ACQUIRING FOREIGN NUCLEAR ASSISTANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has laid out an ambitious plan to become the first Arab country to possess a civilian nuclear energy program. Central to that effort has been the Emirati government's ability to obtain foreign nuclear assistance. This article traces the UAE's strategies for overcoming the obstacles that stood in the way of nuclear suppliers providing assistance. It examines the approach taken by the UAE to assuage the safety and security concerns of nuclear suppliers, how the UAE leveraged its alliances with France and the United States to obtain their cooperation, and its strategies for engaging domestic interest groups in supplier states. The generalizable elements of the UAE's strategies are discussed and used to provide insight into the prospects for other Middle Eastern states' bids to obtain similar assistance. The article concludes with a discussion of the potentially transformative aspects of the strategies employed by the UAE in shaping other countries' pursuit of nuclear energy in the region.     

TURKEY'S NUCLEAR COMEBACK

As worries have grown about global warming and the sustainability and price of fossil fuels, the demand for nuclear energy has increased, and nuclear power is increasingly viewed as a reliable and clean resource. However, the so-called nuclear renaissance coincides with an international security environment in which the norms of nuclear nonproliferation seem to be eroding. Turkey, a non-nuclear weapon state, plans to generate nuclear power to meet future energy demands, but it is aware of and concerned with regional proliferation trends. Questions have also been raised regarding Ankara's rationale for using nuclear energy, as well as its potential motivations and capabilities regarding future proliferation. This article will provide an overview of Turkey's nuclear energy history and plans, as well as the proliferation-related questions that could arise; it will also look at the domestic debate on nuclear energy and Turkey's status as a non-nuclear weapon state.     

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.     

TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN ITALY: Striking a Balance between Disarmament Aspirations and Alliance Obligations

Despite the fact that Italy hosts almost half of the remaining estimated 150–200 US tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) that are currently deployed in Europe, case studies of Italy have been largely neglected. The article seeks to fill that gap by outlining the key elements of Italy's position regarding the presence, role, and future of TNW in Italy. By considering both the military and political-symbolic dimensions of TNW, the author argues that Italy has largely embraced the process of the devaluation of nuclear weapons; however, this is offset by the country's determination to preserve the principles of solidarity and the indivisibility of Euro-Atlantic security. By making the alliance's cohesion a priority, Italy appears willing to postpone the complete elimination of TNW from its territory if necessary; despite this, Italy otherwise considers TNW to be not only weapons of little intrinsic value but also obstacles to the global nuclear disarmament program that it strongly supports.     

PART I: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF “THE MYTH OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE”

Several years ago, Ward Wilson presented in this journal a wide-ranging challenge to what every generation of national security scholars and practitioners since the end of World War II has been taught about nuclear weapons. He asserted that nuclear deterrence amounts to far less than its proponents have claimed and provocatively suggested that nuclear deterrence is a myth. Relying upon both empirical and theoretical objections to nuclear deterrence, he concluded that its failures were clear-cut and indisputable, whereas its successes were speculative. Yet in spite of a flourishing trade in scholarly articles, think tank reports, blog posts, and opinion pieces concerning nuclear deterrence, nobody—including nuclear weapons scholars—has ventured more than a limited critique of Wilson's essay. There are, however, serious shortcomings in Wilson's arguments—deficiencies that make his essay an unpersuasive brief against nuclear deterrence. Wilson's thesis could be correct. His arguments, however, are unlikely to persuade any skeptical members of Congress, upon whom future progress in arms control depends, to reconsider the value they attach to nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.

     

KICKING THE HORNETS’ NEST

This article applies the concept of nuclear ambivalence to the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nuclear ambivalence differs from other approaches to understanding nuclear proliferation in that it focuses on the deeply misunderstood relationship between the two potential uses of nuclear power: energy and weapons. According to this theory, the civilian applications of nuclear technology cannot be separated from the potential military applications and vice versa. Ambivalence, therefore, extends into the realm of states’ nuclear intentions, making it impossible to know with certainty what a potential proliferator's “true” intentions are. This article will demonstrate that the concept of nuclear ambivalence applies in the case of Iran, suggesting that current international nonproliferation efforts run the risk of encouraging rather than discouraging Iranian weaponization. The final section outlines recommendations for policy makers to reverse this counterproductive nonproliferation approach.     

EXTENDED DETERRENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The article presents and analyzes the US extended deterrence commitments in the Middle East as well as those provided by regional states, and assesses the effectiveness and credibility of these commitments. The article then proceeds to analyze a situation wherein Iran successfully develops nuclear weapons. It considers first the security requirements and alternatives of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, and then proceeds to assess the stability—or instability—of an Israeli-Iranian nuclear balance. The enhancement of US extended deterrence in the region is required in order to deter Iran, reassure allies, and contribute to the stability of an Israeli-Iranian nuclear balance. The article also discusses several contextual issues, such as: the future form of US extended deterrence; distinguishing between the latter and other US extended deterrence commitments; and the different approaches of specific GCC states and Israel.     

ESCAPE FROM NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Since the post-World War II genesis of nuclear deterrence, two presidential initiatives have been presented to deliver humanity from the threat of its failure. The first was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a constellation of space- and ground-based systems that President Ronald Reagan envisioned would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” The second is President Barack Obama's roadmap to “a world without nuclear weapons,” commonly referred to as “Global Zero.” While these proposals appear to have little in common, deeper investigation reveals a number of provocative similarities in motivation and presentation. Moreover, both generated fierce debate, often with ideological overtones, about their strategic desirability and technical feasibility. We use these parallels, as well as prominent dissimilarities, to draw lessons from the SDI experience that can be applied to the debate over Global Zero.     

The Problem of Weak Nuclear States

Governments are increasingly recognizing the problem posed by internally weak nuclear-capable states. The problem, however, is under-theorized. This article brings together literature on sovereignty and international order, the nonproliferation regime, and weak states, and introduces new concepts to provide a more structured understanding of this problem. Insight comes from focusing attention on the function and governance of two nuclear estates (termed the production and operational estates), and on their resilience to decay and disorder occurring within the state and society. Drawing on empirical observation, the authors suggest a typology of weakness in nuclear states, involving state fragmentation typified by the former Soviet Union, the “hard weak state” typified by North Korea, and the internally conflicted state typified by Pakistan. Although these types give rise to distinctive difficulties, their alleviation depends heavily on the maintenance of internal authority within the state and estates, the presence or absence of cooperative relations, and the international regulatory framework's vitality.     

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.