Is it inevitable that nuclear proliferation will continue?

‘A threat that rises above all others in urgency,’ is how President Obama described nuclear proliferation. An examination of the raw statistics reinforces the potential for global catastrophe: in 2008, and despite the reduction in arsenals following the end of the Cold War and the SALT and START initiatives, the nine nuclear powers of the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea possessed 11,530 warheads between them with the combined destructive force of 1,300,000 Hiroshima bombs. The question here is: will the countries of the world see the folly of adding to this tally of destructive capability and refrain from seeking more nuclear weapons (‘vertical’ proliferation by the nuclear nine) or joining the ‘nuclear club’ (‘horizontal’ proliferation by everyone else)? This essay will approach the problem by examining the explanations and motives for proliferation – availability of raw materials and scientific expertise, the building of regional power balances, desire for prestige and status and in the case of terrorist organisations, the furthering of ideological goals. And it will look at the reasons – both economic, strategic and cultural –  why states would not want to increase the world’s nuclear peril. Finally, it will reach a conclusion as to whether or not the continuation of nuclear proliferation really is ‘inevitable’.

Today, there are 450 nuclear power reactors operating in 70 countries, a number which is likely to increase as concern over greenhouse gas emissions drives the search for alternatives to fossil fuels in the generation of electricity. Indeed in China and India alone, around 50 nuclear power plants are currently under construction. The side-effect of this is the production of enriched uranium and plutonium – the material required to produce nuclear weapons. Combined with a growing base of scientific expertise, it is clear that practical considerations are becoming less and less of an obstacle to those who seek to create a bomb. But who exactly are they and why would they want to do it?

Kegley asserts that non-nuclear weapons states have ‘strong incentives’ to join the nuclear club. He points out that they argue from the standpoint of Charles de Gaulle, who said that without an independent nuclear capability France could not ‘command its own destiny’ and Aneurin Bevan, who said that without the bomb Britain would go ‘naked into the council chambers of the world’.  For many states, such as Argentina, Brazil and Taiwan, the acquisition of nuclear weapons would provide status and power – a conviction born of the realist account that the way to achieve political stature is through military strength – and if the US, Russia, China et al can have them, why shouldn’t they? According to many of the states knocking on the door of the ‘nuclear club’, the dual standards of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are simply hypocritical. For others, on the other hand, the possession of nuclear weapons is deemed necessary to help facilitate a balance of power in the face of perceived threats from their neighbours.

Such is the case with Japan. North Korea’s determination to advance its nuclear capability has caused perturbations in Tokyo where historically – in the light of the only two atomic weapons detonated during conflict being those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki –  the prevailing culture has been very much against the bomb. However, former PM Koizumo said ‘although we could have them, we don’t.’ And significantly, Japan has stockpiled 2,000kg of enriched uranium and has a sufficiently well developed missile program to launch any warheads it did decide to produce.

Another balance of power equation is to be found between India, which has 50 devices, and Pakistan, which has 60. The two states teetered on the brink of war in 2002 and again six years later after terrorists with links to Pakistani intelligence killed 173 people in Mumbai. Indian PM Manmohan Singh did not take the nuclear option but indicated that any future such act of belligerence from Pakistan would illicit a strong response from his country. Under these circumstances, which of these two fierce rivals would be willing to get rid of or even decrease its nuclear arsenals? In the Middle East, Iran is feared to be developing its own nuclear weapons capability, which observers such as former US National Security adviser Brent Scowcroft believe could prompt neighbouring rivals including Saudi Arabia to seek the bomb too. ‘We’re on the cusp of an explosion of proliferation,’ said Scowcroft, ‘and Iran is now the poster child.’

There is also the question of a global balance of power and the establishment of a condition of Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD was a hot topic during the Cold War, and has raised its head again after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Graham Allison points out that of the three countries identified in the George W Bush administration’s ‘Axis of Evil’ – North Korea, Iran and Iraq – only one did not have or was nowhere near getting nuclear weapons. That country was Iraq and observers insist it cannot be a coincidence that it is the only one of the three that has been attacked. Strategist Lawrence Freedman drew this conclusion: ‘The only apparently credible way to deter the armed force of the US is to own your own nuclear arsenal.’ But as well as status and balance of power, there is ideology.

Osama Bin Laden has called the acquisition of nuclear weapons Al Qaeda’s ‘religious duty’ and challenged his followers to ‘trump 9/11’. As has been discussed, the production of nuclear devices is becoming more and more achievable by non-state actors. And indeed, they are receiving expert help. The head of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme A Q Khan was arrested in 2004 for selling such technology to other parties. The IAEA even described him as the ‘Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation’ and the fear of some observers now is that Bin Laden could well be one of his customers. However, not all hope of a reduction in atomic weapons has been lost.

No less that 184 states have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Among them are countries with the technological capability of producing weapons, such as Brazil and Argentina, who in the 1980s chose to close down their programmes, in part because the economic costs were seen to outweigh the strategic benefits. In the early 1990s, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine returned more than 4,000 warheads inherited after the dissolution of the USSR to Russia for dismantlement while South Africa, prior to the handover of power to the post-apartheid government, dismantled its own small nuclear arsenal. Two other states mentioned  here – Japan and Saudi Arabia – have, so far, been persuaded that so long as they remain under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, there is no reason for them to develop or buy from a third party, such as Pakistan, weapons of their own. The same could be said of South Korea’s relationship with Washington and Taiwan’s with China.

