Table Of ContentPower versus Prudence:
Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons
With the end of the Cold War, nuclear non-proliferation has emerged
as a central issue in international security relations. While most existing
works on nuclear proliferation deal with the question of nuclear acqui-
sition, T.V. Paul explains why some states have decided to forswear
nuclear weapons even when they have the technological capability or
potential capability to develop them, and why some states already in
possession of nuclear arms choose to dismantle them.
In Power versus Prudence Paul develops a prudential-realist model,
arguing that a nation's national nuclear choices depend on specific
regional security contexts: the non-great power states most likely to
forgo nuclear weapons are those in zones of low and moderate conflict,
while nations likely to acquire such capability tend to be in zones of
high conflict and engaged in protracted conflicts and enduring rivalries.
He demonstrates that the choice to forbear acquiring nuclear weapons
is also a function of the extent of security interdependence that states
experience with other states, both allies and adversaries. He applies the
comparative case study method to pairs of states with similar charac-
teristics - Germany/Japan, Canada/Australia, Sweden/Switzerland,
Argentina/Brazil - in addition to analysing the nuclear choices of
South Africa, Ukraine, South Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Paul
concludes by questioning some of the prevailing supply side
approaches to non-proliferation, offering an explication of the security
variable by linking nuclear proliferation with protracted conflicts and
enduring rivalries.
Power versus Prudence will be of interest to students of international
relations, policy-makers, policy analysts, and the informed public
concerned with the questions of nuclear weapons, non-proliferation,
and disarmament.
T.V. PAUL is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science, McGill University. He has published several books and numer-
ous articles on international security and the politics of nuclear
weapons, including Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker
Powers, the Absolute Weapon Revisited: Nuclear Arms and the Emerg-
ing International Order, and International Order and the Future of
World Politics.
FOREIGN POLICY, SECURITY, AND STRATEGIC STUDIES
Editors: Jacques Levesque and Charles-Philippe David
The Foreign Policy, Security, and Strategic Studies Series seeks to
promote analysis of the transformation and adaptation of foreign
and security policies in the post-Cold War era. The series welcomes
manuscripts offering innovative interpretations or new theoretical
approaches to these questions,
whether dealing with specific strategic or policy issues or with the
evolving concept of security itself.
MONOGRAPHS
Canada, Latin America, and the New Internationalism:
A Foreign Policy Analysis, 1968-1990
Brian J.R. Stevenson
Power versus Prudence:
Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons
TV. Paul
COLLECTIONS
NATO after Fifty:
Enlargement, Russia, and European Security
Edited by Charles-Philippe David and Jacques Lèvesque
Power versus Prudence
Why Nations Forgo
Nuclear Weapons
T.V. Paul
The Centre for Security and Foreign Policy Studies
and
The Teleglobe+Raoul-Dandurand
Chair of Strategic and Diplomatic Studies
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press 2000
ISBN 0-7735-2086-4 (cloth)
ISBN 0-7735-2087-2 (paper)
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2000
Bibliothèque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of
a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences
Federation of Canada, using funds provided by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges
the financial support of the Government of
Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing
activities. It also acknowledges the support of
the Canada Council for the Arts for its
publishing program.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Paul, T.V.
Power versus prudence:
why nations forgo nuclear weapons
(Foreign policy, security and strategic studies)
Copublished with the Centre for Security
and Foreign Policy Studies and the
Teleglobe+Raoul-Dandurand Chair of Strategic
and Diplomatic Studies.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-2086-4 (bound) -
ISBN 0-7735-2087-2 (pbk.)
1. Nuclear weapons - Government policy.
2. Nuclear nonproliferation.
3. Security, International. I. Universitè
du Quebèc á Montreal. Centre d'études
des politiques étrangéres et de sécurité.
II. Teleglobe+Raoul-Dandurand Chair of
Strategic and Diplomatic Studies. III. Title.
