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This
research
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been
commissioned
by
the
International
Commission
on
Nuclear
Non‐proliferation
and
Disarmament,
but
reflects
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of
the
author
and
should
not
be
construed
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necessarily
reflecting
the
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of
the
Commission.
Nuclear Abolition: Trust-Building’s Greatest Challenge?1 Nicholas J Wheeler2 30 September 2009 Executive Summary The concept of trust has been marginalised in the theory and practice of International Relations, and this has had negative consequences for exploring viable alternatives to a nuclear-armed world. For the most part, the mainstream has conceded the view that because of the inescapable uncertainties that confront governments about the motives and intentions of others – the security dilemma – it is dangerous to trust in the peaceful intentions of states that have the capabilities to inflict great harm. The paper challenges this position by arguing that while trust can never be separated from the condition of uncertainty, this does not prevent governments and societies from developing the political conditions that can mitigate and even eliminate interstate security competition. Building trust at the international level is particularly demanding because it is the sphere of politics where the safety nets are at their flimsiest, and the costs of misplaced trust are at their most expensive. This has never been more the case than with nuclear weapons. This is why the internationalisation of trust will be so difficult to achieve in such a high-stakes arena, but also why trust-building is so urgently needed if the logic of fear and mistrust is not to feed further nuclear proliferation. As long as the existing nuclear powers argue that they need nuclear weapons for their security, the invitation is there for that growing number of states that have the technological capability to develop nuclear weapons to apply the same reasoning. The result could be a world of many more nuclear armed states. We have no precedents for what life would be like in what Albert Wohlstetter once called ‘a nuclear armed crowd’. A few brave strategists argue that the benefits of nuclear deterrence – that is, the overwhelming fear of nuclear war – will maintain peace even in a world of many more nuclear powers. But given that deterrence would have to work in a multipolar nuclear world not only for the rest of this century, but for centuries to come, it is surely too great a wager with the lives of the millions that would be killed in a future nuclear war - or even wars - to rely on fear to keep the arsenals indefinitely at bay.
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I would like to thank Ken Berry, Anne Harris, Jan Ruzicka, and Tristan Price for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. Some of the ideas in this paper were first presented as ‘Nuclear Abolition: Trust-Building’s Greatest Challenge’, Professorial inaugural lecture, Aberystwyth University, 10 March 2009, vidcast available at http://www.aber.ac.uk/interpol/en/research/DDMI/audiovideo.html and ‘Trust to Zero’, paper presented to a Wilton Park conference on ‘Managing Nuclear Weapons’, 18-21 June 2009. 2 Director, David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, Department of International Politics Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Ceredigion SY23 3FE; Tel +44 (0) 1970 622852; Fax + 44 (0) 1970 622708; Email:
[email protected]
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Nuclear abolition will never be achievable whilst governments view it as moves in a zero-sum game; instead, what is needed is for leaders to transcend this way of thinking and learn to base their security on mutual trust rather than mutual fear. This paper explores two alternative pathways to building trust – a graduated model where trust develops step-by-step and the idea of a ‘leap of trust’. I examine the potential of these trust-building processes and mechanisms in relation to the challenge of building trust between the nuclear powers (actual and latent). The paper also highlights the ‘trust deficit’ between the ‘Nuclear-Weapon States’ (NWS) and the ‘Non-Nuclear Weapon States’ (NNWS) in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which must be repaired if the Treaty is to endure as the corner-stone of global nuclear non-proliferation efforts. The paper argues that the key to restoring the confidence of the NNWS in the NPT is for the NWS to live up to their disarmament obligations under Article VI of the Treaty. This is not to underestimate the importance in any revitalised ‘Grand Bargain’ of the NNWS playing their part in strengthening the norm of non-proliferation. However, what is necessary in the first place is to convince the NNWS that this time it will be different (after what many of them see as a trail of broken promises), and this puts a premium on the NWS taking the lead by making significant progress towards disarmament Achieving radical reductions in nuclear arms will require leaders in the NWS with the imagination to empathise with the security fears of potential nuclear adversaries. However, the challenge is translating this individual level of empathy into state policies that can build trust. This requires policy-makers with both the confidence and the domestic political support to take a series of unilateral measures – perhaps even what I call in the paper a ‘leap of trust’ – to break-through the psychology of fear and distrust that can develop even between actors with peaceful/defensive intentions. Ultimately, the purpose of these trust-building processes is to promote a transformation of identities, leading to the growth of a ‘security community’. The paper argues that the promise of trust-building at the international level is the emergence and development of regional security communities, and ultimately, the achievement of a global security community. Security communities hold the key to achieving ‘global zero’ because they promise to replace nuclear threats by a new international politics in which force has been delegitimated as an instrument of state policy. However, it is important to recognise that security communities such as the West-European one do not emerge fully-matured overnight. Rather, it can take decades before states have arrived at the point where they no longer target each other with military forces – the litmus test of a security community. The final part of the paper discusses the potential for nuclear trust-building through the example of the security community that developed between Argentina and Brazil in the 1980s. Both countries had the potential to develop nuclear weapons by the end of the 1970s, and there were concerns that their rivalry might lead to a regional nuclear arms race. Although there are regionally specific factors that explain the nuclear rapprochement that took place, I consider whether there are any lessons that can be learned for nuclear trust-building elsewhere.
