focus of international attention. The United States and some (but not all) other countries see nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat. The Obama Administration has proposed measures to strengthen the nonproliferation regime and to move toward nuclear disarmament. The prospects for success remain unclear.

This introductory chapter analyzes how the legal framework intended to ensure nonproliferation—the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adopted in 1970—is failing to contain the evolution and exponential growth of nuclear risk. It explains why the Grand Bargain of the NPT is not succeeding as conceived, and why counterproliferation will continue to fall short in achieving nuclear security unless reinforced and eventually supplanted by a different legal and institutional framework. The task of creating a new legal and institutional framework requires, first, understanding why the current legal and institutional infrastructure is failing, and how contemporary nuclear risk defies containment. This in turn requires examination of nuclear risk in greater detail, to understand its components and its dynamics, at every principal stage, from source to detonation, to identify where in the process we can work a new regime to construct security.

Chapter 4 centres on the 1990s, a period of significant consolidation for global nuclear order following the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. In this high period, China sought to secure its stake in nuclear order as a credible and legitimate nuclear armed state in two main ways. First, China’s military modernization process and debates regarding nuclear strategy validated the nuclear deterrence element of nuclear order and bolstered the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. Second, through deeper engagement with institutions like the NPT, China reinforced elements of nuclear order related to non-proliferation, at the same time enhancing its image and legitimacy. Unfortunately, as the decade came to a close a number of less positive developments, in particular nuclear testing in South Asia, threatened to cast a shadow over global nuclear order.

In the past few years, Brazil has renewed its interest in nuclear energy both for peaceful and military use. Possessing the sixth largest reserve of the world’s uranium and the key technologies for producing nuclear fuel, the Brazilian government resumed its nuclear program in 2003. While its third nuclear power plant is still under construction, Brazil—which renounced nuclear weapons in 1990—is also engaged in building a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. By 2013, it is expected to join the exclusive club of nations equipped with such vessels. Although Brazil has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is a critic of some norms of the international regime of nuclear proliferation, such as the Additional Protocol dealing with international safeguards. It has also criticized the lack of commitment towards nuclear disarmament among nations already possessing nuclear arms. This chapter will analyze the Brazilian nuclear diplomacy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s and Dilma Rousseff’s administrations. Particular attention will be given to Brazil’s position in the international regime of nuclear non-proliferation, to the 2010 attempt to negotiate a deal between Iran and the nuclear powers, and, finally, to the international relevance of Brazil’s current nuclear plans.

This chapter examines the emergence of non-physical measures of cooperation in British nuclear diplomacy between 1965 and 1967. Despite initial reservations, the Labour government ultimately welcomed US proposals for greater consultation between the allies in the form of the Nuclear Planning Working Group (NPWG), later supplanted by the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). The proposal complemented the dual objectives of removing nuclear sharing proposals from the international political landscape and progressing non-proliferation negotiations. Responsibility for the success of this approach, however, rested largely with the superpowers following a series of private negotiations designed to improve the ailing non-proliferation negotiations. The British government’s limited role reflected unease about upsetting US creditors, lingering fears about the possibility of a future NATO nuclear force that could exclude British participation, persistent difficulties over the costs of British forces stationed in West Germany, and a growing interest in membership of the EEC.

This chapter focuses on the pattern of Indian leadership behaviour on the issues of Indian nuclear testing and the question of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It provides an assessment of the pattern and structure of internal dynamics from 1964 to 1974. It reveals that the internal dynamics during this period were very significant because of the increased tension and interplay between internal and external compulsions in Indian nuclear decision-making. It identifies the five main nuclear decisions that were made during this time, and shows how domestic and international tendencies influenced Indian nuclear decision-making during the Shastri-Gandhi years. Next, it looks at the variables and constants that were involved in Shastri-Indira Gandhi nuclear decision-making, the role of bureaucratic politics, and the players and influences in the nuclear debate. The discussion concludes with a section on the role of civil servants and politicized scientists, and the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project I (RAPP I), Rajasthan Atomic Power Project II (RAPP II), and the NPT.

This chapter examines the multiple setbacks to nuclear sharing. Once Wilson had secured approval from the cabinet and US president Lyndon Johnson to pursue his proposal for the ANF, progress swiftly dissipated. Throughout 1965, the government subtly extricated itself from its commitment to nuclear sharing proposals, and instead pursued consultative solutions and a non-proliferation treaty. Broader international and domestic concerns, however, tempered Wilson’s resistance to nuclear sharing. US support for the pound, growing tensions with the FRG on the costs of military cooperation in Europe, and fears about a revival of the MLF meant that formal support for the ANF remained prudent. The government’s stance on nuclear sharing was thus characterised by public support for the ANF, but procrastination and equivocation in private.

Nuclear weapons development requires three critical elements: fissile materials, testing data, warheads and delivery systems. Estimates of India’s fissile material stocks suitable for military are modest, and the current international political environment has placed severe constraints on testing. The quality and robustness of India’s nuclear deterrent is thus largely dependent on the progress achieved in warhead design and acquisition of delivery systems and platforms. The biggest challenge in the coming years will be the integration of the tested nuclear devices with various missiles in order to constitute a credible second strike nuclear force. Doubts were cast recently about the reliability of current warhead designs. Production and acquisition of delivery systems and platforms have been very slow and likely to affect the pace of weaponization program. This chapter reviews the current status of India’s current nuclear force structure, and the role of warhead design and delivery systems and platforms in nuclear weapons development.