Turkey and Iran's Nuclear Choices

This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Kilowatts or Kilotons Turkey and Iran's nuclear choices Stein, Aaron Michael Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 KING’S COLLEGE LONDON FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES Dissertation Kilowatts or Kilotons: Turkey and Iran’s Nuclear Choices By Aaron Stein Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 1 Abstract Scholars have been working on the proliferation question since the detonation of first the atomic bombs in 1945. Yet despite over six decades of fears about the rapid spread of nuclear weapons, only ten states now posses the bomb; and of these only Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea developed their weapons after the Treaty for the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons opened for signature in 1968. Nevertheless, numerous states have clandestinely pursued nuclear weapons despite their treaty obligations and the robustness of the nonproliferation norm. What factors prompt some leaders to pursue nuclear weapons, while the vast majority of others choose to rely on the nonproliferation regime, external guarantees, or a combination of the two, for security? To answer this question this study compares nuclear decision- making in one state that chose to proliferate - Iran - and a state that did not - Turkey - from the mid-1950s, when they first showed interest in nuclear energy, to the present. To maximize the total number of observations, the study analyzes every nuclear decision made during this period in an attempt to identify the subjective variables influencing decision-makers in both countries. It will be further argued that nuclear decision-making is multi-causal, owing to different conceptions of similar external inputs. As such, nuclear decision-making is country specific, requiring in-depth research to determine the dynamics of proliferation in different countries to determine the reasons why individual states choose to proliferate, compared to the majority that have embraced nonproliferation. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 2: Theories of Proliferation and Methodology 14 Chapter 3: Threat Perceptions and Nuclear Decision-Making 40 Chapter 4: Nonproliferation Norms and Restraint 95 Chapter 5: Nuclear Mythmaking and Powerful Leaders 160 Conclusion 233 Bibliography 235 3 Introduction: The World’s Most Powerful Weapon In August 1945, the United States’ military dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapons’ power changed the way military strategists conceived of war. Bernard Brodie, the American architect of deterrence theory, reasoned that in the atomic era, nations must remain forever prepared for war or otherwise risk tempting a nuclear-armed adversary to launch a preventative attack. For Brodie, the destructive power of nuclear weapons rendered traditional defense obsolete, and thus required the maintenance of a credible capability to strike an enemy’s cities. Brodie’s mentor, Jacob Viner, coined the term deterrence in November 1945, telling the audience that a well prepared and nuclear armed adversary could retain the capacity to respond to any first strike by enemy. As such, both sides could be deterred from launching a first strike, so long as the adversary retained the capability to strike back. This fundamental assumption has underpinned nuclear strategy ever since. The notion of deterrence has also influenced the study of nonproliferation and the assumptions made about why states seek out nuclear weapons. If an adversary acquires a weapon with the destructive power of an atomic bomb, then the rival state must seek out an effective defense. As Brodie articulated in his seminal work on the topic, The Absolute Weapon, deterrence was the only rational policy in the nuclear weapons era.1 Thus, if a rival state is suspected of pursuing, or has acquired a nuclear weapon, it is rational for a state to seek out atomic arms to ensure state survival. This pessimistic assumption about the 1 Bernard Brodie (ed.) The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946). 4 dynamics of proliferation, in turn, has resulted in the prevalence of realist/neo-realist arguments about proliferation decision-making. In an anarchic world where power begets power, states have an interest in obtaining history’s most destructive weapon. And, if one state acquires this weapon, a rival state will take steps to also acquire nuclear weapons. Balanced against this pessimistic assumption are other explanations for nuclear decision-making. Like Brodie in 1945, many of the American scientists responsible for the development of nuclear weapons argued that the physics needed to develop nuclear weapons were widely known; and thus proliferation was inevitable. Thus, to prevent future catastrophe, the United States must disarm, in favor of a global regime responsible for overseeing nuclear research. This proposal was never fully implemented, although many of its component parts were used first in the United States’ Atoms for Peace initiative, and then the supranational International Atomic Energy Agency. Thus, to explain why states forego nuclear weapons, some scholars point to the weapon’s indiscriminate lethality. This lethality, in turn, has resulted in a prohibitive norm against the weapons’ use. Indeed, despite the prevalence of the security centric explanations about nuclear decision-making, few states have developed nuclear weapons. This slow pace of proliferation has prompted scholars to examine the dynamics of proliferation to determine: Why do certain states proliferate, whereas most choose to forego nuclear weapons? To date, scholars have yet to settle on a definition of these dynamics, owing to continued disagreement about the reasons for nuclear decision-making. To address this lacuna in the nonproliferation scholarship, this study examines nuclear decision-making in two similar states, Iran and Turkey. 5 Both countries are heirs to historic empires, sit at the periphery of the Middle East, were close allies of the United States for much of the Cold War, and have expressed a prolonged interest in nuclear energy. Furthermore, both countries had an antagonistic relationship with the Soviet Union and, by extension, were wary of the spread of Soviet- allied pan-Arab nationalist states along their borders. As such, one should expect Turkey and Iran to have viewed nuclear weapons similarly, owing to their shared threat perceptions. Furthermore, when the first normative mechanisms against proliferation were drafted, neither Iran nor Turkey had nuclear weapons, both faced key technical constraints that hindered independent nuclear weapons/energy development, and were reliant upon foreign actors for nuclear expertise. For these reasons, one should also have expected a similar reaction to supranational effort to control nuclear technology. Further to this, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s relationship with the United States changed. After this change in government, the Iranian leadership made the decision to proliferate. This key data-point allows for the study of a so-called “deviant case,” as compared to the more typical decision-making processes in Turkey (1954- present) and pre-1979 Iran. According to Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, the selection of a so-called deviant case study that breaks from traditional nonproliferation explanations (either through restraint when exposed to so-called “triggers” or foregoing restraint in favor or proliferation during an era of wide acceptance of nonproliferation norms) “may provide significant theoretical insights” for scholars.2 As James Walsh notes in Bombs Unbuilt: Power, Ideas and Institutions in International Politics, nonproliferation scholarship has traditionally suffered from the 2 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in Social Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 6-7. 6 “dependent variable problem.” Most case studies, Walsh notes, focus on the behavior of nuclear weapons states, which has therefore resulted in case study selection bias; leading to flawed conclusions about the dynamics of proliferation.3 Thus, by comparing two states that made different nuclear decisions, this

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