Perspectives on the evolving Nuclear Order

ix, [1], 110 pages. Notes. Cover has some wear and curling. Toby Dalton is co-director and a senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. An expert on nonproliferation and nuclear energy, his work addresses regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order. Dalton?s research and writing focuses in particular on South Asia and East Asia. He is author (with George Perkovich) of Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2016), which provides in-depth analysis of the conflict spectrum in South Asia. He also wrote (with Michael Krepon) A Normal Nuclear Pakistan and ?Beyond Incrementalism: Rethinking Approaches to CBMs and Stability in South Asia.? He co-edited Perspectives on an Evolving Nuclear Order and wrote ?South Korea Debates Nuclear Options,? (with Byun Sunggee and Lee Sang-Tae) and ?South Korea?s Search for Nuclear Sovereignty? (with Alexandra Francis). From 2002 to 2010, Dalton served in a variety of high-level positions at the U.S. Department of Energy, including acting director for the Office of Nuclear Safeguards and Security and senior policy adviser to the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security. He also established and led the department?s office at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan from 2008-2009. Dalton previously served as professional staff member to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, at the National Bureau of Asian Research, and as a project associate for the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program. Tensions in the global nuclear order are rising. The sources of tension are many, including profound disagreement among states about disarmament and nonproliferation priorities, regional insecurity that both contributes to proliferation concerns and enhances the salience of nuclear deterrence, disenchantment about the lack of progress toward disarmament, and questions about integrating the nuclear outlier states into the order. The 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was symptomatic of these tensions. The conference failed to reach a consensus outcome, leading one nongovernmental observer to charge that it was an ?accurate reflection of the profound inadequacies and disagreements permeating the global nuclear disarmament regime? and a ?necessary shock to an ailing system.? Most contemporary disagreements about nuclear governance stem from the broader struggle for power in the international system as well as the extent to which states view the rules governing international nuclear affairs as just. This policy subsystem is referred to as the nuclear order?broadly defined as an arrangement of states and institutions in the international system based on beliefs about the relationship between nuclear technology and international political power. The existing order, built since the 1950s in and around the United Nations (UN), gives special preference to the early developers of nuclear technology. The dominant global powers at the time?principally the United States and the Soviet Union?succeeded both in developing nuclear weapons and in negotiating a treaty (the NPT) that legitimized, though conditionally, their possession of those weapons. Ultimately, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States were designated nuclear-weapon states by the treaty, while all of the other countries were classified as non-nuclear-weapon states. The institutionalization of unequal access to nuclear technology, and particularly the possession of nuclear weapons to perpetuate international political power, has contributed to an order that many states consider unjust?albeit one that has remained mostly stable and free of rampant proliferation. Many actors have tried to reenvision the nuclear order. These efforts are playing out in various venues, including at the United Nations; at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); at the UN. …