Path Not (Yet) Taken?: Revisiting the Three East Asian Cases

[ 126 ] asia policy Path Not (Yet) Taken? Revisiting the Three East Asian Cases Jing-dong Yuan Nuclear proliferation constitutes one of the most serious threats to international and regional security. This is particularly the case in the post– September 11 world, where a number of issues—nuclear terrorism, active and covert pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities by some states, and new regional and international security environments in which the role of nuclear weapons in national defense is being redefined—are becoming increasingly salient for policymakers and analysts alike. If such a strategic policy agenda sounds a bit familiar, it should. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 attempted to explore this territory, offering its own answers to some of these questions. As James Wirtz’s contribution to The Long Shadow makes clear, however, the ideas set forth in the NPR are in some cases current U.S. policy only in the nominal sense: many of them have received little support from Congress, and the NPR has not produced practical results on the ground commensurate with its conceptual boldness (pp. 118–21, 130). Nor, of course, have the concepts outlined in the 2001 NPR been received with great favor, to say the least, by the rest of the international community. In short, these concepts are in no immediate danger of becoming a new strategic consensus and nuclear policy work plan for this new century, and may well be summarily scrapped by the incoming Obama administration anyway. Nevertheless, The Long Shadow suggests that these questions themselves may not go away so easily. As a result, even those who disagree with the specific conclusions reached by the 2001 NPR may in time need to follow it, perhaps uncomfortably, down the road of wrestling with these challenges. Whatever further new ideas or approaches may result from such a thoroughgoing review of strategic policy in light of 21st century conditions, it is likely to become harder than ever to avoid undertaking it. jing-dong yuan is Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and Associate Professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He can be reached at . [ 127 ] book review roundtable • nuclear logics & the long shadow Two timely and well-researched volumes provide fresh insights into some of the critical variables affecting the decision of states to either acquire or renouncenuclearweapons.Thetwovolumesalsoofferinterestingperspectives on the role of nuclear weapons in the 21st century both for nuclear weapons states and for non–nuclear weapons states, including those that once sought or are currently seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Etel Solingen’s Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East continues and expands on a seminal article she published in International Security almost fifteen years ago by re-examining the underlying rationale behind which states either pursue, forswear, or renounce nuclear weapons. Critiquing the neorealist understanding of the motivations for nuclear weapons as too deterministic and at best incomplete, she offers new insights into the explanatory power of domestic variables and explains how coalition formation and leadership interests in closer integration into the global economy help to prevent states from acquiring nuclear weapons. On the other hand, for those leaders who reject such a path and who exercise tight controls and authoritarian rules, the pursuit of nuclear weapons becomes a means for regime survival. Analyses of nuclear proliferation typically identify three major reasons as to why states pursue nuclear weapons: insecurity, prestige, and bureaucratic politics.1 An anarchical international system—where states resort to internal or external balancing to ensure survival—offers a most powerful explanation of state behavior, including the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Indeed, states pursue nuclear weapons because they face serious security threats and their ability to defend themselves through conventional armaments is either insufficient or too costly. Nuclear weapons therefore offer an attractive alternative as a force equalizer in situations where asymmetries of power balances exist. Solingen sets out to challenge this conventional wisdom by first identifying anomalies in neorealist theory where nuclear policy is concerned, i.e., why states facing similar security dilemmas have chosen to adopt different policies and why not all of these states embrace...