In conclusion, this essay has shown that a number of compelling factors indicate a continuation of nuclear proliferation. They are: the relatively easy access to raw materials, technology and expertise; the desire to achieve a military balance of power; and a determination by some states to gain the status of joining the nine countries who are members of the global nuclear club. Added to these factors is the stated aim of Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons and ‘kill four million Americans’. Though there is evidence that the NPT is holding and a majority of states are not seeking their own arsenals, this essay concludes that continued nuclear proliferation may not be ‘inevitable’. On the weight of evidence, however, it seems highly probable.   

Are there any limits to what a sovereign state can do?

by John Lee

At first reading, this question would appear to have one simple answer: no. Why? Because if sovereign is defined as supreme or without higher authority, it indicates that when applied to a state, there is no superior controller of that state’s actions and it is therefore unfettered in what it may or may not get up to on the world stage. But this essay will argue that such an interpretation is too crude. While acknowledging the historical input of Machiavelli and Bodin in establishing the norm of summa potestas – the sum or totality of power i.e. sovereignty – it will point out that in today’s international politics, sovereignty has a rather different definition. According to Alan James the irreducible minimum requirement of sovereignty in a global context is being constitutionally self-contained as well as having equality with other states in international law. Certain rights come with such status, but also responsibilities to respect international law and to not interfere with the rights of others. This essay will highlight the several factors which affect a state’s capacity to exercise sovereign power, examine the claim by pluralists such as John Burton that sovereignty has little relevance in today’s interdependent world and put into context the roles of nationalism and national interest in defining sovereign states’ behaviour.

With the disintegration of medieval feudalism, the barons and warlords arrogated titles such as duke, prince or king to themselves. Territories recognisable as future sovereign states began to be established and in Machiavelli’s The Prince, the rulers of these territories had a manual of how to conduct their statecraft. Jean Bodin’s De Republica further provided a theory of how to validate sovereign power. He said that a ruler’s power was God-given and he was entitled to deference as the supreme authority. If a ruler acknowledged no superior, was this not also true of his state? And if so, did that not mean a state was free to do whatever it desired? Well, not quite. As will be seen, Bodin’s theory of unlimited sovereignty does not stand up to scrutiny in the modern world.

It was with the Westphalian settlement of 1648 that the criteria of sovereign status were established: fixed territory with defined boundaries; a permanent population; and a government capable of exercising control and of observing international obligations. However, simply meeting these criteria is not enough. In order to be regarded as legally sovereign, a state must be recognised as such which, on the world stage throws up a number of anomalies. Take two Chinese cases. After the collapse of imperial China, Tibet claimed sovereign status yet was never accepted by the wider international community. Taiwan, too, claims sovereign status yet few others recognise it as not constitutionally joined to Beijing. It therefore finds itself limited in what it can legally achieve as a ‘sovereign’ entity.

Along with constitutional self-containment, a sovereign state has equality with other states in international law. This allows it to: control its own domestic affairs; act in self-defence; enjoy freedom from intervention (other than in UN-sanctioned situations); create laws; and take part in international diplomacy. Legal rights come with responsibilities to observe those rules – yet more constraints on a sovereign state. Legal equality does not necessarily imply absolute equality to act on the world stage, either. A number of factors exist to make some states more sovereign than others. And it is these factors that limit what a sovereign state can and cannot do.

Military capability is widely regarded as a key indicator of a state’s standing and is inextricably bound to the concept of national interest. For Hans Morgenthau, the acquisition of power is the primary national interest. Hobbesian realism would concur with this. But some sovereign states have accrued more of this power than others and therefore a greater capability to act without limit. The sole superpower, the United States, or Great Powers such as Britain, China and Russia are capable of militarily influencing events on a global scale. The same cannot be said of small powers such as Singapore which, even though it is a sovereign state, is limited in what it can achieve. The alternative for such a state is to employ ‘soft power’ – economic, diplomatic and political – in an effort to reach its goals.

The issues of military power and the limits of action are thrown into sharp focus when it comes to intervention. Can the use of uninvited military action by one or a number of sovereign states within the borders of another sovereign state ever be justified? Realists such as Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer would likely say ‘No’. Rationalists on the other hand would answer with a qualified ‘Yes’, the qualification being that such intervention would need to be on humanitarian grounds. That is, where there is a massive loss of life either through genocide or government collapse or where peace is threatened. A further qualification would be that any action would require the assent of the UN.

While military capability may be seen as the primary limit on a state’s capacity to exercise power, it is far from the only one. A country’s geography – it’s size, climate, frontiers and location on the world map – are crucial, as is its ethnic mix and political culture. Economic strength must also be taken into account: states with a powerful, fully-functioning economy are clearly in a better position to attain their objectives than those without. Diplomacy, too, plays a key role with membership of IGOs cuch as the UN, the EU, ASEAN or the WTO giving a state leverage on the world stage.

Over and above endogenous limitations, there are supranational factors which affect a state’s capabilities. As pluralist John Burton indicates, sovereignty’s relevance is diminishing in an interdependent world. He asserts that military and technological developments have destroyed the notion of sovereign self-reliance: Bodin’s theory of unlimited sovereignty is blown out of the water. With the march of globalisation, all policy-making has domestic as well as foreign implications which means further constraint on activity. The growth of nationalism since the 18^th Century can further be seen as threatening the concept of the sovereign state. This comes in the form of secessionism, with the parent state being diminished by the breakaway and the scarcely viable states that come into existence having little ability to exercise sovereignty.

So it can be seen that there are numerous limits to what a sovereign state can do. As CAW Manning points out, by seeking and attaining sovereign status, a state agrees to be bound by international law, which necessarily means constraining action in order to abide by the rules. If a state is in breach of international law while trying to reach its own goals, the international community is then at liberty to take interventionist action. And in any case, simply desiring a certain outcome does not necessarily mean it can be achieved. Military capability, economic strength, place on the world map and membership of IGOs or military alliances all help determine a state’s chances of achieving a certain aim. Pluralists such as Burton and Rosenau also point out that in an increasingly interdependent world, where nationalism is still in the ascendancy, the very concept of sovereignty is undermined. All of which leads to the conclusion that Bodin’s 16^th Century view of a state’s absolute superiority does not hold in the 21^st Century and that there are indeed limits to what a sovereign state can do.

