President Lyndon B. Johnson looking on as Secretary of State Dean Rusk prepares to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, on July 1, 1968. (Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library)
The newly released 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS), the aspirational security blueprint for the final years of the Obama administration, refers to the risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclear material no fewer than eight times in its 29 pages of text. The key passage on Page 11 reads “no threat poses as grave a danger to our security and well-being as the potential use of nuclear weapons and materials by irresponsible states or terrorists.” One of the greatest tools the United States has to combat this threat is the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, shifting global power could threaten the nonproliferation regime architecture in ways that could have serious long-term security consequences.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or the NPT, is the cornerstone of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, a set of treaties, agreements, and norms aimed at curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons and dangerous nuclear materials. It was this very architecture—the NPT, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, IAEA inspections, IAEA referrals to the U.N. Security Council, and six rounds of sanctions — that brought Iran to the negotiating table, and which remains the most viable way to approach nuclear proliferation peacefully. These institutions provided a clear mechanism for the United States to organize much of the international community around a strong sanctions regime to exert pressure on Iran.
But the United States may not always be able to use its outsized influence to corral states to support and cooperate with the nuclear nonproliferation order. As the relative economic power of the United States wanes and others grow, U.S. levers of influence weaken vis-à-vis these states. Indeed, as the NSS correctly notes, “India’s potential, China’s rise, and Russia’s aggression all significantly impact the future of major power relations.” These and other newly powerful states may not be as interested in underwriting the regime as the United States has been.
As my research indicates, it has been the superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and the United States alone in the post-Cold War era — that have used their global influence to develop and promote the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The United States and the U.S.S.R. largely penned the NPT text in the 1960s. In 1975, the United States convened what would become the Nuclear Supplier Group to establish guidelines for nuclear trade so civilian technology would not be misused for weapons development. In 1991, after the discovery of the breadth of the clandestine Iraqi nuclear weapons program, the United States took a leading role in establishing a stronger IAEA safeguards agreement, the Additional Protocol. The Additional Protocol, a voluntary agreement that the United States would like to universalize, requires states to supply greater information on all aspects of their nuclear fuel cycle to the IAEA, permits short-notice inspections of nuclear facilities, and allows the collection of environmental samples. The United States and its allies also pushed for the NPT’s indefinite extension in 1995, allowing the treaty to exist in perpetuity. Not only did the superpowers develop this nuclear order, but they have used their influence to encourage other states cooperate with it.
In previous research, Nicholas Miller has shown how the United States pressured states to curtail their nuclear programs, and Jennifer Erickson and Christopher Way have found that the United States and the Soviet Union offered “selective and conditional access to conventional arms” to encourage states to join the NPT.
My research takes this strain a step further in showing that superpower pressure— in the form of conditions, inducements, and coercion — has been instrumental in garnering cooperation with a variety of institutions within the nuclear nonproliferation regime. I find that in general, states that are allies and partners with the United States—those states that are largely satisfied with the U.S.-led international order—have cooperated with each new nuclear nonproliferation initiative relatively quickly. In contrast, states that have lower satisfaction with the U.S. global leadership are slower to cooperate and when they do, a significant portion of their calculation is based on pressure exerted by the superpowers. Most of these states do not prioritize nuclear nonproliferation as the Soviet Union and the United States have — they have other priorities. These states lack the motivation the superpowers provided to put nuclear nonproliferation on their agendas.
Using a newly created dataset of nuclear nonproliferation regime cooperation indicators, and a new measure of satisfaction with the U.S. order by Michael Bailey, Anton Strezhnev and Erik Voeten, I find that the single best predictor of how quickly a state joins new nonproliferation regime agreements and activities is its satisfaction with the U.S.-led order. I find this to be true for IAEA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements, states’ positions on the 1995 indefinite extension of the NPT, the Additional Protocol safeguards agreement, and states’ implementation of UNSCR 1540. When dissatisfied states do cooperate, they have often been influenced by the United States, especially states that received U.S. aid, indicating one possible mechanism of U.S. leverage.
Beyond the quantitative findings, forthcoming case study research indicates the United States has used many means of leverage to promote these nonproliferation activities to less cooperative and less satisfied states. During the 1995 debate over how to extend the NPT, the United States sought buy-in from its allies and partners—satisfied states—before addressing hesitant states. After the May 1995 Conference in which a majority of states agreed to extend the treaty indefinitely, as was the U.S. goal, a number of weaker states complained about the “arm-twisting” they encountered by the United States. In another example, the United States declared in 2004 that concluding an Additional Protocol was required for states to enter into U.S. nuclear supply agreements. The United States continues to push the Nuclear Suppliers Group to make the Additional Protocol a condition of nuclear supply.
Following the logic of my research, the global power shifts noted in the NSS could spell trouble for the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the general security of the United States. As the United States declines in relative power, its ability to lead nuclear nonproliferation behavior may wane as well. Powerful states may resist efforts to strengthen the regime, as Brazil currently challenges the U.S. effort to make the Additional Protocol the universal safeguards standard. Similarly, whereas the Soviet Union cooperated with the United States to promote nonproliferation, today Russia resists IAEA efforts to develop a new safeguards agreement, the so-called “state-level concept.” Most troubling would be a future gap in superpower focus on this issue, with no state able to direct attention and resources on nuclear nonproliferation as the United States has for over half a century. Fortunately as the NSS points out, today “the vast majority of states do not want to replace the [global] system we have.” But as global power dynamics continue to shift we may come to a time when the regime loses steam without a potent superpower champion.
Rebecca Davis Gibbons is a doctoral candidate in international relations at Georgetown University. In 2013-2014, she was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the RAND Corporation.