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Can trust-building strategies of the kind recommended in this paper commend themselves to policy-makers? The answer to this question depends upon what level of vulnerability decision-makers are being asked to accept in order to build trust. I show how a graduated or step-by-step approach to trust-building requires leaders to take only ‘limited risks’, though this leaves plenty of room for debate as to what counts as ‘limited risks’. Leaps of trust, on the other hand, as the name suggests require decision-makers to take greater risks, but even here leaps are sometimes furnished with a safety net. The hard case arises when decision-makers can only send a signal of their trustworthiness by exposing their country to danger if it turns out that the target of their trust-building efforts has aggressive intent. These cases arise but they occur less often than we think, and there is more space for trust-building than we often give credit for. If governments and global civil society are serious about ridding the world of nuclear weapons, then radical rethinking, along with bold policy initiatives, is needed if inter-state relations based on nuclear fear are to be replaced by robust security communities embedded in relations of trust. Trust-building is no guarantee of security, but when decision-makers in nuclear-armed states weigh the costs of taking a ‘leap of trust’ that might prove dangerous, they need to remember that misplaced suspicion brings its own risks and costs. There are no risk-free nuclear or non-nuclear futures, and any assessment of the risks that would accompany policies of trust-building has to be set against the risks that would exist in a world of 40-50 nuclear weapon states. This frightening prospect could easily come to pass if the existing owners of the bomb – and any future entrants to the nuclear cabal – continue to operate with the mindset that nuclear weapons are the ultimate hedge against an uncertain world. Changing this approach is trust-building’s greatest challenge. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons ever invented and their abolition is the greatest challenge facing trust-building at the international level. The starting point for this paper is President Barack Obama’s claim in his Prague speech that fatalist thinking is the ‘deadly adversary’ that has to be conquered if nuclear abolition is to be achieved. As the President argued, such thinking feeds the dangerous belief that ‘we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction.’3 The standard contention in the literature on Strategic Studies and nuclear strategy has been that disarmament is not possible in the absence of trust between states, and that this cannot be achieved in an anarchic international system (defined as one that lacks an overarching global authority). However, it is this assumption that needs to be critically challenged. The notion of trust has been marginalised in the theory and practice of International Relations, and this neglect has been most notable in relation to issues of nuclear arms control and disarmament. As the Egyptian diplomat Sameh Aboul-Enein has written, ‘The concept of trust is probably the one least developed in the whole disarmament and nonproliferation literature, yet trust...is a key to any process of cooperation among nations.’4 It might be objected that such a proposition overlooks the
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Remarks of President Barack Obama, Hradčany Square, Prague, 5 April 2009. Sameh Aboul-Enein, ‘The Roadmap to Total Nuclear Disarmament’ in George Perkovich and James Acton (eds.), Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C., 2009), p. 281. 4
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significant literature on nuclear Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) that has developed since the early 1970s. However, what is striking about the existing work on CSBMs is that it has not systematically explored how adversaries might overcome the dynamics of distrust without which CSBMs would not be possible in the first place. The paper aims to rectify these deficiencies. I explore the potential of a number of trust-building mechanisms and processes to overcome the fear and suspicion that exists between some of the nuclear powers and to repair the ‘trust deficit’ that exists between the five recognised ‘Nuclear-Weapon States’ (NWS) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the ‘Non-Nuclear Weapon State’ (NNWS) parties to the treaty.5 I define the goal of successful trust-building as the creation of a relationship in which two or more actors, based on mutual interpretations of attitudes and behaviour, believe that they can be relied upon now - and in the future - to desist from exploiting their military capabilities – actual or potential – in ways that will be damaging to them.6 The promise of trust-building at the international level is the emergence and development of regional security communities, and ultimately, the achievement of a global security community.7 The concept of a security community will be explored later in the paper. The idea was first developed by Karl Deutsch and his colleagues in the mid-1950s. Deutsch’s normative project was the eradication of war and the promoting of peaceful change, and the litmus test of a security community is that the participants do not target each other militarily. Security communities hold the key to achieving nuclear abolition because nuclear weapons have no political or military relevance in relations between the members of a security community, though if security communities are regionally specific as they are today, nuclear weapons may be kept for a deterrent role vis-a-vis states outside the security community. Mainstream Strategic Studies has argued that because of the security dilemma – the existential condition of uncertainty that faces states about each other’s motives and intentions8 - there can be no escape from unending security competition, fuelled by fear and distrust. This is why political realism has argued that even states with peaceful/defensive intentions have no choice but to hedge militarily against the possibility that states with the military capability to do them harm might one day use force against their interests and values. Such thinking is well encapsulated in John Mearsheimer’s contention that ‘Great powers always prefer to be the first to develop new technologies; they have to make sure that their opponents do not beat them to the punch and gain the
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Exploring the contribution that multidisciplinary theorising about trust can make to building trust between nuclear-armed rivals and to developing new regional and global trust structures for managing the spread of nuclear-weapons capabilities guides the project on ‘The Challenges to Trust-Building in Nuclear Worlds’ that I lead under the auspices of David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies (DDMI) in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. From 1 October this project will be funded by a 3-year ESRC/AHRC Fellowship that I have been awarded as part of Research Councils UK’s ‘Global Uncertainties: Security For All in a Changing World’ Programme. A key output of this research will be a monograph provisionally entitled Trust and Distrust in a World of Nuclear Powers. For more details about the project visit http://www.aber.ac.uk/interpol/en/research/DDMI/research_trust_building.html 6 This definition builds on the one first developed in Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 230. 7 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 414. 8 See Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma.
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advantage for themselves…At a maximum, a successful breakthrough might [bring] clear superiority; at a minimum, these efforts [prevent] the other side from gaining a unilateral advantage.’9 The problem with applying zero-sum thinking, such as that exemplified by Mearsheimer, is that it can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of security competition that no one intended. Because the players do not trust one another and feel insecure, they believe they have to accumulate more and more armaments, the result being an ever increasing stockpile of both conventional and nuclear weapons. Moreover, strategists working with these assumptions have argued that far from the world being a safer place without nuclear weapons, disarmament would lead to a far more dangerous world. This paper proceeds in two parts. First, I argue that if nuclear abolition is framed in terms of a strategic environment in which the operating assumption is one of fear and mistrust - then ‘zero’ will never be achieved. And even if the assumption is made that it could be reached under these operating conditions, a non-nuclear world would be a far more dangerous place to live than our current one. Against this, I argue in the second part of this paper that global nuclear disarmament can lead to a more secure world. But on one critical condition: that each step on the road to ‘global zero’ is conceived as a process of trust-building. Before I explore these potential trust-building processes in more detail and suggest some examples of them in operation, it is worth reflecting on the dangers that would exist if radical nuclear disarmament is pursued in the context of a world dominated by fatalist thinking. The challenge of getting to zero and staying there Contemporary strategic thinking has identified a number of issues that would have to be addressed if moving to zero is to be achieved. I will briefly focus on three of these. They are: (1) the challenge of verifying a total ban on nuclear weapons; (2) the risk of cheating; and (3) the problem of enforcement in the event of a state, or group of states, breaking out of a disarmament agreement. Verification to and through zero Can a global ban on nuclear weapons be verified so that distrustful governments would have the confidence to dismantle their warheads? Or, would such concerns lead states to resist taking the final steps to zero? Verifying a global prohibition is a daunting task. It would require each state to declare all its nuclear warheads, materials and facilities, and then for these to be abolished such that governments were confident that others had disarmed. This represents an enormous challenge as is evidenced by the difficulties that have confronted the International Atomic Energy Agency in verifying Iran’s compliance with its non-proliferation obligations under the NPT. What about the existing nuclear powers? The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China (inside the NPT) and Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea that stand outside of the Treaty might have confidence that each other’s declared weapons and materials had been dismantled and placed in secure internationally supervised storage sites. But how much confidence could they have that their fellow possessors were not hiding fissile materials that could be covertly fabricated into nuclear
9
John J Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (London: W.W. Norton, 2003), p. 232
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weapons? No verification system can provide one hundred per cent certainty. But given that significant military and political advantages might accrue to a state that was able to hide even a small stockpile of weapons at zero, those nuclear-armed powers that are locked into relations of mutual fear and mistrust would view it as highly imprudent to give up their nuclear weapons. What is more, a future nuclear world that moved, under conditions of fear and mistrust, close to zero – or even to zero – would be one in which there would be a compelling incentive to hedge against others cheating. The problem of hedging A disarmed nuclear world, where the players do not trust one another, would be one where the security dilemma would operate with an even greater ferocity than it does in our existing nuclear-armed world. This is because the existential problem we face is that nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. This is not to say that the weapons themselves cannot be physically disassembled and their supporting infrastructure destroyed such that it would take years to put them back together again. But what can never be disinvented is the human capacity to make nuclear weapons, and as long as humans exist, the potential will be there for these engines of mass destruction to be rebuilt. The key challenge for a disarmed world that is bereft of trust would be ultimately convincing leaders that they should not secretly maintain or acquire the bomb, either out of fear that others were doing the same, or that they might do so in the future. Such anxiety about the stability of a disarmed world was well expressed by John Herz, the founder of the security dilemma concept. Pondering in the late 1950s the possibilities of global nuclear disarmament, he wrote: ‘nobody would be able to resist the urge to evade and conceal, if merely for reasons of security, and the ensuing uncertainties and suspicions might render conditions more unstable than they would be at higher armament levels.’10 The implication of Herz’s warning is that the challenge is not only one of reaching zero, but also ensuring that this condition can be sustained. As Thomas Schelling argued, in a world of fear and suspicion, every condition of disarmament is a potential situation of rearmament.11 Compounding the risk of the former nuclear powers rearming is the danger of proliferation, that is, new nuclear states emerging. As Christopher Ford has emphasised, disarmament massively increases the incentives for proliferation because ‘At “zero” itself, the strategic value of “Weapon One” – the first weapon introduced into a disarmed world – would be enormous indeed. One might call this the “August 1945 problem”: the prospect of being the lone possessor of such weapons in an otherwise nuclear-weapons free world might seem very attractive indeed.’12 From this perspective, it is evident that achieving nuclear abolition would depend upon governments being sufficiently confident that any violating government would be proportionately punished.
