Atomic Assurance a Volume in the Series

Atomic Assurance a volume in the series Cornell Studies in Security Affairs Edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt A list of titles in this series is available at cornellpress . cornell . edu. Atomic Assurance The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation Alexander Lanoszka Cornell University Press Ithaca and London Copyright © 2018 by Cornell University The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2018 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of Amer i ca Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Names: Lanoszka, Alexander, author. Title: Atomic assurance : the alliance politics of nuclear proliferation / Alexander Lanoszka. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Series: Cornell studies in security affairs | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018016356 (print) | LCCN 2018017762 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501729195 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501729201 (ret) | ISBN 9781501729188 | ISBN 9781501729188 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Nuclear nonproliferation— International cooperation. | Nuclear arms control— International cooperation. | Nuclear arms control—Government policy—United States. | Nuclear nonproliferation— Government policy—United States. | United States— Foreign relations—1945–1989— case studies. Classification: LCC JZ5675 (ebook) | LCC JZ5675 .L36 2018 (print) | DDC 327.1/747— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2018016356 To my parents Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation 1 1. How Alliances (Mis)Manage Nuclear Proliferation 10 2. American Security Guarantees during the Cold War, 1949–1980 29 3. West Germany, 1954–1970 48 4. Japan, 1952–1980 79 5. South Korea, 1968–1980 110 6. Nuclear Proliferation and Other American Alliances 132 Conclusion: Understanding and Managing Alliances in the 21st Century 149 Notes 159 Index 197 vii Acknowl edgments It took many years for this book to come together. At Princeton University, John Ikenberry was especially helpful and generous; he never let me lose sight of the big picture. Tom Christensen, Keren Yarhi- Milo, and David Car- ter provided extensive and varied feedback. Aaron Friedberg provided use- ful commentary and support—through the Bradley Foundation—at a criti- cal juncture when this proj ect was still in its infancy. I also benefited im mensely from fellowships at the Security Studies Program and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at the Mas sa chu setts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Dartmouth College, respectively. At MIT, where I was a Stanton Fellow, I am grateful for the mentorship I received from Barry Po- sen and Frank Gavin. Indeed, Frank has been a wonderful ally over the years. I learned much from Owen Coté, Vipin Narang, and Jim Walsh as well as Henrik Hiim and Julia Macdonald. The Stanton Foundation contributed funding to this proj ect. At Dartmouth, I held a manuscript workshop that saw the participation of Bill Wohlforth, Steve Brooks, Ben Valentino, Jeff Friedman, Brian Greenhill, Joshua Shifrinson, and Katy Powers. Tim Craw- ford drove up from Boston and took the lead at that workshop, providing me with a new vision for the manuscript. I have many other friends and colleagues to thank, whether for the support they provided or for the feedback they gave when I was working on this book. They include Alexander Alden, Dan Altman, Danny Bessner, Mat- thew Fuhrmann, Kiichi Fujiwara, Kate Gheoghegan, Mauro Gilli, Andrea Gilli, Tsuyoshi Goroku, Brendan Green, Kristen Harkness, Matthew Kroe- nig, Raymond Kuo, Akira Kurosaki, Christine Leah, Andreas Lutsch, Rupal Mehta, Rohan Mukherjee, Leah Sarson, Jonas Schneider, Luis Simón, Henry Sokolski, Jeffrey Taliaferro, Nobuhiko Tamaki, and Simon Toner. Michael ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Hunzeker, in partic u lar, read numerous drafts over the years. I could not have asked for a better friend. Sandy Hager, Leonie Fleischmann, Iosif Kovras, Ronen Palan, Inderjeet Parmar, and Madura Rasaratnam are among the many scholars and friends who have made City, University of London a wonderful place to work. I apologize to those whom I forgot to mention. I also thank Roger Haydon, for his superb assistance, and the staff at Cornell University Press. They are all consummate professionals—it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with them. Robert Art and the reviewers gave terrific feedback that helped me to clarify and to improve key parts of the book. Emmanuelle Richez entered my life when this book was already under review. She has been a tremendous source of love and comfort, motivating me always to see the bright side of things and to power through the work that needed to be done when this proj ect was in its final stages. I am very grateful to have her support. Fi nally, I want to thank my