Nonproliferation Policy: a Quintet for Two Violas?

The Nonproliferation Review/Spring-Summer 1994 Current thinking about nonproliferation issues tends to deal with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in a political vacuum, choosing to see these issues in a security-oriented context. This perspective reduces the complex rhythms and multiple voices of the process of proliferation to a single element-security. Just as a string quintet requires a viola, sometimes even two, so security clearly is an important element of understanding and dealing with proliferation. Yet the full score for proliferation extends beyond any single voice or any single set of issues. I argue in this essay that the policy instruments available for dealing with proliferation need to expand beyond security-centered measures and need to work in better harmony with their domestic political foundations, and that theoretical and policy understandings of proliferation need to become more explicitly political. Too often, U.S. government policy and the recommendations of nonproliferation analysts focus on a narrow set of proliferation causes and nonproliferation options. Countries are usually assumed to acquire weapons of mass destructions or ballistic missiles because they see them as necessary for their security. The most important factors in determining the course of proliferation therefore tend to be identified as external security threats and foreign technical assistance. Other causes or processes are addressed only cursorily or lumped into the residual category of status and prestige, while basic questions about the “security” issue--what is defined as security, what is defined as necessary for security, and how those definitions come to be accepted--frequently escape focused attention. Similarly, policy recommendations tend to rehearse the same tunes: export controls, arms control, and redressing security concerns. These old favorites play well in various capitals around the world, perhaps because they are both sensible and comfortably familiar. But they are also insufficient. The point here is not only that the nonproliferation community--both theorists and practitioners--can reach farther afield in devising policy options. We also need to recognize that nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction do not spring into being in isolation from the rest of society. Our analyses and recommendations need to recognize instead how the process of proliferation is intimately connected to broader political and international issues. This essay first examines the surprising diversity of causes and motivations that underlies the processes of development, acquisition, deployment, and retention of weapons of mass destruction, as well as ballistic missiles. It then turns to the expanded set of nonproliferation policy options and political processes that, from the U.S. perspective, becomes available when the spotlight is turned away from traditional security-based arms control and export control policies. This essay also tries to draw new implications and policy recommendations from the reality that nonproliferation policy formation in the United States is just as diverse and politiVIEWPOINT: NONPROLIFERATION POLICY: A QUINTET FOR TWO VIOLAS?