10
John H. Herz, ‘International Politics and the Nuclear Dilemma’, in John H. Herz, The Nation-State and the Crisis of World Politics (New York: David McKay, 1976), p. 137 11 Thomas C Schelling, Arms and Influence, (London: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 259. 12 Christopher A. Ford, ‘Deterrence to – and Through – “Zero”: Challenges of Disarmament and Proliferation’, paper presented to the Nonproliferation forum sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Centre and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Washington, D.C., 14 November 2008.
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The problem of enforcement The first issue is whether the verification system can provide timely warning so that countervailing responses can be taken. The nightmare here is that the first warning of a nuclear break-out might be a government brandishing nuclear threats, or even more apocalyptically, a mushroom cloud rising above its adversary’s cities. Even if the verification system provides sufficient warning for an international response, which body is to be entrusted with this, and what instruments does it have at its disposal to coerce the violating state back into compliance? The UN Security Council is a potential candidate here. The thorny problem is what would happen if one of the violating states was one of the five permanent vetoholding members of the Security Council, or one of its allies, since they could veto Security Council action. But other states will severely lack confidence in any global ban on nuclear weapons that establishes a mechanism for compliance that could be shortcircuited by the most powerful states in the system. In these circumstances, the danger is that individual states facing a nuclear threat from a potential enemy might try and launch a pre-emptive attack with non-nuclear forces against the state that had violated the agreement, triggering a military conflict and a race to acquire nuclear forces that would lead to the collapse of a disarmament agreement. Historically, collective security systems have failed. The wreckage of the League of Nations has been perhaps the most spectacular example of the world failing to live up to the Musketeer’s principle of ‘all for one and one for all’. But if collective security was difficult in the non-nuclear age, the challenge is even more daunting when the transgressing state could give a nuclear response. Any failure to enforce an abolition agreement would surely trigger a race to rearm and/or proliferate. Moreover, given the significant uncertainties and risks as to whether a global ban on nuclear weapons could be enforced, it is very hard to see the existing - and any future nuclear weapon states - giving up their deterrents and entrusting their fate to a new collective security system. These three challenges to nuclear disarmament strongly suggest that the world will never reach, let alone remain at ‘zero’, whilst achieving abolition is framed in terms of fear and mistrust. One immediate reply to this debate as to the dangers of a world at zero is ‘if it isn’t broke don’t fix it’; in other words, we should focus on making the existing world of nine nuclear weapon states a safer one, and not concern ourselves with the fictional utopia of global nuclear disarmament. However, this is not the choice we face. The alternative to pursuing zero is not the existing nuclear order. This is because it is decaying for two key reasons. The first is the ‘trust deficit’ that has developed within the NPT regime and which stems fundamentally from the belief on the part of the NNWS that the NWS have repeatedly failed to live up their obligations under Article VI of the Treaty. The latter obligates the NWS to ‘pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.’ It has become increasingly untenable to think that the world can be permanently divided into nuclear haves and have-nots, and the only solution to this division is either to seriously work towards nuclear abolition or accept the reality that more and more states will seek to break-into the nuclear cabal. As the veteran nuclear disarmer Jonathan Schell wrote: ‘It
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was easier in the twentieth century to split the atom than it will be in the twenty-first to split the family of nations into two permanently unequal nuclear camps.’13 The second reason for unease about the future nuclear order relates to what Robin Cook once called the ‘design flaw’ in the NPT.14 This is the loophole that allows states to build and operate nuclear plants for energy production that can also provide the fissile materials for a nuclear weapon. This has resulted in an increasing number of states hovering on the edge of becoming possessors of nuclear weapons. Moreover, if the expected so-called civil nuclear renaissance comes to pass, driven in part by concerns about climate change, then we could see even more states seeking to acquire nationally owned and controlled proliferation sensitive fuel-cycle technologies of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. The trust deficit in the NPT is not a one-way street. Even if they took radical steps towards nuclear disarmament, the NWS worry that this would not necessarily be followed by those states within the Treaty that possess - or are developing - proliferation sensitive fuel-cycle technologies from taking the concrete steps (e.g. signing the Additional Protocol) that are vital if the barriers to proliferation are to be strengthened.15 A significant factor in tipping governments into deciding to weaponize their nuclear capabilities will be their judgement about the longevity of the NPT, and here Iran is the test-case. Iran is rapidly approaching the nuclear threshold, and if it crosses the line that separates the peaceful and military uses of nuclear technology, it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race in the Middle East and the collapse of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty. This is why achieving a breakthrough on the Iranian nuclear issue is such an urgent challenge. I would argue that the real choice we face in the next decade is to continue with the nuclear status-quo, and risk a collapse of the Treaty in the years ahead and the spread of proliferation sensitive fuel-cycle technologies – and perhaps weapons – to an increasing number of states. Or, alternatively, recognise that to reduce the risks of proliferation, it is vital for both the NWS and the NNWS to take concerted efforts to repair the trust deficit. This means that the nuclear powers must work seriously towards achieving nuclear abolition. However, what is crucial to any such stable transition is whether the nuclear powers can learn to base their security on mutual trust rather than mutual fear. The remainder of the paper identifies two distinct approaches to building trust which have the potential to contribute significantly to the development of a security community – the ultimate goal of a trust-building process between nuclear-armed and arming powers. These are: (1) the graduated or step-by-step approach to trust-building and (2) the idea of a ‘leap of trust.’