Does law have a role in maintaining international order?

By John Lee

In its widest sense, law can be defined as a system of rules enforced through a set of institutions. Within a country, a supreme legislature creates laws which are enforced by a judiciary. On the global stage, however, no overarching international body exists to make laws nor is there an international judiciary and police force to ensure they are kept. All of which must lead the scholar of international relations to question whether international law is really law at all or, as John Fried asserts, merely a ‘weak and defenceless’ construct with little or no practical use. This essay will argue that while there are a multitude of problems associated with international law, it is a vital mechanism in the maintenance of international order and, moreover, one which, as Charles Kegley points out, most state actors accept as real and abide by most of the time. But first, it is important to locate the sources of the rules of global behaviour.

Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice defines the sources of international law thus. The first, customary law, is formed by the common practices of states over a period of time. For example, much of the law of the sea has developed on this basis. In order for customary international law to work, there has to be an acceptance by states that it is legally binding. Some states are bound by it even when they protest because the vast majority of states have consented. Such was the case during the years of apartheid when the South African government protested that its racial policies did not breach international law even though the international community considered them illegal. The second source of law is the treaty, which comes in two varieties: bilateral when concluded between two states and multilateral – such as those governing the exploration of the Antarctic, the seabed and outer space – when anywhere between three countries and the entire world are involved. The third main source of international law is the UN resolution, the most important of which earn the title Declaration, as in the Declaration of Human Rights. But even though there is expectation that states will abide by their provisions, Declarations are still only UN Resolutions and cannot be made legally binding, which highlights the greatest sticking point in international law: how to police it.

In a debate for Legal Affairs magazine, Chicago University’s Eric Posner suggests that enforcing the rulings of international courts and tribunals is nearly impossible. He questions why states continue creating international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea when they appear to lack the capacity to influence the actions of other actors. Similarly, he argues, tribunals to adjudicate on war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have been farcical due to the tiny number of wrongdoers convicted and the platform such hearings provide for those on trial to stir up xenophobic reaction at home. In reply, Yale Law School’s Oona Hathaway contends that the records of such international tribunals are not as bad as Posner paints, that the ICC and ITLOS are still in their formative years and that rulings they have made enjoy a good record of compliance. She also points to the effectiveness of the International Court of Justice in solving border disputes, arguing that it is in disputants’ interests to abide by this Court’s rulings as the alternative would mean neither side being able to invest in a border area without fear of future retribution or loss. But underlying this entire debate is the principle of compliance of sovereign states interacting in a system of global anarchy.

As Kegley points out, sovereignty means that no authority is legally above the state except that which the state voluntarily confers on the international organisations it joins. In other words, states cannot be compelled to perform their legal obligations since there is no body to punish them if they don’t. So why do most states seem to abide by international law? One reason is reciprocity – that is, a state will meet its legal obligations because it wants other states to do the same. For example, the non-intervention norm requires states to refrain from acting uninvited within another’s boundaries. Then there is diplomatic immunity: a state will observe another’s diplomatic immunity because it wants the same observance in return. A less empirically-based principle for a state’s compliance is that of international standing. Reputation increases an actor’s soft power – ie, the ability to achieve its goals by non-military means. If you play by the rules you will receive rewards, says Kegley, and the long-term advantages of observing international law can be seen to outweigh the short-term benefits of violating it. This idea is imbricated with the concept of legitimacy. As Thomas Franck argues, legitimacy is functional when states desire to be recognised as a member of a community in which they learn to abide by the rules in order to secure the benefits of membership. Such self-enforcement, says Franck, explains the willingness of state leaders to comply with international rules since non-compliance leads to disrepute and isolation.

The legal status of these rules plays a part in the establishment of regimes – bodies of regulations which lay down the norms of conduct in areas such as trade, commerce, arms control and the exploration of the seabed. Stephen Krasner cites the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) – the forerunner of the World Trade Organisation – as a classic example of a successful regime while others include the Common Agricultural Policy and the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Going hand-in-hand with regimes are international organisations – global, like the UN; regional, like the EU and inter-governmental, like NATO. Pluralists see such organisations as portents of an international community of mankind – an interconnected global village. Realists, on the other hand, view them as instruments of their members. A case in point being the UN, which in effect can do little without the backing of the US. Turning this concept on its head, the US sought the backing of the UN to legalise its invasion of Iraq in 2003 for what might be called a ‘just war’.

So what is a ‘just war’.  The concept in a modern framework can be traced back to the thinking of Hugo Grotius, the Dutch lawyer who challenged the Catholic and Protestant belligerents in the Thirty Years War of (1618-1648) to abide by humane standards during combat. He said a war should only be fought in self-defence to punish damages caused by an adversary’s blatant act of armed aggression and that for war to be moral, it must be fought by just means without harm to innocent non-combatants. In the modern arena, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 - rules limiting the barbarity of war – can be seen as a logical development of Grotius’s principles.

But what would Grotius have made of Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003? Paust points out that many critics consider the attack a preventive war, which would be a breach of international law, thus making the US a ‘rogue state’.  Even realists were perturbed by the action. At the end of 2002, while the UN Security Council frantically negotiated prior to the invasion, 34 leading realists took out an advert in the New York Times saying that a war with Iraq was not in the national interest. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt also questioned why the US had abandoned its policy of deterrence, which had been so success sful during the Cold War. Some have even said, controversially, that George W Bush and his ally, Britain’s Tony Blair should be put on trial for war crimes by the UN’s International Criminal Court. The debate on this still goes on.

