Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Nuclear deterrence is born from the two superpowers’ relations during the Cold War as they were the first countries to get nuclear weapons and they were the main and most powerful rivals in the world. Then new actors joined the game by testing their own nuclear bombs: the UK in 1952, followed by France in 1960, China in 1964, India in 1974, and Pakistan in 1998. Israel pretends it does not have any nuclear weapons but it is an open secret that they do 1. France helped Israel to get its weapons and the nuclear explosion in 1979 off the southern coast of Africa probably involved Israel and South Africa (sourced by the Federation of American Scientists, the Wisconsin Project on Arms Control, the Center for Defense Information, etc.). This was confirmed by Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli scientist who worked on developing the bomb. The intrusion of new nuclear countries frightened the United States and the USSR because the balance was already fragile and newcomers could break it. Would the game remain "safe" with more players? Therefore in 1968 both countries drafted a treaty to prevent nuclear proliferation. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970, at a time when five countries had successfully achieved a nuclear explosion. The NPT officially recognises only these five countries as nuclear-weapons states. They happen to be also the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council. India and Pakistan carried out a nuclear test after 1968 and are therefore referred to as non-official nuclearweapons states. The new nuclear states adopted and adapted the nuclear doctrine to their needs, their geopolitical interests and their place in international relations.

The timeframe of 1978-1984, a period of critical importance in the development of the nuclear world, sets the boundaries for this analysis of Canadian nuclear arms control policy. The situation brought about by increasing hostility between the superpowers, and changes in doctrine and advances in technology that facilitated nuclear war-fighting scenarios, was extremely grave. Therefore it would seem appropriate for Canada, in its traditional role as mediator and middlepower devoted to easing the danger of world conflagration, to have taken an active stand in its nuclear arms control diplomacy. Such was not the case, as bureaucratic politics, cybernetic decision-making, and cognitive dissonance made adherence to the status quo, or minimal rhetorical changes, the order of the day. While that changed towards the end of the period under examination, there remained little substantive modification of policy, despite the growing threat of nuclear disaster. Four examples of Canadian nuclear arms control policy are examined with the aid of official government documents and appropriate commentary from a variety of analysts. Canadian arms control policy at the two United Nations Special Sessions on Disarmament, the controversy over the question of testing the American Air-Launched Cruise Missile in Canada, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's personal peace initiative provide a wealth of information that is used to illustrate the struggle of bureaucratic politics versus rational decision-making. Some of the more influential theoretical and structural difficulties within the foreign policy-making process in Canada that posed real impediments to comprehensive analytical decision-making are presented. These problems are outlined in order to provide a framework for the analysis of the four policy situations. In the first three cases, the decision-making indicates the predominance of the bureaucracy's cybernetic conduct. In the last instance, the attempts of the Prime Minister to impose rational/analytical decision-making on the policy process caused him to actively circumvent the bureaucracy within Canada, but he was bested by external forces. The thesis of this monograph is that Canadian nuclear arms control policy for much of this period was reactive, limited to well-crafted rhetoric, and oblivious to the changing nature of the strategic environment. The reasons for this policy behavior may be traced to external constraints imposed by the dynamics of the international system, the nonrationality of the nuclear world, and the weakness of Canada's influence vis-a-vis the superpowers. As well, the importance of not alienating the United States by too forceful a criticism was an essential consideration in the policy process due to the many issues of contention that already existed between Canada and the United States, and the vulnerability of Canada in economic terms to the negative reactions of its North American neighbour. When the Prime Minister did try to set policy and actively change the nuclear world via his personal peace initiative, the same factors and forces proved to be his undoing. In addition, the reactions on the international scene by some of the more powerful Western players indicate that Canada did not have the credibility to attempt such an influential role in the nuclear world. This response may have been prompted by Canada's minimal defence spending in recent years, or it may well have been the fate of a middlepower trying to exert influence in areas where the other nations were loathe to accept it. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brandeis University, 2008. / Title from IR (viewed on May 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Peter Lavoy. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-75). Also available online.