13
Jonathan Schell, The Seventh Decade (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007) p. 211 Robin Cook, ‘America’s Broken Nuclear Promises Endanger Us All’, The Guardian, 27 May, 2005. 15 This argument is persuasively made in George Perkovich and James M. Acton, ‘Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Adelphi Paper 396, International Institute for Strategic Studies, August, 2008. See also George Perkovich and Patricia Lewis, ‘The Vantage Point’, Research Paper of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, January 2009. 14
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The Gradualist or Step-by-Step Approach to Trust-Building A key precondition for developing trust between existing and potential antagonists is that decision-makers come to appreciate that others might be acting out of fear and not malevolence. The inescapable uncertainties that face decision-makers about the motives and intentions of others mean that there can be no guarantee that one is not facing a potential aggressor. The fact is that not all conflict situations can be explained in terms of actors misunderstanding each other, and hence there will be occasions when the trustbuilding toolkit should remain firmly closed. Nevertheless, if there are great dangers in misplacing trust in others, there are also risks and dangers in misplaced suspicion. It is crucial that leaders and diplomats reflect on the possibility that their own behaviour might have played a crucial role in making others feel insecure. The British historian, Herbert Butterfield, in a famous passage captured the importance of policy-makers empathising with potential adversaries. Diplomats, he wrote, ‘may vividly feel the terrible fear that [they] have of the other party, but [they] cannot enter into the [others] counter-fear, or even understand why [they] should be particularly nervous…[and it is] never possible for you to realise or remember properly that since [the other] cannot see the inside of your mind, [they] can never have the same assurance of your intentions that you have.’16 Because each side believes that the other knows it is not a threat – the problem of deeply ingrained peaceful/defensive self-images each fails to recognise how its own policies which it sees as defensive might appear highly threatening from the other’s point of view. Robert Jervis elaborated and developed Butterfield’s pioneering contribution through the introduction of what Jervis called the ‘spiral model’ of international conflict. The latter makes the key assumption that the parties have peaceful/defensive intent, but what leads to an escalating security competition is the inability of policy-makers to ‘recognize that one’s own actions could be seen as menacing and the concomitant belief that the other’s hostility can only be explained by its aggressiveness.’17 Here, it is important to realise how far this mutual suspicion and distrust can be fed by bitter historical memories. Spiral situations exist because policy-makers fail to understand security dilemma dynamics,18 - that is how their own actions have made others fearful. It follows, then, that the strongest evidence for the existence of a spiral (and hence a potential trust-building situation) is for policy-makers on one – or preferably both sides – to show empathetic responsiveness to the security concerns of their adversary. One attempt to expand this particular idea is the concept of ‘security dilemma sensibility.’ This has been defined as an ‘actor’s intention and capacity to perceive the motives behind, and to show responsiveness towards, the potential complexity of the military intentions of others. In particular, it refers to the ability to understand the role that fear might play in their attitudes and behaviour, including, crucially, the role that one’s own actions may play in provoking that fear.’19 The intention and capacity to exercise security dilemma sensibility has been a rarity because it requires leaders and diplomats to overcome their strongly held peaceful/defensive self-images, as well as to avoid ideological stereotyping of adversaries.
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Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), pp. 19-20 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 75. See also Robert Jervis, ‘Realism, Game Theory, and Cooperation,’ World Politics, 40(3) 1988, p. 337. 18 Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, 30:2 (1978), p. 181. 19 Booth and Wheeler, p. 7. 17
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A text-book case of a leader exercising security dilemma sensibility was Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies after he became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. Gorbachev realised that even though the Soviet Union might profess defensive intent, its enemies were not so easily reassured in the face of Soviet conventional and nuclear capabilities. He and his advisors managed to enter into the counter-fear of the United States and NATO. They rejected the ideological mindset that had dominated Soviet foreign policy, which depicted the United States as inherently aggressive, and acknowledged that Soviet actions, especially its build-up of nuclear and conventional capabilities in the 1970s, had increased Western fears and insecurity. Gorbachev called for new policies which recognised that ‘Security cannot be built endlessly on fear of retaliation…security can only be mutual…The highest wisdom is not in caring exclusively for oneself, especially to the detriment of the other side. It is vital that all should feel equally secure.’20 Yet even if leaders understand the importance of exercising security dilemma sensibility, there are often important psychological and political barriers to translating such individual-level empathy into state-level policies that can build trust. The fundamental obstacle that faces policy-makers who want to empathise with their adversaries is the worry that their assessment of the other side’s motives and intentions as peaceful/defensive might be wrong. Consequently, even governments that consider themselves to be in a spiral situation will be reluctant to make the sort of concessions that might leave them exposed if it turns out that they are facing an aggressor. Thus, Jervis warned that governments with peaceful/defensive intentions should ‘design policies that will provide safety’ if their trust in others proves mistaken, and that as a result ‘even if both sides believe that the other desires only protection, they may find that there is no policy and level of arms that is mutually satisfactory.’21 The trouble in following Jervis’s advice for a state that wants to signal its trustworthiness is that the kind of policies that maintain ‘safety’ are often insufficient to convince an adversary to lower their guard. This is because governments, as Evan Braden Montgomery argued, ‘are often confronted with a difficult trade-off: the same actions necessary to reassure their adversaries will also endanger their own security if those adversaries are in reality aggressive.’22 How these bargains play out in particular cases is a matter for empirical research, but they emphasise the importance that decision-makers will attach to having a safety net when they seek to build trust. The risks of a unilateral trust-building initiative exposing the truster (the leader or government seeking to build trust) to high costs if their trust proves misplaced leads governments to prefer to reach agreements that commit both sides to taking a series of agreed measures aimed at reducing fear and suspicion. This negotiated approach assumes that when two adversaries or rivals first develop cooperation they will look to reach an agreement that keeps the risks limited for the parties. An example of this negotiated approach in the nuclear arena would be the strategic nuclear arms control treaties that were signed by the superpowers at the beginning of the 1970s.
20
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, For a Nuclear Free World, Moscow (Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1987), p. 39. 21 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, p. 83 22 Evan Braden Montgomery, ‘Breaking out of the Security Dilemma: Realism, Reassurance, and the Problem of Uncertainty,’ International Security 31(2) (2006), pp. 153-54.
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In the case of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the superpowers moved in tandem towards a new cooperative relationship (albeit one that did not last out the decade). But what if two governments with peaceful/defensive intent are locked into the view that their adversary must make the first move because they believe it has shown by its past behaviour that it has hostile intent and cannot be trusted. This is the type of situation where there is a key role for unilateral trust-building initiatives. The question that each side’s leadership should be asking is whether both sides have mistakenly attributed hostile intent to the other, and could this cycle of fear and distrust be broken if one side was to take a unilateral step aimed at signalling their trustworthiness. An example of this unilateral approach to building trust is Charles Osgood’s strategy of GRIT (Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction). Writing nine months before the superpowers came to the brink of nuclear war over the Soviet deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba, Osgood had proposed that the United States could break the Cold War cycle of suspicion and fear by making a series of limited conciliatory moves. He argued that this might trigger reciprocation by the Soviet Union, leading to what Osgood called a ‘spiral of trust.’23 He encapsulated the essence of a unilateral graduated approach to trust-building in his proposal that it should only involve taking steps than can meet ‘reasonable requirements of national security’ and which involve only ‘limited risks.’24 He contended that a secure second strike nuclear force provided a safety net or what he called a ‘security base’25 for the initiation of these moves, and that nothing should be done that would compromise the survivability of the US deterrent (his only conception of nuclear strategy was one of mutual vulnerability). If reciprocity was forthcoming, Osgood argued that the initiating state should follow up with bolder initiatives. If there was no positive response, he argued that the state pursuing GRIT should carry on making limited moves in the hope of triggering reciprocation. There is clearly room for debate and political disagreement as to what type of trust-building moves would satisfy ‘reasonable requirements of national security.’ Nevertheless, the potential merit of GRIT is that it allows governments in relationships of varying degrees of rivalry to signal their peaceful/defensive intentions without exposing themselves to a high level of risk if it turns out that the trustee (the state that one is seeking to build trust with) has aggressive intentions. Although the risks of a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia are extremely low at the end of this decade, there remains continuing strategic rivalry and a legacy of distrust. Consequently, it remains important for each side to reassure the other that they are taking into account their legitimate security concerns if there is to be progress in achieving deep cuts in both countries nuclear arsenals. A recent example of such a trust-building move was arguably Obama’s decision to reverse the Bush Administration’s plans to deploy ten long-range missile interceptors in Poland and a new radar facility in the Czech Republic. The Bush Administration had justified this deployment as vital to countering the threat from Iran’s long-range ballistic missiles. However, the Russian Government had strongly opposed this decision for a combination of political and military reasons. Moscow has become increasingly sensitive to how the
23
Charles E. Osgood, An Alternative To War Or Surrender 2nd edn, (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970), p. 87. 24 Osgood, An Alternative, pp. 89-90. 25 Osgood, An Alternative, p. 90.
