Rogue Nations, States of Concern, and Axes of Evil: Examining the Politics of Disarmament in a Changing Geopolitical Context

The post-Cold War international system has witnessed the emergence of conflicts and greater challenges to global security. The growth of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and states' defiance of nonproliferation efforts have been astonishing. Major regional contenders have advanced their nuclear and chemical weapons cache for balance-of-power and other geostrategic reasons, thereby causing a security dilemma. In some cases, this tendency has led to a serious arms race, comparable only to that between the Soviet Union and the United States in the Cold War era.

Alarmed by India's possession of nuclear weapons, Pakistan, a perennial adversary of India over Kashmir, developed and publicly demonstrated its own nuclear weapons program. In East Asia, North Korea, a long-time adversary of its southern counterpart, recently declared that it was resuming its own nuclear weapons program after several years' hiatus. Sandwiched among hostile states, North Korea is also wary of the U.S. military buildup on the Korean peninsula, the presence of U.S. military bases in Japan, and the vast strength of the Chinese and Russian military arsenals in the region. In Africa, where the majority of the countries have ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ), South Africa was the only emerging nuclear power that voluntarily destroyed its stockpiles (in early 1989) with no pressure from the international community. ¹ In the Middle East, two countries known to possess WMD are Israel and Iraq. The latter was said to have not only nuclear ambitions but also chemical and biological weapons, while the former, it is argued, has never fully declared the existence or the extent of its weapons stockpiles. The fall of Iraq to U.S.-led coalition forces patently changed the military configuration of the Middle East.

This essay addresses the key issue of the determinants of state response to international norms of nonproliferation. An effort is made to explain South Africa's readiness to disarm without any international sanctions, Iraq's refusal to disarm even in the face of growing international military pressure, and the lukewarm response of the international community to North Korea's public declaration of its nuclear weapons program. Moreover, it will seek to account for the varying responses and the mixed signals that WMD states receive from the major powers regarding compliance with the nonproliferation regime.

I argue that the geostrategic environment that a state operates in determines its actions regarding observance of the international security regimes of nonproliferation. States will comply only where the geostrategic dangers of noncompliance are more than those of compliance. Moreover, geostrategic interests of major powers also determine the extent of their interest in the disarmament of a WMD state. Major powers with heavy regional interests are more likely to pursue a disarmament agenda where their interest is directly at stake than where it is only tangential. Aware that geostrategic interests will determine the nature of international response to their behavior regarding WMD policy, states choose to act in ways that conform to calculable interests arising from these relationships. Similarly, the response of the international community is determined by parallel geostrategic interests and not necessarily by the immediate threat to the international security that normatively shapes the nature of the reaction.

In order to further this argument, I sketch out a three-tiered analytical framework influenced by a neorealist approach. This framework assumes that the geostrategic context and the response to it by WMD-possessing states is determined by (1) the nature of the relationship of a state to its regional counterparts, (2) the presence of a perceived competing regional military hegemon, and (3) the nature of the existing containment strategy as a strategic response to limit the ability of a militant state to inflict danger. I identify three ideal type categories, namely, open (exempt), unanimous...