In conclusion, it is evident that law is a fundamental control element in the maintenance of international order. It oversees the rules of international trade and commerce; encourages reciprocity of behaviour between states at a diplomatic level; stands up for human rights, health and the environment via UN Resolutions and Declarations; arbitrates on border and regional disputes through the International Court of Justice; promotes the use of soft power as opposed to military intervention; and when combat cannot be avoided, puts checks and measures in place to ensure a ‘just war’ with as little barbarity and civilian loss of life as possible. When there are trangressions, rogue states’ leaders may be indicted as war criminals and punished by the UN’s International Criminal Court. So it can be seen that international law is not the ‘weak and defenceless’ construct described by Fried. Rather it is the nearest thing to an overarching authority we have under the global community’s prevailing condition of anarchy.

Disarmament & arms control: the arguments

In the 19th Century, war was seen as a legitimate function of sovereign rule. So long as the war-making body had legal authority to act and followed correct procedures, such as a proper declaration, war could be waged lawfully. Four 20th Century developments created a new legal regime:

1: Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919;

2: The Pact of Paris 1928 – the Kellogg-Briand Pact;

3: The UN Charter of 1945;

4: The London Charter of 1945 which set up the War Crimes Tribunal.

Taken together they establish a new legal regime in which war is only legitimate in two circumstances: as an act of self-defence or as an act of law enforcement to help others defend themselves.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was a symbolic ‘high tide’. It was intended to mark 150 years of US-French friendship with the signing of a non-aggression pact but transformed into a general treaty to abolish war. A function of such an abolition is disarmament and arms control which must be distinguished from one another.

Disarmament

The attempt to eliminate armaments has historically taken place in two ways.

Imposed disarmament on the defeated state after a war. For example, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles limited the German army to 100,000 troops thereby rendering it incapable of offensive activity. Similarly, after the Second World War, restrictions were placed on Germany and Japan. Inability or unwillingness to enforce these restrictions has been their weakness. Germany established training facilities and munitions factories in the Soviet Union after the First World War without penalty, and after 1945, a primary goal of US foreign policy was to re-establish the military capabilities of both West Germany and Japan. 

Voluntary disarmament, in which states seek a mutually acceptable framework to reduce the size of their militaries, has three models:

1: Reducing the size of an army to its bare minimum eg Germany after Versailles;

2: General and Complete Disarmament (GCD) which seeks the elimination of all weapons. Although associated with extreme idealism there are examples of it being tabled for example, at the Reykjavik Summit of 1986, Gorbachev proposed – and Reagan accepted – the elimination of all nuclear-armed ballistic missiles by 1996. The plan was never executed.

3: Regional disarmament seeks to reduce or eliminate weapons from a particular geographical area, frequently in the form of nuclear-free zones. This was proposed in South Asia but the SANFZ is hampered by the fact that both Pakistan and India have acquired nuclear weapons and are unlikely to give them up in the foreseeable future. However there are four successes: The 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco prohibits nuclear weapons in the South American region while three other treaties ban the placing of nuclear weapons in Antarctica, on the seabed or in outer space. 

However, two major problems hamper the progress of disarmament:

1: Doubt over the assumption that arms cause war. CND claimed the arms race was out of the control of politicians and advocated unilateral disarmament to break the cycle. However, the end of the Cold War has seen a dramatic reduction in nuclear weapons suggesting that arms races are caused by underlying political conflicts.

2: The difficulty of verification. If some states disarm while others cheat and fail to do so, dangerous imbalances of power may result.

Arms Control

Arms control is to be distinguished from disarmament in that proponents of the latter argue that peaceful international relations can only be achieved by eliminating weapons from states’ calculations. Advocates of the former, on the other hand, seek regulation of arms. They don’t aim to construct a new world order, but rather to manage the existing one according to agreed principles, which include:

1: Limiting the number and kind of weapons that can be used in war;

2: Banning technologies that may have a destabilising effect on the balance of power.

Treaties include:

1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of gas and bacteriological weapons

1968 NPT limiting nuclear weapon development in non-nuclear states

1972 SALT 1

1991 START 1

1998 Anti-Personnel Landmines Treaty (APLT)

The biggest problem is that of verification. States ‘cheat’ by not disclosing the full extent of weapons stocks, building secret installations and moving weapons around. Also uncooperative with weapons inspectors eg Iraq. But how to enforce arms control in a world of sovereign states with no over-arching arbiter? Short of armed intervention sanctions and diplomatic persuasion.

Another problem is that of LDCs or lesser powers complaining that the NPT of 1968, for example, allows the Global North to maintain its stranglehold on the Global South. Rather than increasing the peace, arms control can be seen in this instance as increasing international tension.

Is nuclear proliferation inevitable?

By John Lee

‘A threat that rises above all others in urgency,’ is how President Obama described nuclear proliferation. An examination of the raw statistics reinforces the potential for global catastrophe: in 2008, and despite the reduction in arsenals following the end of the Cold War and the SALT and START initiatives, the nine nuclear powers of the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea possessed 11,530 warheads between them with the combined destructive force of 1,300,000 Hiroshima bombs. The question here is: will the countries of the world see the folly of adding to this tally of destructive capability and refrain from seeking more nuclear weapons (‘vertical’ proliferation by the nuclear nine) or joining the ‘nuclear club’ (‘horizontal’ proliferation by everyone else)? This essay will approach the problem by examining the explanations and motives for proliferation – availability of raw materials and scientific expertise, the building of regional power balances, desire for prestige and status and in the case of terrorist organisations, the furthering of ideological goals. And it will look at the reasons – economic, strategic and cultural –  why states would not want to increase the world’s nuclear peril. Finally, it will reach a conclusion as to whether or not the continuation of nuclear proliferation really is ‘inevitable’.