12
United States has been extending its military presence on Russia’s borders; planning to deploy missile defences on the territory of the former allies of the Warsaw Pact was seen as yet further evidence of this. Moreover, US missile defences have alarmed Russian strategic planners who have feared that if effective the planned US missile shield could be used to degrade the Russian deterrent (apparently assuming a scenario where US defences would come into play after Washington had launched a pre-emptive nuclear attack). Obama denied when announcing his decision that this was a conciliatory move aimed at reassuring Russia. He claimed, instead, that the latest intelligence on Iran’s development of missile technology indicated a growing threat from its short and medium range missiles which could be best met by deploying shorter-range interceptors on seabased platforms.26 Changing assessments of the threat posed by Iran’s development of ballistic missiles undoubtedly played a part in shaping this decision, but it is plausible to argue that the White House also saw this as a trust-building move. The problem that faced Obama in sending a conciliatory message to the Kremlin was that the administration could not present the decision in these terms without this giving ammunition to his domestic critics who argued that he had sold his NATO allies down the river to appease Russia. The administration was sensitive to this charge and was keen to reassure the Poles and the Czechs that their concerns were not being subordinated on the altar of great power politics as had happened with such tragic consequences so many times in the past. Nevertheless, a president well-known for his empathetic qualities appreciated the importance of extending the olive branch to Russia, and his cancellation of the deployments can be seen as Obama exercising security dilemma sensibility. What this example also illustrates is how a trust-building initiative directed at one actor might have an unintended and negative effect on the trust that third parties – in this case two of Washington’s NATO allies – place in the government that has made the initial trust-building move. What is also evident is how even a graduated approach to trust-building exposes leaders who pursue it – especially in pluralist democratic political systems – to domestic political pressures aimed at scuppering such initiatives because they are seen as either too risky in terms of national security or threatening to entrenched domestic interests. Two important lessons follow from this. The first is the importance of trying to keep such trust-building initiatives secret – at least in the early stages before they have borne fruit – through the use of backchannels etc. At some point, they will have to be revealed to the world, but if this is done at too early a stage, there is a risk of domestic critics mobilising against such initiatives. This is not to underestimate the importance of securing domestic policy legitimacy for such initiatives – especially in liberal-democratic states – but it is to argue that the timing of such moves is crucial if they are to gain the necessary political support at home. The second lesson is ensuring that each side’s negotiators are fully aware of the domestic constraints that they are labouring under. Leaders in response to these concerns might have to adopt public justificatory strategies that deny a trust-building initiative (as Obama apparently did with the missile defence decision). But if both sides are aware of the domestic limits on each government’s freedom of manoeuvre, this should not damage the trust-building process.
26
Peter Baker, ‘White House Scraps Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield’, The New York Times, 18 September 2009.
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The Obama Administration is looking to Russia to reciprocate its initial trustbuilding move in two key areas. The first is Moscow’s support for tougher sanctions against Iran to pressurise it into compliance with existing UN Security Council resolutions that demand a halt to its enrichment activities. The second would be a speedy resolution of the issues that are delaying the signing of a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – the so called ‘START Follow-On Treaty. It is hoped that this Treaty will be finalised by the end of the year. It is unlikely that missile defences would have blocked an agreement which is expected to see the United States and Russia reduce to something like 1,500 operationally deployed warheads each (this does not deal with the thousands of warheads that both sides have in reserve). However, Russia has made clear that any reductions below this figure would depend crucially upon establishing new constraints on ballistic missile defences. By removing this obstacle, the path is potentially cleared for moving quickly into a further round of talks which would aim at achieving further reductions in the numbers of warheads beyond that agreed in the ‘START Follow-on Agreement.’ It is frequently argued that reducing US-Russian nuclear forces down to say 1,000 by the end of the next decade, or even a few hundred by the 2030s, is deeply problematic because it will lead to increased fears about the survivability of one’s forces in the event that the other side cheated. Such concerns are not to be dismissed, but there are two key responses that should be made. First, it is vital that any future US-Russian ‘deep cuts’ regime is designed with the goal of maintaining crisis stability (reducing the incentives for one side to lunch a pre-emptive attack during times of crisis) and arms race stability (reducing the incentives for one side to cheat and breakout of an agreement).27 This puts a premium on those measures that reduce the readiness of nuclear forces for launching, preclude doctrines of ‘launch on warning’, and increase confidence in the survivability of nuclear forces. One key issue here for Russia, along with ensuring that missile defences are kept limited, would be reassurances from Washington that it is not seeking a disarmed nuclear world in order to maximise the advantages of US conventional superiority. A key step here would be agreed constraints on US non-nuclear systems that Moscow fears could pose a threat to its strategic nuclear forces. The second, and most important, reason for questioning the assumption that everything becomes harder – in terms of the dangers from cheating and break-out – as states move closer to zero is that this assumes that levels of distrust and fear remain constant as the disarmament process progresses. But there is no reason to accept this assumption, and the challenge is to ensure that the disarmament process is also a trustbuilding one. If this turns out not to be the case, then it is inconceivable that the United States and Russia would be prepared to make major cuts in their arsenals beyond those agreed in a START Follow-On. A new US-Russian nuclear partnership that is showing concrete results in terms of arms reductions would start to repair the trust deficit in the NPT. Agreeing a new START Treaty will undoubtedly help in the run-up to the 2010 NPT Review Conference in reassuring the NNWS that the NWS are taking seriously their Article VI commitment. However, the challenge is to sustain this new momentum for nuclear disarmament by following up with even deeper cuts.
27
Charles L. Glaser, ‘The Instability of Small Numbers Revisited: Prospects for Disarmament and Nonproliferation’, paper presented to the CISAC P-5 conference, 16-17 October 2007 (copy on file with the author).
