Rival Hierarchies and the Origins of Nuclear Technology Sharing

Abstract

In the 1950s, the United States and Soviet Union abandoned secrecy and began sharing nuclear technology internationally. Soon thereafter, the two superpowers worked together to create the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to place safeguards on nuclear assistance, and eventually added other non-proliferation measures. What explains these decisions? Conventional accounts are incomplete. We argue that an international hierarchy framework offers a fuller explanation for the superpowers’ behavior and identify three distinct mechanisms through which rival hierarchies can influence the internal workings of one another: competitive shaming, outbidding, and inter-hierarchy cooperation. We then probe the plausibility of our argument by investigating multiple observable implications in our case study of nuclear politics. We show that Soviet competitive shaming motivated the United States’ Atoms for Peace program, which sought to strengthen the loyalty of client states or attract new ones. In response, the Soviet Union attempted to outbid the United States with its own technology-sharing program. Ultimately, Moscow and Washington cooperated on the IAEA to limit the risks that nuclear sharing posed to their own dominant positions vis-a-vis subordinate states.