Sicherheit und Risiko

ESPRIT St.Gallen Business Review
Living with
Nuclear Weapons
Prof. Dr. Christoph Frei
Professor für Politische Ideengeschichte und Internationale Beziehungen, Universität St. Gallen
Even a sketchy historical account of nuclear
nonproliferation efforts reveals how precarious
the provision of security is bound to remain
in a world of sovereign states.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August
1945 served to convince public opinion worldwide
of the new weapon’s unprecedented significance—its
terrible efficiency as a killing machine, its
enormous potential to disrupt established balances of
power and to enhance security dilemmas. In its wake,
prospects for control and abolition of the new weapon
were examined. One fundamental assumption
emerged and was reiterated in numerous contemporary
statements. As the Franck Report put it in 1945,
“the efficient protection against the destructive use
of nuclear power … can only come from the political
organization of the world.” Immediately, political and
diplomatic attention focused on how to establish a supranational
body with unchallenged authority to stem
proliferation.
A supranational agency, however, was beyond
reach as the East-West conflict intensified. It is fair to
say that the rapid accumulation of nuclear weapons
in the early stages of the Cold War was impervious
to political control. At the same time, the necessity
“to do something” increased. The Cuban missile crisis
demonstrated the risk of an unregulated strategic
competition between the United States and the Soviet
Union, along with anxieties about the proliferation of
nuclear weapons extending to Germany and Japan. At
the same time, there were mounting commercial pressures
for civilian uses of nuclear energy.
A grand bargain
The 1960s and 1970s saw concerted efforts to
build an international nuclear order worthy of that
name. A basic deal was struck to underpin the Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. In return for committing
the vast majority of states to refrain from
acquiring nuclear weapons, the established nuclear
powers committed themselves under Article VI to
pursue a process towards “general and complete” nuclear
disarmament. As a quid pro quo for renouncing
nuclear weapons, the have-nots would under Article
IV partake in “the fullest possible exchange of equipment,
materials and … information for the peaceful
use of nuclear energy.”
«As long as state
sovereignty remains
the dominant ordering
principle in international
politics, no
system of nonproliferation
will prevent
states from acquiring
the requisite
capabilities.»
The nonproliferation regime was built on a set
of liberal assumptions: rationality on the part of state
actors; the attainability of a fair deal in the face of
obvious inequalities; the possibility of building trust
among states through rule-based interaction; the ability
of international agencies to monitor compliance;
and, last but not least, the very feasibility of cooperation
in preventing nuclear-armed chaos and in realizing
nuclear energy’s economic potential.
Abstinence, provisional
From the beginning, skeptics argued that the
NPT was never intended to compel states to act in line
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