Maintaining a nonproliferation regime

Joseph S. Nye

International Organization, 1981, vol. 35, issue 1, 15-38

Abstract: Three-and-a-half decades have passed since the energy of the atom was used in warfare. Yet rather than nuclear doom, the world has seen a surprising nuclear stability thus far. Equally remarkable is the fact that over the same period nuclear technology has spread to more than two score nations, yet only a small fraction have chosen to develop nuclear weaponry. A third notable point has been the development of an international nonproliferation regime—a set of rules, norms, and institutions, which haltingly and albeit imperfectly, has discouraged the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability.The wrong policies in the 1980s—i.e., policies that put the United States in an overly rigid position on the nuclear fuel cycle or which lower the priority the United States gives to the issue in security terms—could still sacrifice the current modest success in regime maintenance. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to the political problem of proliferation. But given the difficulty of constructing international institutions in a world of sovereign states, and the risks attendant upon their collapse, political wisdom begins with efforts to maintain the existing regime with its presumption against proliferation.

Date: 1981
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:intorg:v:35:y:1981:i:01:p:15-38_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Organization from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().