From International Regime Construction to Action: The Past, Present, and Future of Bargaining the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Abstract

Banning the Bang or the Bomb? Negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Regime. Edited by Mordechai Melamud, Paul Meerts, I. William Zartman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 373 pp., $99 hardcover (ISBN: 978-1-107-04400-5). In Banning the Bang or the Bomb? , the editors and members of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Steering Committee gather an eclectic group of scholars and practitioners to analyze the negotiations over the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and its Organization (CTBTO), which is charged with implementing a monitoring and verification regime, including special on-site inspections (OSI). The manual pinpoints efforts toward the prohibition of nuclear weapon testing as a model of international regime-building, and casts lights on the challenges inspectors will face by drawing lessons from OSI negotiation simulations. Not only is the contributors' expertise eclectic, but so is the framework followed throughout the book, which reaches beyond IR disciplinary boundaries by combining realist and constructivist understandings to capture the essence and evolution of conflicting interests and preferences. Material and non-material factors, as well as distributive (win-lose) and integrative (win-win) negotiation strategies, are important facets to take into account in a holistic examination of international arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation negotiations such as this one. The book's title highlights the contested relations between banning nuclear weapon testing (non-proliferation), or nukes tout court (disarmament), and the different security interests of the regime creators. Designing and negotiating international regimes are recursive activities in which the parties involved need to first agree on general guiding principles and common understandings, and then …