The scope of the thesis is to study India's nuclear behavior and the international responses in the period following India's nuclear weapons tests in 1998 leading up to the waiver for India by the nuclear suppliers group in 2008. The thesis explores this process of nuclear reconciliation in the context of a quest for international nuclear legitimacy. Nuclear legitimation is understood as a two-sided process and the explanation assumes two sides to the story: the Indian side and the audience side. Grounding the conceptualization within a theoretical framework of constructivism, the thesis explores the legitimation strategies employed by the Indian government to assuage international apprehensions about its possession of nuclear weapons. Additionally, the thesis analyzes how and why selected states in the international audience received and responded to India's strategies. In doing so, the thesis acknowledges but goes beyond an apparent power and interest explanation underlined by geo-political/security considerations and economic/trade interests - to include an analysis of shared norms and beliefs that constituted a basis for legitimacy judgments, circumscribed the interaction between India and other states, induced certain responses on the audience side and made possible certain claims on the Indian side. The principal argument is that normative evaluations and ideational factors served as important resources on both sides and also played an important role in determining the timing as well as the nature of nuclear reconciliation with India. By allowing a strategic employment of different arguments that appealed to the different states in the targeted audience, a legitimation process reduced the political, economic and diplomatic costs for the Indian government. Similarly, it enabled other states in the audience to support (as the P3: France, Russia and United Kingdom did), not come in the way (as the game-changers: Australia, Canada, Germany and Japan did) or not block India-specific waiver (as the white knights: Ireland, Austria, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland did) - and to justify their responses, cost-effectively.

This study is designed to assess the effectiveness of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime and analyze theories for effectively analyzing countries that are a risk for proliferating nuclear armaments. The initial phase of my research is designed to assess the existing literature and primary theoretical approaches for analyzing nuclear non-proliferation initiatives and potential nuclear proliferators. My main means of analysis will be to examine the national and international actors involved in each case. With this method, I plan to analyze a government at the level of each of its ruling institutions. Each of these institutions will be analyzed in the context of Joseph Cirincione's five drivers and barriers: security, prestige, domestic politics, technology, and economics. This study will then review multiple historical cases of countries and treaties related to the nuclear non-proliferation issue in the context of my method of analysis. In particular, each historical study will discuss major actors and institutions with respect to the five major proliferation concepts, as a means of demonstrating the validity of my method. The primary section of my thesis will be the application of my method to one of the preeminent nuclear proliferation threats today: Iran. After a discussion of the physical status of Iran's nuclear program, I will begin my analysis in terms of my concepts, and will examine the principal actors involved in the Iranian nuclear dispute. These will be the Iran's moderate and conservative factions, as well as the U.S., Israel, the EU-3, and IAEA, and they will be examined in the context of the five drivers and barriers. The final section will be my overall risk analysis for Iran. My preliminary analysis is that regime survival is the most critical issue when it comes to the principal motivations of a state to develop nuclear arms. If this is correct, policy options designed to take advantage of the actors' positions in Iran can be formulated based on the specific conditions that prevail in Iran.

No description available.

Since the end of the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Northeast Asia and its comprising countries have avoided international conflict as well as any regional set has done over the past few decades. The absence of nuclear weapons among Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, in particular, is striking, given their technological and scientific capabilities. Though each of those countries has come close at times to developing their own nuclear weapons, one factor or another contributed to the failure of those upstart programs. The United States has played a significant role in all of them. Still, other factors remain. The purpose of this thesis is to determine in detail what caused the lack of a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia, beyond the American angle, as far as could be done. Existential threats exist to each country involved in the study, theoretically and tactically. Additionally, what causes an outlier like North Korea, which has boldly moved forward with nuclear weapons development? An important work by Scott Sagan is utilized in the thesis to assist with developing some far-reaching conclusions, with great importance to other parts of the world, beyond northeast Asia. Other literature can assist with those conclusions, as well. The framework of this thesis will be to intermingle a somewhat amended version of Sagan's nuclear proliferation rationalizations with historical analyses to draft some region-specific conclusions about why northeast Asia has not had a nuclear arms race. Processes going on between countries, within countries, and among countries, militarily, culturally, and economically, play such important roles than none can be discarded. The economic power centered on the capitalist core of northeast Asia can show how nuclear weapons acquisition is no longer among the things necessary to gain international respect or even security.