Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

Transnational Coalitions 47
For power theorists, the primary concern of states is neither maximizing
power nor realizing economic gains. Instead, a state’s primary concern is
to maintain its position in the international system (ibid., p. 127). 32 Also
for this reason, realists would doubt that developing countries would join
the global ocean dumping regime. Moreover, considerations of security subordinate
economic gains and all other gains to political interest. Owing to
the security and energy concerns intimately associated with regulation of
radioactive waste, realists would therefore predict that nuclear nations
would strongly oppose other states’ interference in these matters. 33 Nuclear
nations would most likely attempt to exclude regulation of nuclear waste
from the range of issues covered by the regime. Similarly, as long as ocean
dumping of wastes is not perceived to be threatening their national security,
developing countries would be very reluctant about joining and actively
participating in this environmental regime.
Realists generally assert that global cooperation occurs only at the wish of
major states (ibid., p. 107). They further postulate that cooperation and international
order in general can only be established by a leader possessing a
“preponderance of material resources”—in contemporary parlance, a hegemon
(Keohane 1984, p. 32). To illustrate their general claim, the supporters
of the hegemonic leadership theory credit British leadership for the relatively
stable world economy from 1850 to 1914, and the United States for providing
the leadership after World War II until the early 1970s. International
crisis and disorder, then, are caused by a lack of hegemonic leadership. 34
Power theorists will suspect that the United States constructed the global
ocean dumping regime. According to both the benevolent and the coercive
version of hegemonic stability theory, the United States would act on pure
self-interest but ignore collective interests. 35 The hegemon, the United States,
making use of its material and military supremacy, would follow a mixed
strategy of material rewards, threats, and perhaps exclusion of recalcitrant
governments. Through provision of side payments, or by other forms of
reward, the United States would build the necessary support. Some suggest
that the United States might have spent part of its revenue on building support
in case it gained more than others did (Young 1991, p. 289). However,
because of the relative-gains problem, some realists strongly doubt that this
kind of bargaining would occur. 36
When would a regime change occur? Power theorists generally assert that
changes in the underlying relative power capabilities result in regime