Neorealism, Nuclear Proliferation, and East-Central European Strategies
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Neorealism, Nuclear Proliferation, And East -Central European Strategies Mark Kramer Harvard University May 1998 The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in a new era. The contours of the post -Cold War system have not yet congea led, but enough time has passed to allow for some preliminary judgments about the emerging international order and the effects it has had on state strategies. Although most specialists on international relations have welcomed the recent changes in world po litics, a small number have been pessimistic from the outset, warning that the demise of bipolarity would increase the risk of war and spur many more countries to seek nuclear weapons. This pessimistic view has not been confined to any single group of scho lars, but it has been especially pronounced among proponents of structural realism. As early as 1990, John Mearsheimer warned that the emerging post -Cold War order would be far more dangerous than the old bipolar system. He predicted that the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “will come under increasing stress in the post -Cold War World” because “the international system’s new architecture creates powerful incentives to [nuclear] proliferation.” 1 In particular, Mearsheimer believed that the buildup o f a sizeable nuclear force by Ukraine was “inevitable…regardless of what other 1 John J. Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent”, Foreign Affairs , Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 61. states say and do.” 2 Mearsheimer also warned that Germany and, even more, “the minor powers of Eastern Europe would have strong incentives to acquire nuclear weapons” in the pos t-Cold War era: Without nuclear weapons, these Eastern European states would be open to nuclear blackmail from the [former] Soviet Union and, if it acquired nuclear weapons, from Germany. No Eastern European state could match the conventional strength of Germany or the [former] Soviet Union, which gives these minor powers a powerful incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent, even if the major powers had none. [Thus,] a continuation of the current pattern of ownership [of nuclear weapons] without proliferatio n seems unlikely. 3 Although Mearsheimer hedged this last prediction by stating that the East European countries might not actually begin building nuclear forces “until the outbreak of crisis”, he consistently emphasized that the end of the Cold War was bo und to give a strong fillip to nuclear proliferation both in Europe and elsewhere. Developments that followed in the 1990s did not bear out Mearsheimer’s expectations. Far from increasing, the number of nuclear states actually decreased by one, when South Africa unilaterally dismantled its small arsenal. 4 Moreover, the two leading candidates for nuclear rivalry in Latin America – Argentina and Brazil – agreed in 1990 -91 to cooperate in disbanding their nuclear weapons programs. 5 In 1994 Ukraine joined Bela rus and Kazakhstan in signing the NPT as a non -nuclear weapons state and agreed to transfer to Russia the nuclear missiles and warheads left on Ukrainian territory after the Soviet Union collapsed. More generally, the NPT was extended for an undefined peri od in May 1995, something that would have been almost inconceivable if the Cold War had still been under way. 6 2 Ibid., p. 58. 3 John J. Mearsheim er, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War”, International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), p. 36. 4 “South Africa Is First to Dismantle All of Its Covert Nuclear Weapons”, The Chicago Tribune, 20 August 1994, p. 15. For a use ful overview of the South African program and the decision to eliminate it, see David Albright, “South Africa’s Secret Nuclear Weapons”, ISIS Report , Vol. I, No. 4 (may 1994), pp. 1 -19. 5 Tom Zamora Collina and Fernando de Souza Barros, “Transplanting Bra zil’s and Argentina’s Success”, ISIS Report , Vol. II, No. 2 (February 1995), pp. 1 -11. This episode as well as the South African case is also covered in Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center Press, 1995), pp. 7 -43 and 45 -87. 6 The indefinite extension of the NPT would have been extremely unlikely had there not been far -reaching reductions under way in the US and ex -Soviet nuclear arsenals. Those reductions were made possible by the end of the Cold War. If the US and former Soviet nuclear forces had still been at the same levels that they were in the mid -1980s and if US The disjuncture between this empirical evidence and Mearsheimer’s predictions raises important questions about the structural realist conception of international politics. In making his predictions, Mearsheimer explicitly adduced structural realist arguments. The same approach was adopted by numerous other scholars who argued, on the basis of neorealist premises, that nuclear weapons would spread rapidly in the post -Cold War era. 7 One of the questions to be explored here is whether these arguments were truly consonant with structural realism and, if so, what that would imply. Is there a way of reconciling the theoretical claims with observed trends ? What modifications, if any, are needed in the structural realist outlook? Are broader aspects of the paradigm thrown into doubt? In answering these questions, this essay will proceed in four stages. The first sections will consider why a structural real ist approach might lead one to expect that nuclear proliferation would increase in the post -Cold War era. The second part will examine the security strategies of four East -Central European states – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Ukraine – to expl ain why all decided not to acquire their own nuclear weapons. The third section will consider how one might square the empirical evidence with hypotheses derived from the structural realist framework. The final section will offer conclusions about the rela tive merits and shortcomings of structural realism in explaining nuclear proliferation. The paper as a whole will seek to account for a system -level result (the lack of nuclear proliferation in Europe in the 1990s) by analyzing unit -level phenomena (the c hoices made by individual European states). At first glance, this may seem an odd way of evaluating structural realism, which originally was designed to explain systemic results, not foreign policy decisions. Most proponents of neoralism have moved away fr om (or at least modified) that premise, but a few still insist that the focus must be exclusively on systemic phenomena, which, they claim, can be understood only as the aggregate result of states’ actions. 8 In their and Soviet nuclear test programs had still been active, numerous Third World signatories of the NPT would have used that as a pretext to renounce or at least weaken the treaty. 7 See, for example, Benjamin Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation”, Security Studies, Vol. 2, Nos. ¾ (Spring/Summer 1993), pp. 37 -78; Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics”, International Security , Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 66 -67; and Bradley A. Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime”, Security Stud ies , Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring 1995), pp. 463 -519. 8 The original formulation was laid out in Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw -Hill, 1979), pp. 110 ff. Waltz has reiterated his view in many subsequent writings, including “R eflections on Theory of International Politics : A view, the structures of international p olitics are analogous to market outcomes in oligopolistic sectors of an economy. Just as theories of oligopolistic competition do not specify what any particular firm will do, so too, the argument goes, a structural analysis of international relations cann ot specify what any particular state’s foreign policy will be. The validity of this argument, however, is highly problematic. Neorealist theory does in fact make important predictions about state behavior and state goals, both explicitly and implicitly. Th ese predictions, as shown below, yield a number of hypotheses about states’ foreign policies, including policies on nuclear weapons. The hypotheses can then be tested against the empirical record (i.e., the record of states’ foreign policy decisions) to he lp determine whether the underlying principles are accurate. An analysis of foreign policy decisions is especially crucial in understanding the systemic result discussed in this paper – the lack of nuclear proliferation in Europe – which could have been f undamentally altered by the actions of a single state. Only by focusing on unit -level calculations will it be possible to explain why Mearsheimer and others went astray in predicting that non -nuclear states in Europe would seek nuclear weapons. 9 The four countries selected for scrutiny here were chosen for a number of reasons. All four are former European Communist states (or parts of states) that were left without formal security arrangements after Communism collapsed. In addition, all were mentioned by M earsheimer as plausible candidates to acquire nuclear weapons in the post -Cold War world, and indeed they all (especially Ukraine) did consider that option before deciding to forgo nuclear arms. All four were temporarily left with Soviet nuclear warheads a nd delivery vehicles on their soil after 1989. (As discussed below, these were withdrawn in 1990 from Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and by 1995 from Ukraine). Finally, response to My Critics,” in Robert o. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 322 -345, esp. 326 -327. For a recent exchange on the question of unit -level ver sus system -level analysis, see Colin Elman, “Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist Theories of Foreign Policy?” Security Studies , Vol.