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At some point in this process, a US-Russian trust-building process must become one that is joined by the other nuclear powers. There have been few studies of how to develop this process, though one promising development is the initiative that the United Kingdom has pioneered on developing a new dialogue on nuclear CSBMs between the P5. Catalysing this process through top-level engagement is crucial and this is where Obama’s decision to convene the Security Council at heads of state and government in late September 2009 has a potentially crucial role to play if it can be followed-up by substantive discussions on how to extend the nuclear disarmament process from a bilateral to a multilateral one. Reaching legally binding agreements that marginalise the role of nuclear weapons in the foreign policies of the nuclear powers will be a key medium-term goal (5-10 years) of any multilateral deep reductions regime. One key issue that will have to be negotiated in developing such a regime is reaching an agreement that there should be comparative force levels between the existing nuclear powers. On the one hand, it is clear that there should be no increase in forces on the part of the other nuclear powers so as to achieve parity with the United States and Russia, and it is equally clear on the other hand that neither Washington nor Moscow would accept an agreement based on parity.28 One important trust-building measure that would send a clear signal that nuclear weapons were being pushed into the background of international politics would be for the five NWS to commit themselves to a legally binding ‘No-First Use’ (NFU) agreement. This measure has also been identified by the non-nuclear powers as an important one along with a CTBT and FMCT in increasing their confidence in the bona fides of the NWS. The standard objection against NFU is what it would mean for extended deterrence. This is a sensitive issue for states like Japan which shield under a US nuclear umbrella, and fear that a US commitment to NFU would leave it exposed in the event that Japan was attacked with conventional, chemical, and biological weapons. The problem with accepting the proposition that nuclear weapons have an effective role to play in deterring violence beneath the nuclear level is that other states facing conventionally superior adversaries (e.g. Pakistan and Israel) can always invoke this argument to justify retention of their nuclear arsenals. This goes against the fundamental objective of pushing nuclear weapons into the background of international politics which is critical if the risks of nuclear proliferation – and ultimately the dangers of nuclear war itself - are to be reduced in the coming decades. Even if a legally binding NFU proves too much for the political traffic to bear in future years, it is important that the NWS (and any of the other nuclear powers that can be persuaded to come on board) sign up to a declaration (even if not legally binding) that the only use for nuclear weapons is in a second-strike role. But what is crucial is that such a deterrent strategy is backed up by a force posture (restraints on missile defences and conventional technologies than can target strategic nuclear forces would be crucial here) that does not seek to hold at risk the nuclear retaliatory capacities of others. Such a development would have a positive impact on US-China nuclear relations since it would reassure Beijing that Washington has accepted that both sides are made more secure by accepting a relationship of mutual vulnerability. A new strategic consensus of this kind
28
Perkovich and Lewis, ‘The Vantage Point’.
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between the P-5 would also have a positive impact in building trust between the NWS and the NNWS since it should ease the path to achieving both a CTBT and a FMCT.29 The build-up of trust between the five NWS that would be necessary for them to reach an agreement on NFU (or some variant of this kind) is predicated on the assumption that small unilateral steps might trigger a virtuous multilateral circle of cooperation and confidence-building. But what if positive reciprocity is not forthcoming after the first steps have been taken by one side? Osgood argued that the absence of immediate reciprocity was not a reason to abandon the process. He argued, instead, that it was important to keep taking small steps to elicit the desired response. However, the problem with applying this prescription is that it overlooks the political damage that could be done to a leader who makes a concession which is seen to have been pocketed by the other side. Obama has risked this prospect if the Russian leadership fails to respond positively to his first significant step to press the ‘reset’ button in US-Russian relations.30 What will quickly bring the train of trust-building off the rails is a government that responds to what it sees as a conciliatory move by pressing for even greater concessions, believing mistakenly that the initial concession was made from a position of weakness. The other limitation of a GRIT strategy or graduated approach to trust-building is when decision-makers in the trustee (the state one is trying to build trust with) state are not convinced that the olive branch that is being extended is a genuine one. Moscow does not appear to doubt the sincerity of Washington’s move over missile defences. But there have been cases – such as the response of Iran to Obama’s overtures in the first few months of his administration – where decision-makers have been suspicious that an ostensible trust-building initiative hides a sinister intent. In these situations decisionmakers operate with what Ole Holsti called ‘an inherent bad faith model.’31 This leads them to view any apparently conciliatory moves by an adversary as either a sign of weakness or a trick to lull them into a false sense of security which will then be ruthlessly exploited. If decision-makers respond in a negative way to moves aimed at building trust, this risks a backlash in the state that initiated the action(s) since it believes that it has sent a clear signal of its trustworthiness which is being rebuffed. The problem is that this might still be too limited a move to break through the psychology of distrust on the part of the other side’s decision-makers. If the gradualist or step-by-step approach to building trust has some important limitations, there is an alternative – albeit even more risky approach – and that is for governments to take what has been called a ‘leap of trust.’32
29
Perkovich and Lewis, ‘The Vantage Point’. Julian Borger, ‘Obama’s missile rethink: the ball is now in Moscow’s court’, The Guardian, 17 September 2009. 31 See Holsti’s chapter in David Finley, Ole Holsti, and Richard Fagen, Enemies in Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967). 32 The concept of a ‘leap of trust’ is developed in Guido Möllering, Trust: Reason, Routine and Reflexivity (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006). See also Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, pp. 234-7. 30
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A Leap of Trust The gradualist approach encourages decision-makers only to take risks when they are confident that a spiral of trust has developed such that their risky moves will not be exploited. But there can be no guarantees here. Placing trust in others in all human relationships from the personal to the international always carries with it the risk of betrayal if one’s positive expectations about the motives and intentions of others prove misplaced. At the international level, actors seeking to build trust must be willing to accept a certain level of vulnerability because this sends a signal of one’s trustworthiness. As Aaron Hoffman has argued, ‘Trust refers to an actor’s willingness to place something valued under another actor’s control.’33 The corollary of this is that there is a direct relationship between the degree of vulnerability accepted by a truster and the level of trust placed in the trustee.34 The significance of this argument is that we should not think of trust as eliminating vulnerability; rather, placing oneself in a vulnerable position is critical to building trust. But can such a course of action recommend itself to policy-makers who are primarily responsible for protecting their state’s security? The idea that increased vulnerability can give rise to increased trust is a highly uncomfortable one at the international level and at its most challenging in relationships between nuclear-armed and arming powers where misplaced trust could prove fatal. By contrast with the ‘limited risks’ approach of a GRIT strategy, the idea of a ‘leap of trust’ is predicated on the premise that leaders must be prepared to take more significant risks to build trust – with the possibility that this could backfire badly for the leaper. Leaps are frame-breaking conciliatory moves35 that are taken to decisively signal a state’s trustworthiness. A leap might be taken in a context where the initiator has no firm basis for believing that the other would positively reciprocate, but where it is believed that the risks of not acting in terms of an escalating security competition would be outweighed by the possibilities of making a dramatic move that breaks down the walls of distrust. Alternatively, a leap might be taken in the context of a relationship of personal trust that has developed between leaders encouraging the expectation that a leap would be both welcomed and positively reciprocated. Leaps are usually conceived of in unilateral terms, but they might also be taken collectively as I suggest below. Orthodox thinking about statecraft traditionally honours playing it safe, yet international history furnishes us with a set of significant cases in which leaders chose (with positive outcomes) to take considerable risks in an effort to build trust with adversaries. The risks involved in a unilateral leap are not only to be viewed in terms of national security considerations; this is because leaps always expose those who make them to domestic political risks (even if they appear to have been successful). These risks are not one-way either because a leap that begins in a unilateral decision depends for its success on the leadership in the adversary state both welcoming and reciprocating the initiative. In this sense, it is important to avoid drawing a false dichotomy between unilateral and multilateral actions (as often happens in the British political debate on nuclear weapons) since the purpose of a unilateral leap must be to trigger a new level of cooperative action. Leaders who positively reciprocate a leaper also risk political condemnation at home from opponents who continue to view the other side through the
33
Aaron M. Hoffman, Building Trust: Overcoming Suspicion in International Conflict (New York: SUNY Press, 2006), pp. 377-8. 34 This argument is developed in Booth and Wheeler, The Security Dilemma, p. 241-2. 35 I am grateful to Roderick Kramer for suggesting this formulation.
