NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship,Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy

In nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, many governments pursue multiple objectives, and changes in policy can occur rapidly—and often unexpectedly. For these reasons, understanding nonproliferation requires empathy and imagination rather than just historical fact. This article considers one teaching tool to encourage such insight—simulations—and demonstrates how teaching and scholarship can interact to improve our understanding of the complex decisions and negotiations involved in nuclear nonproliferation. The article consists of five parts: first, it explains the benefits of simulations as both a policy development tool in Washington and as a teaching tool in universities; second, it describes the pedagogical strategy of the Stanford University simulation program; third, it shows how the simulations have identified and highlighted theoretical and substantive insights that are often neglected in scholarly studies of nonproliferation; and fourth, it describes how students are tested to enhance the learning experience from the simulation. Fifth and finally, the article provides concluding observations about how using simulations in the classroom can help scholars develop insights that improve their understanding of real-world nuclear negotiation dynamics and outcomes.     

INTEGRATING NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE MANAGEMENT AND NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL OBJECTIVES TO ENABLE SIGNIFICANT STOCKPILE REDUCTIONS

In his 2009 Prague speech and the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, President Barack Obama committed the United States to take concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament while maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. There is an inherent tension between these two goals that is best addressed through improved integration of nuclear weapons objectives with nuclear arms control objectives. This article reviews historical examples of the interaction between the two sets of objectives, develops a framework for analyzing opportunities for future integration, and suggests specific ideas that could benefit the nuclear weapons enterprise as it undergoes transformation and that could make the future enterprise compatible with a variety of arms control futures.     

From combat to non-combat action

This paper examines the rationale and centrality of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in humanitarian assistance operations in Sudan, asking why PMSCs are involved in humanitarian assistance operations in Sudan and what the principles underlying their activities are. To answer this question, the paper draws attention to the link between humanitarian crises and PMSC interventions. Where there is no meaningful alternative intervention, undergirded by humanitarian concerns that are also profit driven, PMSCs come in to provide the needed services. The protracted and complicated internal armed conflicts in Sudan, which have lasted for over two decades, have produced as many as 4,8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) – the single largest number in the world. The kind of humanitarian assistance operations provided by PMSCs in Sudan have become critical to the provision of much-needed services which were inadequately provided by governmental authorities at both unilateral and multilateral levels. This paper argues that the humanitarian crises in Sudan created a regime that permits humanitarian assistance operations by both state and non-state actors.     

Limiting cyberwarfare: applying arms-control models to an emerging technology

ABSTRACT

An arms race in cyberspace is underway. US and Western government efforts to control this process have largely been limited to deterrence and norm development. This article examines an alternative policy option: arms control. To gauge whether arms-control models offer useful lessons for addressing cyber capabilities, this article compiles a new dataset of predominantly twentieth-century arms-control agreements. It also evaluates two case studies of negotiated agreements that regulate dual-use technologies, the 1928 Geneva Protocol prohibiting chemical- and biological-weapon use and the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. The analysis underscores the limits of norm development for emerging technologies with both civilian and military applications. It finds lessons for developing verifiable, international cooperation mechanisms for cyberwarfare in the regulatory model of international aviation. Conventionally, arms-control agreements take advantage of transparent tests or estimates of arms. To restrict cyberwarfare activities, experts and policy makers must adapt arms-control models to a difficult-to-measure technology at an advanced stage of development and use. Further investigation of international regulatory schemes for dual-use technology of similar diffusion and development to the internet, such as international civil aviation, is needed.     

Icons Off the Mark

In two landmark articles, longtime scholars Kenneth N. Waltz and Thomas C. Schelling have re-emphasized the utility of nuclear deterrence over nuclear nonproliferation (Waltz) and nuclear disarmament (Schelling). While the thrust of the articles is seemingly different, both are rooted in the same intellectual ground: an epistemology that assumes problem-free inferences, drawn from past experiences, are applicable in future scenarios; a foundational rooting in strategic rationality that entangles them in unsolvable contradictions concerning comparable risks of different nuclear constellations, namely deterrence versus proliferation and disarmament; and a bias in framing the empirical record that makes nuclear deterrence more conducive to security than nuclear disarmament. The common normative-practical denominator, then, is to let a nuclear weapon-free world appear both less desirable and less feasible than it might actually be.     

Patents and Dual-use Technology: An Empirical Study of the World's Largest Defence Companies

Abstract

This paper examines the generation of technological knowledge by leading companies in the defence industry. In particular, we test whether the characteristics of large defence companies are related to both the production of different types of patents (civilian, military and mixed), and the generation of dual-use technologies. To explore these links, we rely on economic data for the top 100 defence companies from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute database, and patent information from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database. Our results show that the relationship between the production of civilian patents and the size of the company is positive and significant. However, this relationship does not hold for the production of military patents. Furthermore, the military commercial profile is unrelated to the generation of military patents. Regarding the involvement in dual-use technologies, firms engaged in dual-use are those with higher military sales, a greater number of employees and a larger number of patents (civilian, military and mixed) than those not engaged in dual-use. Furthermore, we found a skill effect (more involvement in dual-use per employee) in European firms compared to US firms. These findings help to identify which firms should be targeted by government policies if increasing dual-use technologies becomes a political objective.     

The economic effects of international trade in armaments in the major western industrialized and developing countries†

We have used the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to assess the impact of exports and imports of armaments (based on 1980 data) on sectoral trade and employment and other economic variables in the major Western trading countries. If the United States were to place a unilateral embargo on its arms exports and imports, we calculate that it would experience a comparatively small amount of employment displacement in the aggregate and that most of this displacement would occur in the transport equipment and electric machinery sectors. If all the major Western countries were to place a multilateral embargo on their arms trade, the sectoral effects on the United States would be similarly small. But the sectoral effects in several other industrialized and developing countries measured as a percentage of sectoral employment, would be larger, indicating potential short‐run adjustment problems in labor markets in some cases.