Today, there are 450 nuclear power reactors operating in 70 countries, a number which is likely to increase as concern over greenhouse gas emissions drives the search for alternatives to fossil fuels in the generation of electricity. Indeed in China and India alone, around 50 nuclear power plants are currently under construction. The side-effect of this is the production of enriched uranium and plutonium – the material required to produce nuclear weapons. Combined with a growing base of scientific expertise, it is clear that practical considerations are becoming less and less of an obstacle to those who seek to create a bomb. But who exactly are they and why would they want to do it?

Kegley asserts that non-nuclear weapons states have ‘strong incentives’ to join the nuclear club. He points out that they argue from the standpoint of Charles de Gaulle, who said that without an independent nuclear capability France could not ‘command its own destiny’ and Aneurin Bevan, who said that without the bomb Britain would go ‘naked into the council chambers of the world’.  For many states, such as Libya, Egypt and Turkey, the acquisition of nuclear weapons would provide status and power – a conviction born of the realist account that the way to achieve political stature is through military strength – and if the US, Russia, China et al can have them, why shouldn’t they? According to many of the states knocking on the door of the ‘nuclear club’, the dual standards of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are simply hypocritical. For others, on the other hand, the possession of nuclear weapons is deemed necessary to help facilitate a balance of power in the face of perceived threats from their neighbours.

Such is the case with Japan. North Korea’s determination to advance its nuclear capability has caused perturbations in Tokyo where historically – in the light of the only two atomic weapons detonated during conflict being those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki –  the prevailing culture has been very much against the bomb. However, former PM Koizumo said ‘although we could have them, we don’t.’ And significantly, Japan has stockpiled 2,000kg of enriched uranium and has a sufficiently well developed missile program to launch any warheads it did decide to produce.

Another balance of power equation is to be found between India, which has 50 devices, and Pakistan, which has 60. The two states teetered on the brink of war in 2002 and again six years later after terrorists with links to Pakistani intelligence killed 173 people in Mumbai. Indian PM Manmohan Singh did not take the nuclear option but indicated that any future such act of belligerence from Pakistan would illicit a strong response from his country. Under these circumstances, which of these two fierce rivals would be willing to get rid of or even decrease its nuclear arsenals? In the Middle East, Iran is feared to be developing its own nuclear weapons capability, which observers such as former US National Security adviser Brent Scowcroft believe could prompt neighbouring rivals including Saudi Arabia to seek the bomb too. ‘We’re on the cusp of an explosion of proliferation,’ said Scowcroft, ‘and Iran is now the poster child.’

There is also the question of a global balance of power and the establishment of a condition of Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD was a hot topic during the Cold War, and has raised its head again after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Graham Allison points out that of the three countries identified in the George W Bush administration’s ‘Axis of Evil’ – North Korea, Iran and Iraq – only one did not have or was nowhere near getting nuclear weapons. That country was Iraq and observers insist it cannot be a coincidence that it is the only one of the three that has been attacked. Strategist Lawrence Freedman drew this conclusion: ‘The only apparently credible way to deter the armed force of the US is to own your own nuclear arsenal.’ But as well as status and balance of power, there is ideology.

Osama Bin Laden has called the acquisition of nuclear weapons Al Qaeda’s ‘religious duty’ and challenged his followers to ‘trump 9/11’. As has been discussed, the production of nuclear devices is becoming more and more achievable by non-state actors. And indeed, they are receiving expert help. The head of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme A Q Khan was arrested in 2004 for selling such technology to other parties. The IAEA even described him as the ‘Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation’ and the fear of some observers now is that Bin Laden could well be one of his customers. However, not all hope of a reduction in atomic weapons has been lost.

No less that 184 states have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Among them are countries with the technological capability of producing weapons, such as Brazil and Argentina, who in the 1980s chose to close down their programmes, in part because the economic costs were seen to outweigh the strategic benefits. In the early 1990s, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine returned more than 4,000 warheads inherited after the dissolution of the USSR to Russia for dismantlement while South Africa, prior to the handover of power to the post-apartheid government, dismantled its own small nuclear arsenal. Two other states mentioned  here – Japan and Saudi Arabia – have, so far, been persuaded that so long as they remain under the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, there is no reason for them to develop or buy from a third party, such as Pakistan, weapons of their own. The same could be said of South Korea’s relationship with Washington and Taiwan’s with China.

In conclusion, this essay has shown that a number of compelling factors indicate a continuation of nuclear proliferation. They are: the relatively easy access to raw materials, technology and expertise; the desire to achieve a military balance of power; and a determination by some states to gain the status of joining the nine countries who are members of the global nuclear club. Added to these factors is the stated aim of Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons and ‘kill four million Americans’. Though there is evidence that the NPT is holding and a majority of states are not seeking their own arsenals, this essay concludes that continued nuclear proliferation may not be ‘inevitable’. On the weight of evidence, however, it seems highly probable.

Are there any useful explanations for underdevelopment?

By John Lee

Under the World Bank classification, a developed country in 2008 was one with an annual GNP of $11,116 per capita. By definition then, economic underdevelopment can be seen as the inability of a state to grow to the point where it reaches that level. This essay will look beyond that stark statistic and confront the complexities of explaining the problem. It will proceed by establishing the conditions – from Bretton Woods onwards – under which the world economy arrived at its current state before going on to examine why some countries are underdeveloped in comparison to others. It will do this by contrasting the accounts of those – such as Rostow – who explain underdevelopment as being a result of countries’ internal failings, with the accounts of those – such as Prebisch and the Dependendistas – who point to the exploitative nature of the Global North and the inequalities inherent in the international system. It will take into account the core-periphery relationship propounded by Wallerstein and the world system theorists and, finally, it will seek further explanation of underdevelopment by focusing on those countries which have escaped the condition, particularly in the Global East.    