family. I have treasured their emotional support and encouragement. Some of the issues raised by this book acquired a personal significance for my relatives and me, as we have become alarmed by the geopo liti cal developments in Poland’s region that began in 2014. I especially thank Danusia, Kasia, Rafał, and my grandparents Marianna and Tadeusz. Most of all, I thank my parents, Anna and Marek, to whom I dedi- cate this book. Their love and unconditional support were never in doubt. x Atomic Assurance Introduction The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation Tensions were high on the Korean Peninsula. Fears of nuclear proliferation were rife, and a newly elected American president had gone on record say- ing unflattering things about the South Korean government. Such was the context in mid-1977 when the American ambassador in Seoul met with vari- ous government officials and scientists, in part to discuss what could be done to prevent South Korea from undertaking nuclear weapons activities. During that meeting, a nuclear scientist proposed that one solution would involve the United States extending the same “nuclear umbrella policy” to South Korea as that given already to Japan. This proposal struck the ambassador as nonsensical. After all, South Korea benefited from a nuclear umbrella thanks to its treaty alliance with the United States and the tactical nuclear weapons that American forces had stationed on its territory. The only change to the alliance was the full withdrawal of American ground forces from South Korea— a policy for which President Jimmy Carter had advocated during his presidential campaign. And so the ambassador wrote back to the State Department in Washington, decrying “the evidence of ig- norance at very se nior government levels of either costs or risks [sic] in- volved in the weapons development program over and above seriously ad- verse impact on US relationship [sic].”1 Car ter ultimately decided against his planned troop withdrawal, and South Korea did not acquire a nuclear weapons capability, but the episode raises impor tant questions that continue to resonate into the twenty-first century. Why did the alliance break down so as to create proliferation risks? And to what extent was the alliance responsible for restraining South Korea’s nuclear ambitions? These questions in turn speak to a much larger concern: what is the relationship between alliances and nuclear proliferation? Ever since the United States forged its alliances with partners around the world at the beginning of the Cold War, many experts agree that alliances have yielded impor tant strategic benefits. Alliances enable the United States 1 INTRODUCTION to manage local conflicts, to prevent arms races, and to reassure partners that the United States will defend them in a military crisis that involves a shared adversary. The result is that recipients of these security guarantees feel less need to acquire their own nuclear weapons. Even when allies have pursued nuclear weapons development, the United States would coerce them into halting their ambitions. Such is the emerging narrative of the American ex- perience of the nuclear era: that alliances are effective nonproliferation tools and that the Cold War is largely a story of American nonproliferation success. This nonproliferation mission could become more challenging to undertake if predictions of American decline are true and allies are growing in power relative to the United States. This book challenges this emerging narrative by making two related claims. The first claim is that military alliances are impor tant tools for thwart- ing nuclear proliferation, but they are more susceptible to breakdown and credibility concerns than some accounts in the international relations liter a- ture presume. Indeed, why alliances should ever be a viable solution for nuclear proliferation is puzzling, since international agreements ought to be fundamentally unbelievable in the absence of a world government that can enforce them. Even if we accept that strong commitments are possi ble, those very commitments risk emboldening those allies to undertake aggressive foreign policies that are contrary to the interests of the United States. The second claim is that although the United States has played a key role in enforcing the nuclear nonproliferation regime, we should be careful not to attribute too much success to the United States. It encountered severe dif- ficulties in curbing suspect nuclear behav iors of key allies like West Germany and Japan, to say nothing of Great Britain and France—allies that feared American abandonment yet succeeded in acquiring nuclear weapons. South Korea often serves as an example of the effectiveness of American coercion, but the state of its nuclear program made South Korea an easy target at a time when the United States wanted to demonstrate its commitment to nuclear nonproliferation.

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