Nuclear Weapons Don't Kill People, Rogues Do

Abstract

This article examines whether the nuclear non-proliferation regime is in crisis. I argue that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) is suffering a crisis of legitimacy in domestic US politics and a chronic legitimacy deficit globally, but this does not in and of itself mean that there is a crisis in the non-proliferation regime per se, so long as there are actors with the ability and will to pay the costs of coercive and diplomatic bargaining instruments to maintain the loss of voluntary compliance. Policies addressing nuclear non-proliferation by the nuclear weapons states and their allies have been overwhelmingly ensconced within those latter two mechanisms of compliance rather than addressing the chronic legitimacy deficit of the NPT caused by the continued possession of nuclear arsenals by the nuclear weapons states. The US under the Bush administration, however, has led the way in an attempt to reconstitute the social relations underpinning the non-proliferation regime by recognizing India as a responsible nuclear power. This recalibration portends a more fundamental challenge to a regime of universal nuclear non-proliferation than the approach of nuclear powers to date, which has been to neglect legitimacy concerns in favour of diplomatic carrots and sticks and, with the Bush administration in particular, the threat and use of force. I argue that it is likely to deepen the chronic legitimacy deficit of the NPT, thus requiring greater investment in war, or in diplomatic carrots and sticks that have sometimes proven insufficient, though it is possible a new nuclear condominium could settle that proves at least as stable as the past if not more, with but another addition or two. But even if it does, this strategy of re-legitimation puts further off rather than nearer attainment of the central principle and purposes of the regime.