BRETTON WOODS
In order to establish how the world economy came to be as it is today, it is necessary to go back to July 1944 and the summit of 44 countries at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, which was intended to plan for a post-war international economy. The gathering was predominantly of Western states with the US and Britain taking the lead. As with the establishment of the UN, the first priority of Bretton Woods was to avoid the problems of the past, in BW’s case primarily the breakdown of the pre-war international economy. It was clear that Washington would have to take on the bulk of the burden in achieving this, because, as Paul Kennedy points out in the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, ‘among the Great Powers, the US was the only country which became richer – in fact much richer – rather than poorer because of the war . . . economically, the world was its oyster.’

A major pitfall to be avoided was the imposing of punitive damages on defeated powers.  Thus the consensus at Bretton Woods was that reparations levied on Germany and the other vanquished belligerents would be far smaller than in the 1920s after the First World War. At the top of the Bretton Woods agenda was the need to remedy global monetary imbalances and this was achieved by planning for fixed exchange rates among the major currencies and the use of gold as a reserve asset, which the US (as holder of 70pc of the world’s stocks) promised to sell at a fixed price of $35 an ounce. To manage the Bretton Woods system, two new institutions were created – the IMF to provide countries with short-term credit and the World Bank to give longer-term loans.

MARSHALL PLAN
However, there were obstacles, notably the polarisation between East and West, which made a single global economy based on currency conversion and multilateral trade unfeasible. Another problem was the huge ‘dollar gap’ – the fact that European imports from the US were seven times its exports back across the Atlantic. Washington soon realised it had to remedy the situation, not least because it feared Moscow would take advantage of Western European states’ economic fragility and attempt to induct them into the Soviet Bloc. Its solution was to offer massive financial support, first through the Truman Doctrine – which saw $400million go to Turkey and Greece – and then, more significantly with the Marshall Plan which, as its architect the Secretary of State George Marshall said, would ‘permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist’. In theory, aid was available to East and West, but in practice Moscow put a stop on the likes of Poland and Czechoslovakia getting any money, which resulted in a widening of the economic schism between Eastern and Western Europe.

NIXON'S PANIC
By 1951 and the culmination of the Marshall Plan, Western European had benefited to the tune of $17billion dollars. With economic progress came the idea of closer integration, firstly through the European Coal and Steel Community leading to the European Community and the European Free Trade Association made up of seven non-EC states including Britain. However, while Europe and Japan prospered, the US was soon in trouble. A run on the dollar in 1960, the growing vulnerability of world currencies including the dollar to globalisation and the rise of MNCs and the ruinously expensive Vietnam war (combined with President Johnson’s unwillingness to raise taxes), meant that by 1971, the US suffered its first trade deficit of the 20th Century. As a consequence, in that year President Nixon took drastic action – the imposition of wage and price controls, the suspension of the convertibility of dollars into gold and a 10pc surcharge on imports. By December, a system of free-floating currencies emerged and the Bretton Woods system was in tatters.

OIL, FOOD AND DEBT CRISES
The following decade was to see further blows to the global economy, firstly through food crises – grain shortages and overfishing – which, with grim inevitability, hit the Global South the hardest. Then came a 400pc hike in the price of oil by OPEC countries following the renewal of Arab-Israeli hostilities in 1973. With the economies of oil-producing countries unable to absorb their vast incomes, the banks became awash with petro-dollars, which they in turn were keen to lend. And keenest to borrow were the LDCs of the Global South. However, these countries got into difficulty with the onset of rising interest rates, declining demand for their exports and an ability to service their debts. This problem was typified by the case of Mexico and when it, and other countries became unable to pay when their loans were called in at short notice, the ‘debt crisis’ was triggered. And for the purposes of this essay, the scene is now set for an examination of the explanations of underdevelopment.

WHY UNDERDEVELOPMENT OCCURS
In order to examine the causes and results of underdevelopment and therefore to account for its occurrence, it is first necessary to define the process. Broadly speaking, development can be seen as economic growth within the international economy. In other words, a country is said to be developing if its Gross National Product (GNP) is increasing: if the gap between its GNP and that of developed countries is decreasing then the country is moving from being a Less Developed Country (LDC) to being a developed country. So it can be said that underdevelopment is what results when the above factors are absent.

INTERNAL PROBLEMS OF GLOBAL SOUTH
For classical theorists, the major barriers to development are to be found in the internal characteristics of Global South countries. According to them, the barriers can be overcome by wealthy countries injecting ‘missing components’ such as investment capital through foreign aid or private direct investment. Once economic growth is underway, the benefits would trickle down to the broader population. Walt Rostow formalised this model in The Stages of Economic Growth, which predicted that states would pass through various stages of free market development until they ‘took off’ to become similar to the mass-consumption societies of the Global North. Critics of this viewpoint oppose a set of assumptions characteristic of this classical stance: these are, that the Global North prospered because of a concentration on hard work, innovation, invention of new products and modes of production and investment in schooling and other infrastructures. Instead, they attribute underdevelopment in the Global South to exploitation by the Global North.