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prism of a ‘bad faith’ model. What counts as positive reciprocation will vary from caseto-case, as will the value to be accorded a particular leap as a trust-building move. Some leaps will be primarily symbolic, whereas others might entail the type of concessions that send a very strong signal of an actor’s trustworthiness. A text-book example of a unilateral leap was the courageous decision in 1977 by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to fly to Jerusalem, and in a speech before the Knesset, publicly recognize the right of Israel to exist. In the case of Sadat, Israeli policy-makers did not really believe he was going to come until he boarded the plane in Cairo. Sadat knew of these doubts and this is why he deemed visiting his enemy’s capital so important to breaking the psychology of fear and mistrust. Sadat’s visit made possible the US brokered Camp David peace process which led to a spectacular breakthrough in Egypt– Israeli relations which has endured to this day. But underlining the political (and personal) risks of such leaps, Sadat paid the ultimate price for his courageous decision four years after his historic visit to Israel when he was assassinated by an Islamic extremist from within the Egyptian armed forces. Does the idea of a leap of trust open up new possibilities for building trust between the nuclear powers and repairing the trust deficit in the NPT? There is no precedent from the Cold War of either superpower taking a unilateral leap in the nuclear field. However, there is a dramatic episode from the mid-1980s, when superpower relations were beginning to thaw, that illustrates the potential of a collective leap to transform the nuclear landscape. A leap becomes collective if two or more actors in relationships of varying degrees of rivalry agree to a frame-breaking action which entails significant risks for each party in the event that the other(s) betray their trust. President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came very close to taking a momentous leap of this kind when they came tantalisingly close to agreeing to abolish all nuclear weapons at their 1986 summit meeting in Reykjavik. But as is well known, what stopped these two nuclear abolitionists from reaching such a historic agreement was Reagan’s insistence that nuclear disarmament proceed in tandem with the development and testing of SDI.36 Although Gorbachev had called for nuclear elimination by 2000 and taken some unilateral steps in 1985-86 to build trust (e.g. the Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing), the discussions at Reykjavik went far beyond anything that each side had been expecting. The transformation of attitudes that took place between Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik can be explained in terms of the personal trust that developed between these two extraordinary leaders. Without these interpersonal dynamics and despite their individual commitment to nuclear elimination, neither Reagan nor Gorbachev would have been prepared to contemplate moving to zero. Gorbachev told George Shultz in 1992 that the turning point in bringing about the end of the Cold War was Reykjavik.37 This was confirmed by Gorbachev’s close advisor, Anatoly Chernyaev, who reflected that ‘A spark of understanding was born between them, as if they had winked to each other about the
36
Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) p. 677-9; George Pratt Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: my years as secretary of state (New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993) p. 761; Schell, The Seventh Decade, pp. 193-8. 37 Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: the making of the nuclear arms race (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), p. 271.
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future.’38 Such sentiments were shared by Reagan who wrote in his memoirs that ‘Looking back now, it’s clear there was a chemistry between Gorbachev and me that produced something very close to a friendship.’39 The collective leap that Reagan and Gorbachev came so close to taking at Reykjavik depended crucially on the personal chemistry between them. But it is not enough to get two or more leaders in the same room as President John F. Kennedy’s disastrous meeting with General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961 showed.40 What is needed is for leaders to enter into what has been called a ‘space of trust’,41 and this is what Reagan and Gorbachev were able to do at their meeting in Iceland. Yet even if two leaders have entered into a space of trust such that one of them is prepared to take a leap, the other might not be able to reciprocate because of fears that this would expose them to a third country which might seek to exploit their vulnerability. For example, if India were to make a frame-breaking move towards China on the nuclear issue, Chinese decision-makers might like to respond but they may worry that this would leave them at risk from US strategic power. So the success of an Indian leap vis-à-vis China depends upon overcoming fear and suspicion in China’s relations with the United States. This obstacle to bilateral leaping would be overcome if all the nuclear powers were able to leap together, but widening the number of players in this way inevitably complicates the trust-building process and risks stymieing any progress. Getting to zero through Security Communities Three of the existing NWS belong to a transatlantic security community and the challenge is to extend this to encompass Russia and China. Nuclear weapons and the strategies and practices associated with them have no relevance in relations between members of a security community, and this is why achieving a secure non-nuclear world depends upon the growth of security communities. There are similarities between the security community concept and the idea of ‘Nuclear-Weapon Free Zones (NWFZ). The right of states to establish regionally based NWFZ is recognised in Article VII of the NPT. However, the idea of security communities is more embracing than that of NWFZ because all uses of force are unthinkable in a fully developed security community (not only the development and possession of nuclear weapons). The existing literature on security communities has identified the importance of trust in their formation, but it has not systematically traced how trust plays this role, and this is a subject that deserves future research. The building of trust between former enemies or rivals – and the transformation of identities that this presupposes – is crucial to the emergence of a security community. The latter is characterised by a high degree of integration as in the European Union, no military plans are made against the other members of the community, and there are high levels of mutual transparency. Karl Deutsch and his fellow researchers identified the North Atlantic area as a security community, and the states studied by Deutsch and his associates possessed distinctive characteristics: mutual compatibility of values (especially among decision-makers); strong economic ties and expectations of more; multifaceted social, political and cultural
38
Quoted in David Reynolds, Summits: six meetings that shaped the twentieth century (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 363. 39 Quoted in Reynolds, Summits, p. 366. See also p. 369. 40 Reynolds, Summits, pp. 151-207. 41 I am grateful to Meenakshi Gopinath for suggesting this term to me.
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transactions; a growing degree of institutionalized relationships; mutual responsiveness; mutual predictability of behaviour; dependable expectations of peaceful change; and a strong sense of community sustained by common practices.42 Security communities have developed on a regional basis, and the challenge is to extend them to those regions where states possess or are developing nuclear-weapon capabilities. After all, even if the P-5 can make significant progress in building trust, the process of getting to zero will have to embrace at some point the four nuclear powers who stand outside of the NPT. This is where the idea of regional security communities becomes important as a model for achieving the goal of nuclear abolition. And in thinking about these possibilities, it is worth considering the lessons that can be learned from the nuclear rapprochement that took place between Argentina and Brazil in the 1980s. What the Argentine-Brazilian case shows is that regional rivals, on the point of turning their relationship into one of nuclear adversaries, were able to develop sufficient confidence about the motives and intentions of each other such that their potential nuclear-weapons capabilities ceased to be a factor in their relations.43 Can the Argentine-Brazilian case of nuclear trust-building be generalised as a model for reversing nuclear rivalries and conflicts in other cases such as South Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East? There were special regional circumstances that caution against thinking that it provides a ready-made template for these cases. Nevertheless, there are important lessons that can be learned from this case for building trust elsewhere. The first lesson that can be learned from this case is the importance of decisionmakers exercising security dilemma sensibility. Although there were no leaps of trust by either side, there is evidence that successive Argentine and Brazilian leaders exercised an empathetic responsiveness to each other’s security concerns by taking a series of reciprocal confidence-building steps (e.g. military-to-military contacts, scientific and technical exchanges, and active cooperation between the two foreign ministries) that promoted trust. This led each side to take bolder initiatives in the expectation of reciprocation. A good example of this was the prior notice given to the Argentine Government by Brazilian President José Sarnay before his speech in September 1987 announcing that Brazil had mastered the technology of uranium enrichment.44 This important step was reciprocated the following year by the invitation that President Raúl Alfonsín extended to Sarney and Brazilian officials to visit Argentina’s uranium enrichment plant at Pilcaniyeu which, in turn, was followed by Alfonsin’s visit in 1988 to the Brazilian enrichment facility at Aramar.45 By opening up each side’s sensitive
42
Karl Wolfgang Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: international organization in the light of historical experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 5. 43 The case is discussed at greater length in Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Beyond Waltz’s Nuclear World: More Trust May be Better’, International Relations, 23 (3), pp. 1-18 (forthcoming 2009). 44 Andrew Hurrell, ‘An Emerging Security Community in South America?’, in Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 241. 45 Paulo S. Wrobel, ‘From Rivals to Friends: The Role of Public Declarations in Argentina-Brazil Rapprochement’, in Michael Krepon, J. S. Drezin, and M. Newbill (eds), in Declaratory Diplomacy: Rhetorical Initiatives and Confidence Building (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 1999), pp. 1427.