IV. Series.
U264.P38 2000 327.I'747 C00-900058-5
Typeset in Sabon 10/12
by Caractéra inc., Quebec City
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
PART ONE THEORY
1 Introduction: Theory and Nuclear Weapons Choices 3
2 Explaining Nuclear Forbearance 14
PART TWO CASE STUDIES
3 Aligned Major Economic Powers: Germany and Japan 37
4 Aligned Middle Powers: Canada and Australia 62.
5 Neutral States: Sweden and Switzerland 84
6 Non-Allied States: Argentina and Brazil 99
7 Nuclear Choices of South Africa, Ukraine, and South Korea 113
8 New Nuclear States: India, Pakistan, and Israel 125
9 Conclusions 143
Notes 157
Bibliography 195
Index 219
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
With the demise of the Cold War, nuclear proliferation has become
one of the major challenges to international order. The nuclear tests
by India and Pakistan in May 1998 and the reported efforts by other
states, especially North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, to acquire nuclear
weapons have increased international attention paid to the subject.
Statesmen and scholars, especially in the West, have been concerned
about the arrival of several states with nuclear weapons since the early
days of the nuclear age. This resulted in the creation of the non-
proliferation regime and a number of restrictive measures designed to
prevent the transfer of technology and materials to potential nuclear
states. However, during the five decades since the advent of the atomic
age, several technologically capable states chose to forgo their option
of building deliverable nuclear weapons, while some erstwhile nuclear
states gave up their acquired nuclear arms, generating a gap between
popular expectations and the empirical reality regarding the nuclear
choices of nation-states. The enormous attention being paid to the
question of why nations acquire nuclear weapons is not complemented
by efforts to shed light on why countries forgo nuclear weapons. This
book attempts to provide a theoretical explanation for the puzzle of
nuclear forbearance by several technologically capable states, while
simultaneously explaining nuclear acquisition by some others.
I have benefited enormously from the kindness of colleagues, friends,
and family members while researching and writing this book. Several
colleagues read chapters or the full manuscript and provided valuable
comments and criticisms. They include: Robert Art, Mark Brawley,
Lawrence Broz, Marc Busch, Francis Gavin, John Hall, Richard
Harknett, Albert Legault, David Mares, Baldev Raj Nayar, Phil
Oxhorn, and James Wirtz.
viii Acknowledgments
I revised the manuscript while I was a visiting scholar at the Center
for International Affairs (CFIA) and the Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies, Harvard University, during 1997-98. The support extended
by Jennifer Cairns, Michael Desch, Anne Emerson, Jeff Frieden, and
Inga Peterson was invaluable, and the center's active intellectual life
was a constant stimulus. Seminar presentations at Harvard and else-
where allowed me to test my ideas, and I learned from remarks made
by several scholars. I thank Samuel P. Huntington and the pre- and
post-doctoral fellows at Olin for their criticisms and comments. I am
grateful to organizer Brian Mandell and participants at CFIA'S Canada
Seminar, where I presented the material on Canada (in chapter 4), and
organizers Michael Brown and Sean Lynn-Jones at the Belfer Centre
for Science and International Affairs, where I delivered chapter 3, on
Germany and Japan.
For their hosting of work-in-progress seminars and their valuable
comments, I also thank Robert Art and Seyom Brown at Brandeis
University; Michael Mastanduno and Alexander Wendt at Dartmouth
College; Kanti Bajpai and B. Vivekanandan at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi; Christopher Coker and Terry McNamee at the
London School of Economics; James Clay Moltz and Tariq Rauf at
the Monterey Institute of International Studies; Lynn Eden and Scott
Sagan at Stanford University; Allan Castle, Brian Job, and Mark
Zacker at the University of British Columbia; Patrick Morgan, Wayne
Sandhoz, and Alec Stone at the University of California - Irvine;
Benjamin J. Cohen at the University of California - Santa Barbara;
Christine Ingebester and Resat Kasaba at the University of Washington.
Grants and financial support came from the Rockefeller Foundation,
the now-defunct Cooperative Security Competition Program of the
Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, and McGill University's
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. I thank the Rockefeller
Foundation's Thomas Graham and Rebecca Rittgers for their support,
and the chair of McGilPs Political Science Department, Hudson Mead-
well, for granting me timely leave to work on the book. I also thank
Jacques Levesque, editor of the security and foreign policy series, and
Aurele Parisien, editor, at McGill-Queen's University Press, for their
interest and support. Several individuals assisted me during my field
research trips to Argentina, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Korea,
South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Graduate students
who provided research assistance include Christian Dinwoodie, Saira
Khan, Mark Lanteigne, Matthieu Moss, Mark Peranson, and Kirsten
Rafferty.
I thank my wife, Rachel, and daughters, Kavya and Leah, for their
love, understanding, and patience during my several absences from
home to research and write this book.
PART ONE
Theory