DEPENDENDISTAS
Prominent among these critics are the Dependendistas, one of whom, the Argentinian Raoul Prebisch, asserted that the world was divided into industrialised, fully developed ‘core’ countries and non-industrialized ‘periphery’ countries. He suggested that the only way to break out of this structural vicious circle was for the elites of ‘periphery’ countries to embark on a programme of industrialisation to reduce dependence on import and decrease the accumulation of debt. This would be achieved domestically by ‘healthy protectionism’ – ie controlling imports to speed the development of the industrial base  - and internationally by encouraging ‘core’ countries to show greater regard for the interests of the ‘periphery’ – ie preferential treatment for LDC manufactures in the world market and long-term contracts to provide stability plus long-term development and debt relief programmes.

According to more revolutionary theorists such as Samir Amin, Prebisch’s ideas were somewhat idealistic in that the elites of ‘periphery’ countries were not concerned with the welfare of their own people but of the core states and that nothing short of armed action to overthrow the old order was required. Such revolutionary theorists are further divided into the neo-Marxists, such as Gunder Frank, who posit that only by national revolution and delinking from the world economy can a people be truly liberated, and orthodox Marxists, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, who believe nothing short of world revolution will suffice. But not all reformists are Marxist.

NIEO AND BRANDT
Prebisch’s model for a New International Economic Order was seized on by Western statesmen such as the late West German Chancellor Willy Brandt who emphasized the ‘interdependent’ nature of international relations, with the ideology of, ‘we must help them, or we all go down together’. The Brandt Report of 1980 identified a huge North-South Divide and called for the transferral of resources from developed to developing countries. Indeed the Brandt Line circles the earth at approximately 30deg North, passing between North and South America, above Africa and India but dipping south to include Australia and New Zealand in the richer North. However, an examination of the 21st Century’s developing countries, particularly of the Global East, suggests that this line may have to be redrawn.

ASIAN TIGERS
The states moving from underdeveloped to ‘newly industrialized country’ status are typified by the Asian Tigers of the 1980s – Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea – who as Kegley notes, have engineered export-led growth through neomercantilist policies aimed at protecting infant industries and subsidizing their manufacturers.  While the Asian Tigers are now considered by the IMF to be advanced economies and the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China, and the CIVETS – Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa – are growing at accelerated rates, approximately 150 countries were still classified as emerging or developing countries in 2010.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this essay argues that there are useful explanations of underdevelopment. These can be located by examining the global economic system itself, which evolved towards its current status after the Bretton Woods summit of 1944 and underwent numerous crisis-forced changes, and defining how that system leads to the problematic condition in question. Classical theorists believe underdevelopment can be explained by the conditions within the LDCs themselves. The Dependendistas and Marxist theorists on the other hand, insist the structure of the international economy which sees the Global North exploiting the Global South, is to blame. The liberal non-Marxist view as propounded by Brandt is that such exploitation must be rebalanced by the shifting of ‘core’ resources from the developed countries to the ‘periphery’ or underdeveloped countries. This essay concludes that such explanations are ‘useful’, not only for the IR theorist, but for politicians and policy-makers seeking to address the inequalities which result from underdevelopment.

Hans J Morgenthau

‘All history shows that nations active in international politics are continuously preparing for, involved in or recovering from organised violence in the form of war.’

UN peacekeeping challenges | Time for change

By John Lee

For those drawing up the UN Charter in 1945, the overwhelming priority was to create an international system which would prevent the recurrence of the carnage of the Second World War. The proposition was that member states would join together in common UN action against any state militarily threatening another member. This idea of collective security and confronting aggression en masse is encapsulated in Chapter VII of the Charter – without explicitly using the term ‘collective security’ –  which attempted to give the new organisation the ‘teeth’ missing from the covenant of the UN’s forerunner, the League of Nations. This essay will argue that while the UN does have ‘teeth’, it has used them with only patchy success during its 65-year history. It will proceed by locating the mechanisms of the UN and the options it has available when confronted with crises and examining how their implementation has evolved since 1945 during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Issues such as the relevance of crises within states to the maintenance of international peace and order will be evaluated as will reform of the Security Council and the setting up of a UN army under the Military Staff Committee.  

SOVIET STRIFE

The formative years of the UN were blighted by tensions between the two superpowers. In 1946, the first threat to peace brought before the Security Council involved the reluctance of the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces stationed in Iran. While it eventually agreed to comply (as Britain and the US had), the issue highlighted what would turn out to be the major constraint on UN activity over the next four decades, namely tension between the superpowers. This tension came to another head in 1948, when the USSR withdrew cooperation from the Security Council over US-led opposition to the admission of China to UN membership. As a consequence of its absence, two years later Moscow failed to apply its Security Council veto to prevent the UN – which as Black points out was effectively the US plus allied support – from going to war with North Korea following its invasion of South Korea. It should be noted that this conflict was, until the first Gulf War of 1991, the only UN-sanctioned military campaign to ‘enforce peace’ or rather ‘resist aggression’ (Black).

BLUEPRINT FOR PEACEKEEPING

With the Cold War at its peak, many conflicts which overlapped with the interests of either Washington or Moscow were not even deliberated by the UN. This was the case in the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia and Somalia were the belligerents and in the conflict between Angola and Mozambique. However, principally because of the paralysis imposed on its activities by the Cold War and Security Council vetoes, the UN developed its peacekeeping role so that the superpowers would not themselves have to intervene in conflicts which might then escalate into full-blown war between them. The development of a blueprint for such UN peacekeeping was precipitated by the Suez Crisis of 1956 in which Anglo-French forces (in collusion with Israel) attacked Egypt to recover control of the Suez Canal, which had been recently nationalised by President Nasser. The action was condemned by the US and the matter was taken up by the UN. However, because of the British and French vetoes (as two of the five permanent members of the 15-strong Security Council), the resolution was moved to the General Assembly which authorized the first-ever UN peacekeeping force, interposed between Israeli and Egyptian forces after the withdrawal of the British and French. Deemed a success, this model drawn up by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold – the only person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously – was used subsequently during Cold War period conflicts in the Congo, Yemen, India-Pakistan, Lebanon and Cyprus. In the latter, UN peacekeepers have been present since 1964.

