Updating the Story

[ 131 ] book review roundtable • nuclear logics & the long shadow Updating the Story Deepti Choubey In assessing two major contributions to the debate over nuclear weapons, let me begin by applauding both Etel Solingen and Muthiah Alagappa for their ambitious and tour de force treatments of the nuclear decisions of countries in East Asia and the Middle East. Policymakers’ assumptions about the world tend to influence their responses to challenges. From an analytic perspective, these two books are a study in contrasts. The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia acknowledges alternative analytic frameworks but is primarily influenced by a lens of international politics focused on security concerns and calculations. Lest it be confined to calculations at the level of the state, the book also contains a useful chapter on nuclear terrorism and nonstate actors by S. Paul Kapur. Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East addresses security dilemmas but also benefits from an expanded explanatory model. Solingen considers other factors such as domestic politics, international norms and institutions, and the influence of various forms of government. Depending on one’s framework for understanding nuclear developments, drastically different policy options can appear. Solingen’s systematic appraisal of competing theories creates the foundation for alternative approaches to nonproliferation and security policy. Both studies have explored some of these other theories but have come to different conclusions about their overall salience. As such, they demonstrate the ongoing difficulty of applying political science theory to the shifting sands of nuclear decisionmaking. One of the challenges of reviewing books is the time lag between publication and current events. Since the January 2007 publication of the Shultz,Kissinger,Perry,andNunnop-edessayintheWallStreetJournalcalling for a world free of nuclear weapons,1 a renewed debate on the desirability and feasibility of nuclear disarmament has begun among U.S. policymakers and influencers on both sides of the political aisle. This essay essentially created a new political context that has been sustained for two years now. This 1 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007. deepti choubey is Deputy Director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has recently completed a study of the views of key non–nuclear weapons states toward nuclear disarmament and additional nonproliferation obligations. She can be reached at . [ 132 ] asia policy new context bears on the import of modernization programs, the utility of extended deterrence, and efforts to craft a new nuclear order. James Wirtz’s characterization in The Long Shadow of disarmament as the “dominant enduring theme” of U.S. nuclear policy (p. 114) is particularly notable. His exposition of nuclear trends highlights the degree to which the international community has been confused about the direction of U.S. nuclear policy. Bush administration officials claim that the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review de-emphasized the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security policy. The rest of the world, however, did not interpret the review in the same way. On the one hand, reductions continue to decrease the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal (whether weapons are actually dismantled or just recategorized is another matter). On the other hand, the Bush administration’s modernization plans included more usable nuclear weapons, such as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) and the current effort to develop the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). These activities created ambiguity: was the point to reduce both the number of weapons and their roles, and to develop new weapons for lessened roles, or was the range of possible uses expanded? Congress effectively killed the RNEP, and the RRW in its current form seems to be headed for the same fate. Wirtz’s assessment of U.S. nuclear policy touches on disarmament issues and helps put in proper context Alagappa’s emphasis on what modernization programs reveal about the role of nuclear weapons for nuclear weapons states. Too much emphasis on these modernization programs can miss the broader trends of nuclear policy. Steps a nuclear weapons state takes to ban nuclear tests and cease the production of fissile material may be far more revealing about the...