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ABSTRACT
Nuclear proliferation is not a binary outcome with uniform consequences, but instead spans a continuum of latent capacity to produce nuclear weapons. At various thresholds of technical development, some countries leverage nuclear latency to practice coercive diplomacy. How and when does nuclear technology provide a challenger with the most effective means to extract concessions in world politics? This article claims that compellence with nuclear latency puts a challenger on the horns of a credibility dilemma between demonstrating resolve and signaling restraint, and identifies a sweet spot for reaching an optimal bargain where the proliferation threat is credible while the assurance costs of revealing intent are low. Historical studies of South Korea, Japan, and North Korea validate this Goldilocks principle and find that it consistently reflects the ability to produce fissile material. Contrary to conventional wisdom about proliferation, nuclear technology generates political effects long before a country acquires nuclear weapons.
Acknowledgments
This article benefited from comments on earlier versions by James Acton, George Anzelon, Austin Carson, Toby Dalton, Alex Downes, Daniel Jacobs, Matthew Kroenig, Matthew Fuhrmann, Erik Gartzke, Charles Glaser, Jeffrey Knopf, Alex Montgomery, Nicholas Miller, Neil Narang, Jonathan Pearl, George Perkovich, Brian Radzinsky, Brad Roberts, Grant Schneider, Todd Sechser, Doug Shaw, Adam Stulberg, Jane Vaynman, George Quester, numerous government officials, two outstanding anonymous reviewers and the editors at Security Studies, as well as participants at the May 2016 Nuclear Policy Talk at the Elliott School of International Affairs, the 2016 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Nuclear Crossroads Initiative, the 2015 US Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium, and especially the 2015 Nuclear Studies Research Initiative retreat in Virginia.
Funding
The Stanton Foundation provided generous funding for the author to complete this research as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2015 until 2016.
Notes
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21 This follows the logic of signaling out of a security dilemma. See Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997): 171–201.
22 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 43.
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24 This logic is derived from H. E. Goemans, War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 32.
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32 Henry Kissinger, “Iran Must Be President Obama's Immediate Priority,” Washington Post, 16 November 2012, as quoted in Fuhrmann and Tkach, “Almost Nuclear,” 443.
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38 William Walker, Nuclear Entrapment: THORP and the Politics of Commitment (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1999).
39 Japan provides another example of path dependency in action, albeit not in a compellence situation. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, the shuttering of nuclear reactor operations curtailed Japan's ability to use plutonium, and reduced the need for a new reprocessing plant. But local government was so invested in the operation of the reprocessing plant that they forced Tokyo to reverse a decision to consider shutting down the facility. See James M. Acton, Wagging the Plutonium Dog: Japanese Domestic Politics and Its International Security Implications (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015).
40 I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
41 For an overview, see Kenneth M. Pollack, “A Return to Arms,” in Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 224–75.
42 I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
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44 U.S. Department of Energy, Restricted Data Declassification Decisions 1946 to the Present (RDD-7, Office of Declassification, January 2002).
45 Fuhrmann and Tkach, “Almost Nuclear.”
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49 Ibid., 56.
50 Ibid., 60.
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52 US National Security Council, “ROK Weapons Plans,” Memorandum, 3 March 1975, NPIHP #114628.
53 US National Security Council, “Development of US Policy.”
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56 Washington Post, 12 June 1975, quoted in Choi, “First Nuclear Crisis in the Korean Peninsula,” 78.
57 Choi, “The First Nuclear Crisis in the Korean Peninsula,” 78, 82.
58 US Department of State, “ROK Nuclear Reprocessing,” Cable, 8 September 1975, NPIHP #114609; Choi, “The First Nuclear Crisis in the Korean Peninsula,” 83.
59 Ibid., 81.
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62 John Welfield, An Empire in Eclipse: Japan in the Postwar American Alliance System (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1988), 110–111, 157.
63 LaFeber, The Clash, 316.
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65 LaFeber, The Clash, 318.
66 US Department of State, “Background Paper on Factors Which Could Influence National Decisions Concerning Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons,” Background Paper, 12 December 1964, NSA #NP01079, 10. Emphasis in original.
67 US Department of State, “Japan's Prospects in the Nuclear Weapons Field: Proposed US Courses of Action,” Memorandum, 15 June 1965, NSA #JU00485, 2.
68 Ibid.
69 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “Your Meeting with Prime Minister Sato,” Memorandum, 9 January 1965, NSA #JU00430, 3; US Department of State, “Current US-Japanese and World Problems [Part 2],” Memorandum of Conversation, 12 January 1965, NSA #JU00437.
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72 US Department of State, “Japan's Prospects in the Nuclear Weapons Field.” 14.
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74 Ibid., 10.
75 Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 37.
76 Scott Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999), 81–85.
77 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, 175.
78 Ibid., 181.
79 Alan Riding, “U.S. and North Korea Sign Pact to End Nuclear Dispute,” New York Times, 22 October 1994, A5.
80 Testimony of Robert Gallucci, “Implications of the US–North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, United States Senate, 1 December 1994 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1994), 12.
81 Testimony of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, “North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 24–25 January 1995 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1995), 7.
82 Ibid.
83 Narushige Michishita, North Korea's Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966–2008 (London: Routledge, 2010), 168.
84 Statements of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 February and 31 March 2005. Quoted in Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011), 148.
85 The best overview remains Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 14–45. For a direct challenge to the core pillar of mutual vulnerability, see Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2015): 37–73.
86 Victor Cha, Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: Ecco, 2012), 300.
87 Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?"
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89 For a complementary set of formal model findings, see Andrew J. Coe and Muhammet Bas, “Give Peace a (Second) Chance: The Viability of Bilateral Nonproliferation Deals,” (paper presented at the 2015 International Studies Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 18–21 February 2015).
90 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 70–73.
91 Sechser, “Militarized Compellent Threats.”
92 Despite an enduring debate about compellence with nuclear weapons, there has been little consideration of how variation in nuclear latency enhances or degrades a country's ability to compel changes in the status quo. See, for example, Matthew Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 141–71; Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 173–95.
93 Todd S. Sechser, “Goliath's Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power,” International Organization 64, no. 4 (October 2010): 627–60; Phil Haun, Coercion, Survival and War: Why Weak States Resist the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).
94 Mira Rapp-Hooper and Kenneth Waltz, “What Kim Jong-Il Learned from Qaddafi's Fall: Never Disarm,” Atlantic, 24 October 2011.
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96 Daniel Altman and Nicholas Miller, “Red Lines in Nuclear Nonproliferation,” (working paper, March 2016).
97 James M. Acton, “The Problem with Nuclear Mind Reading,” Survival, 51, no. 1(February–March 2009): 136–37.
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Tristan A. Volpe
Tristan A. Volpe is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to Carnegie, Volpe was a Lawrence Scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2013 to 2015.