POST COLD WAR PROGRESS

By the end of the 1980s and the thawing of the Cold War, the UN began to enjoy what is perceived to be its most successful period in respect to peacekeeping and the maintenance of international security. It became involved in monitoring ceasefires, for example in the Iran-Iraq conflict; repelling insurgents in such strife-zones as Nicaragua and El Salvador; supervising the removal of landmines in Cambodia and Angola; monitoring democratic elections in, for example, Namibia and Cambodia; securing and implementing humanitarian aid in Bosnia; and maintaining enclaves such as those in Iraq and Serbia. This UN activity, reflecting the fact that most of the wars being fought were within states rather than between them, must be distinguished from that of maintaining peace between states. It is nevertheless a vital component in the maintenance of international security as – according to democratic peace theory –  stable, democratic states are far less likely to take up arms against other similar states. 

SUCCESS IN FIRST GULF WAR

This wave of success swept the UN forward to 1991, when the Security Council was again united in its decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The tyrant’s action was precipitated by his country’s war with Iran which ended in 1988. That conflict virtually bankrupted Iraq with most of its debt owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, neither of which would waive that debt. Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil. After a period of sabre-rattling, Saddam sent his forces over the border. The subsequent military action against him was executed under the UN flag and signalled another tent pole of success for its political machinery.

FROM 'AGENDA FOR PEACE' TO BLACK HAWKS DOWN IN SOMALIA

In 1992, the Security Council met at heads of state level for the first time. With the Cold War now over, a new dawn was envisaged and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was given the task of drawing up an ‘Agenda For Peace’. However this dawn would prove to be false one and in the very same year, the tide began to turn against the UN. With the approval of the Security Council, American forces helped save victims of a famine in Somalia caused by the devastation resulting from the internal belligerence of factional warlords. This was the first time a humanitarian disaster was defined as a threat to international peace and handled under Chapter VII of the Charter. However, the second phase of the operation in which a smaller peacekeeping force was sent in to maintain order, ended in disaster. The UN troops became involved in fighting the notorious Somali warlord General Mohamad Aideed. Their efforts to capture him failed and culminated in the downing of two of its own Black Hawk helicopters and the deaths of 17 US soldiers. In March 1994, President Clinton took the unilateral decision to withdraw his country’s forces and a bitter blame game between his administration and the UN ensued. 

GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

After the debacle of Somalia came the lowest point in UN history – the powerlessness of its peacekeeping forces to prevent the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in the benighted African state of Rwanda. This abject failure – which saw the deaths of 800,000 citizens in just 100 days – can be seen as a direct result of America’s decision to not get involved having been badly burned in Somalia. Indeed, Washington declared itself unwilling to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations which were not in its national interest. Relations between the UN and US were in tatters.

IRAQ 2003 AND THE RIFT WITH AMERICA

But by 2002, America under the George W Bush administration would be seeking the approval of the UN for its invasion of Iraq. Under the pretext of Resolution 1441 that found Saddam Hussein in breach of ceasefire terms demanding disarmament from the first Gulf War, the US was intent on embarking on another round of democratic regime change. However, the Security Council stumbled when it came to endorsing the action with France threatening to use its veto. By March 2003, with diplomatic efforts exhausted, the US invaded without the backing of a UN resolution. Debate  continues over the legitimacy of the war: some say the breaching of 1441 made it legal; others that it was illegal but legitimate in that all diplomatic avenues had been gone down; while those such as Anne-Marie Slaughter say it was both illegitimate and illegal. The final nail in the coffin of relations between the US and UN came in 2004 when Kofi Annan was asked whether the war was a legitimate act of ‘peace enforcement’. The Secretary-General replied that it was not.

SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM AND A PERMANENT UN ARMY

It can be seen, therefore, that all is not well with the UN and its arrangements for maintaining international peace and security. But what should it do to remodel the landscape? Among the issues up for discussion is a change to membership of the Security Council. In 1995, Annan proposed an increase in sitting members from 15 to 25 and the creation of a new humanitarian council. He also called for the number of permanent members (the only ones with the power of veto) to be increased from the five of the US, Russia, China, Britain and France to seven. And the case can be argued that places should be available for states of the economic, cultural and military status of Germany, Japan and India. Further, commentators also posit the case for the Military Staff Committee – which comes under the umbrella of the Security Council in the UN’s structural hierarchy – to have at at its command a permanent UN force which does not rely on member states making forces available. This would arguably have allowed the UN to head off the tragedy of Rwanda where the commander there had pleaded for 5,000 troops to stifle the aggression but did not receive them.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the UN’s arrangements for peacekeeping have changed markedly since 1945 when its goal was to ensure no repeat of the human catastrophe that was the Second World War. From that date until 1989, its actions were heavily constrained by the Cold War and its inability to act in areas regarded as legitimate spheres of the then-two superpowers. There were successes however, notably in the establishment of a peacekeeping blueprint by Dag Hammarskjold which was effectively interposed between Israeli and Egyptian forces after the Suez Crisis of 1956. After the end of the Cold War, too, the Security Council was united in its resolution to repel Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1991. But clearly there have been problems as the mode of armed aggression has changed from conventional inter-state wars to internal conflicts in failed and failing states of the Global South such as Somalia. The nadir was reached with the genocide of Rwanda in which the UN signally failed to act. With the fluctuating state of its relations with the sole superpower, lack of its own permanent army and the outdated structure of the Security Council, this essay concludes that the UN must embrace even more radical change if it is to be a relevant peacekeeper in the rapidly evolving international system of the 21st century