How did the new emphasis on non-proliferation influence Cold War global politics? And how effective was the NPT in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons? In the years since the treaty was signed, many critics have emerged and have pointed out the treaty’s weaknesses. According to them, the original treaty did not create a rigorous enough inspections regime. Given the hopes for peaceful uses of atomic energy, not enough was done to recognize how easily civilian projects could be turned into weapons programs. Further, the treaty was inherently discriminatory, particularly against countries outside of the Cold War alliance system. The superpowers were not held to their promise to reduce their nuclear arsenals and to plan for their eventual elimination. Little was done to sanction new nuclear countries, such as Israel and India.
US non-proliferation policy was often a target of sharp criticism. Close allies, like West Germany, Taiwan, and South Korea, chafed at the pressure applied on them to forgo weapons, while other geopolitical interests seemed to cause the United States to overlook Israel’s and Pakistan’s efforts. Although few experts fully accepted the logic of Kenneth Waltz’s argument that "more may be better," many observers in the United States argued that the robust nature of nuclear deterrence made undue attention to nuclear proliferation misguided. Even after the Cold War, the United States has been unwilling to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy. While countries including India, Russia, Israel, and even China have moved toward full or modified promises to eschew the first use of nuclear weapons, the United States still maintains its right to do so if it sees fit. These and other positions have caused critics to argue that US nuclear strategy undermined the goal of nuclear non-proliferation.
What they ignore is how difficult it is to construct an effective global nuclear non-proliferation regime that is not riddled with puzzles and paradoxes. As a 1964 Hudson Institute report explained, “retarding the spread of nuclear weapons” is a process where “the best may be the enemy of the good.” The study continued, an “attempt to get 'everything’ may risk achieving substantially less than it would be possible with more modest ambitions.”607 Most everyone believed that nuclear non-proliferation was an admirable principle. But constructing policies that generated worldwide support for it was difficult. How could states be convinced to forgo the perceived prestige and national security advantages that came with becoming a nuclear power?
What the critics have failed to fully understand is that any successful nuclear non-proliferation policy would be burdened with paradoxes and contradictions. Consider the US position toward nuclear strategy, non-first use, and anti-ballistic missile defenses as it related to its efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation among its allies. On the one hand, the United States needed to emphasize “the political unattractiveness of nuclear weapons, to convince populations that they are ugly, dirty, immoral, illegal, dangerous, sickening and not very useful.” On the other hand, US policies undermined this message. “As one US expert noted at the time, having a nuclear sub visit Tokyo is like bringing a shiny new motorcycle home to show it off to your teenage son, while trying to convince him that he doesn’t want one.”608
From Japan’s perspective, however, the issue was not quite so simple. Japan was near two enemies who had nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and China. If it was going to give up its own weapons, Japan needed a serious and credible commitment that the United States would protect it if attacked, even if it meant using nuclear weapons. This commitment could hardly be credible in the face of much larger Soviet and Chinese conventional forces without a robust nuclear capability. According to this logic, ifthe United States reduced its nuclear forces, it might actually encourage proliferation. A smaller US strategic force increased the incentives for small countries to become a “first rank nuclear power.”609 To keep Japan nonnuclear, a “clearly superior US nuclear capability in Asia” had to be maintained.610 The United States also needed to be willing to use its nuclear weapons first to protect allies surrounded by nuclear adversaries that also had conventional military superiority.
Deploying strategic missile defenses would also have uncertain effects on nuclear proliferation. Building an ABM system might accelerate an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, a US ABM deployment could "decrease U. S. vulnerabilities to possible Chinese threats of attack and thereby enhance the credibility of our [US] commitments to Japan and other friendly nations."611 A limited ABM could be justified so that "those countries which fear the growth of Chinese nuclear capabilities should not feel that their only alternative is to create a costly nuclear arsenal themselves."612
In order to prevent proliferation, the superpowers had to guarantee allies and potential friends that they would come to their defense if attacked. Since few potential proliferators outside of the Eastern bloc were interested in any sort of guarantee from the Soviet Union, the burden fell upon the United States to craft military policies that would reassure countries such as Japan, West Germany, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan that they could live safely within the new non-proliferation regime. This led to expensive deployments of forces abroad, and justified the buildup of US nuclear capabilities. Security guarantees, however, threatened to pull the United States into regional conflicts it might have otherwise avoided.
What about states that did not want or trust superpower security commitments? And what factors motivated states whose primary concern was not the Cold War - diverse countries ranging from Argentina to Sweden? Much more historical research remains to be done to fully understand why some states forgo nuclear weapons while others embrace them.
World History
