Progress in Enforcing International Law against Rogue States?: Comparing the 1930S with the Current Age of Nuclear Proliferation

Abstract

This chapter will first review why Hudson's generation failed to enforce international law during the 1930s and how this failure contributed to the outbreak of World War II. Then it will turn to one of the greatest security challenges of our time - the proliferation of nuclear weapons and examine how and why the international community is again failing to take the enforcement measures necessary to prevent a major calamity. The first major step in the decline of the nuclear nonproliferation regime involved a set of Indian and Pakistani nuclear detonations in 1998. Yet the international community has been strikingly hesitant to take strong enforcement action against North Korean violations of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. But China is concerned that significant economic or other pressure on North Korea might cause the North Korean regime to collapse, thereby flooding China with refugees that would be costly to care for. Keywords: international law; major calamity; nuclear proliferation; significant economic