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nuclear facilities to the scrutiny of the other, these visits were highly significant in promoting confidence in each other’s peaceful nuclear intentions.46 Understanding the role that one’s own actions might have played in provoking fear on the part of others and designing new policies that promote reassurance instead is crucial to the building of trust. The Argentine diplomat Julio C. Carasales who witnessed the Argentine-Brazilian nuclear rapprochement at first-hand reflected in a proposition that should guide all future trust-building efforts in this field that: ‘You have to be sincere...No moves in this field can have the slightest chance of success if they are taken with the ulterior motive of cheating the other party, or guiding it into a false sense of security. As a first step, a country should open itself to the other party on the understanding that this policy will be reciprocated.’47 The second lesson from the Argentine-Brazilian nuclear rapprochement is the importance of democratisation to trust-building. The transition to democratic rule in both Argentina (1983) and Brazil (1985) led to the deepening of trust between the two countries, not least because it brought to power leaders who were aware of the growing political and economic costs and risks of pursuing a unilateral approach to security. Positive relationships between leaders spilled over into the inter-societal level as Argentina and Brazil became partners across a whole range of political and economic issues. Thus, the nuclear issue was one aspect, albeit a critically important one, of the wider process of cooperation and increasingly economic integration that was developing between the two countries. Andrew Hurrell has argued that democratisation was an important motor in leading both countries to redefine their interests in ways that promoted this integration, and that this changing conception of interests sprung from a redefinition of identity. The need to nurture their fledgling democracies and promote joint economic development became shared values of Argentinean and Brazilian policy-makers. Rivals became ‘friends’, a transformation Hurrell described as the emergence of a ‘loosely knit security community.’48 Speaking at a conference in 1996 reflecting on the lessons of the rapprochement for the Middle East, Gideon Frank, then Director General of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, reflected that the most important lesson for other regions (he was clearly thinking of his own) was the value of ‘democratization [because]…Only in a democratic regime can you have confidence in the intentions of a country.’49 It is evident that the major transformation in Argentine-Brazilian nuclear relations took place only after both countries had become democratic states, and it is a fascinating counterfactual whether the trust they established could have been achieved without this process of democratisation.
46
John R. Redick, ‘Nuclear Illusions: Argentina and Brazil’, Occasional Paper No. 25, (Washington, DC: The Henry Stimson Center, 1995), pp. 22-3. 47 Julio Carasales, ‘The Evolution of the Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Rapprochement’, paper presented to a seminar on Argentina and Brazil: The Latin American Nuclear Rapprochement sponsored by the Shalheveth Freier Center for Peace, Science, and Technology and the Institute for Science and International Security, 16 May 1996, Soreq, Israel, http://www.isisonline.org/publications/israel96/596am3.html, accessed 27 September 2009. 48 Andrew Hurrell, ‘An Emerging Security Community in South America?’, p. 250. 49 Gideon Frank, ‘Concluding remarks’ to a seminar on Argentina and Brazil: The Latin American Nuclear Rapprochement sponsored by the Shalheveth Freier Center for Peace, Science, and Technology and the Institute for Science and International Security, 16 May 1996, Soreq, Israel, http://www.isisonline.org/publications/israel96/596am3.html, accessed 27 September 2009.
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The third lesson is the great danger of potential nuclear rivals crossing over the nuclear threshold by testing and developing nuclear weapons. Neither Brazil nor Argentina have tested or weaponised nuclear devices, and this made cooperation far easier than would have been the case had each side developed operational nuclear weapons. The latter circumstance would have increased fear and suspicion on both sides, and developing policies that promoted mutual confidence in such a context would have been much harder to achieve. A comparison with the South Asian nuclear situation is instructive here.50 India and Pakistan have crossed the nuclear threshold, and though both store warheads separately from delivery vehicles (to reduce the risks of accidental or inadvertent war), fear and suspicion of each other’s nuclear intentions has been magnified in a situation where missile flight-times are as short as 5-10 minutes, and both sides know that the other has the capability to rapidly assemble and deploy nuclear forces. The IndiaPakistan experience shows that de-mating warheads from their delivery vehicles is not necessarily stabilising if it occurs between states which distrust each other. The variation in levels of nuclear weapon development between India and Pakistan on the one hand, and Argentina and Brazil on the other, reflects the fact that the two South American rivals never experienced the levels of enmity and violence between them that have so embittered relations between the South Asian nuclear powers. This was recognised by Carasales who speaking at the same conference as Gideon Frank considered that the trust-building process succeeded because ‘Argentina and Brazil were not enemies, just competitors. Nevertheless, he suggested that ‘Perhaps we followed a particular way that could be of some use.’51 Exploring the potential of this proposition in relation to the existing nuclear powers and the growing numbers of nuclear-weapons capable states is a key challenge facing policy-makers, diplomats, and wider civil society if the goal of a more secure non-nuclear world is to be achieved. Conclusion The only path to a more secure non-nuclear world lies in the development of regional nuclear security communities. Nuclear abolition will never be achievable whilst governments view it as moves in a zero-sum game; instead, what is needed is for leaders to transcend this way of thinking and learn to base their security on mutual trust rather than mutual fear. There are no risk-free nuclear futures available to us. Trust-building is no guarantee of security and it always involves decision-makers accepting some degree of vulnerability. But when decision-makers in nuclear-armed states weigh the costs of taking a ‘leap of trust’ that might prove costly and dangerous, they need to remember that misplaced suspicion brings its own risks and costs. They also need to balance the risks of moving to small nuclear forces against the risk that a failure on the part of the existing nuclear-weapon states to decisively disarm might deepen the crisis of trust at the heart of the NPT, thereby further weakening the barriers to proliferation. If governments and wider global civil society are serious about ridding the world of nuclear weapons, then radical rethinking is needed and related policy initiatives, to replace security based on nuclear fear with robust security communities embedded in relations of trust.
50
I am indebted to Simon Davies who first compared these cases in his PhD. See his ‘Community versus Deterrence: Managing Nuclear Proliferation in Latin America and South Asia’, International Relations, 18:1 (2004), p. 60. 51 Julio Carasales, ‘The Evolution of the Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Rapprochement.’
