Different Strokes for Different Folks.

From this week’s readings, I gained a new perspective on nuclear weapons, and the various ways countries pursue the development of nuclear weapons programs.

I had always assumed the path to develop a nuclear weapon capability was all more or less the same. Countries without a nuclear opinion want one if for nothing else then as a prestigious status symbol and keeping up with the international Jones’s.  And while most countries are eager to have nuclear weapons, the notion of mutually assured destruction is a deterrent from actually using them.

However, in the reading by Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino, I realized that the historical notion of nuclear weapon deterrence should not be assumed to last forever. The authors describe the “logic of consequence” in the reading might not hold up against shifting international norms, divergent ideologies, and regional political instability.

What stood out to me the most from this week’s reading is the various pathways countries pursue to develop nuclear weapons programs. It’s one thing to think about why a country might pursue a nuclear weapon, but there seems to be much more utility in studying how they go about developing them.

The Narang reading points to four typologies: hedging, sprinting, hiding, and sheltered. The hedging pursuit seems the least destructive to international peace. If countries can develop their nuclear weapons programs without completing an actual nuclear weapon capability, then perhaps mutually assured deterrence remains relevant to preventing the use of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, If an increased number of countries want to develop a hedging strategy for a nuclear weapons program, how is such activity monitored and controlled by the international community? While technical hedging may not pose significant risk factors, hard hedging or Insurance hedging is easy. Their potential to include dual-use delivery vehicles has the potential to pose significant threats.

As Narang points out, as a country moves closer to developing a capable nuclear weapon program, the level of regional instability increases. This includes economic turmoil and the increased potential for violent military confrontation. Narang mentions that the level of duress a country experiences influence the rate at which they might pursue a functional nuclear weapon.

From the readings, it appears the motivating drivers of nuclear weapons development programs are ouroboros in nature.

Could a revitalized international deterrence strategy for the 21st Century include a responsibility from the United States, Russia, and China to prevent duress from occurring within a country?

I found this table really insightful in thinking about how a country’s nuclear weapon strategy changes over time.

For example, as the table above illustrates, Iran appears to have changed their approach several times over the decades from Technical Hedging in 74′-78′; to  Hiding strategies between 81′-03′; and their current strategy of  Hard hedging.

Thinking along the lines of how a country purses it’s nuclear weapons interests could be a useful framework to analyze shifting geopolitical power balance between nations and drill down to understand a specific country’s broader military and economic strategic pursuites. IN other words, a given country’s nuclear strategy may be closely correlated to its overarching military and economic strategy, and as its nuclear strategy changes, so do geopolitical regional balances.