In our first article, Christopher Hobbs and Matthew Moran explore the “human dimension of nuclear security.” They trace the evolution of the concept of nuclear-security culture as it expanded to include human as well as technical factors. The article draws on three case studies to highlight the ways in which the human element can undermine nuclear security. One key finding from the authors’ research is that threat perceptions vary significantly across different occupational categories: for example, employees in technical, operational, and managerial roles tend to have a far more abstract understanding of the threat, particularly the threat associated with insiders, than their colleagues within the explicitly security-related functions. The authors conclude that management must scrap rigid, top-down approaches to security and instead solicit insights and input from employees among all groups and levels.
The safeguards regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also has evolved over the past several decades. One notable change is the 1997 Model Additional Protocol (AP), which enhances the agency’s ability to carry out inspections under safeguards agreements and was supposed to become the new standard. Rebecca Gibbons and Todd Robinson argue that it is “the strongest globally available, codified signal for states to indicate their commitment to the nuclear nonproliferation regime and to nuclear restraint.” But a number of key states have not adopted an AP, and, as Gibbons and Robinson note, these “significant holdouts show no sign of concluding an AP anytime soon, undermining the claim that the AP is the universal safeguards standard.” Gibbons and Robinson delve into the cases of the holdouts, attempting to assess the relative weight of three main motivations—“costs,” “leverage,” and “clandestine activities,” in the article’s shorthand.
A third evolving regime is the one for chemical weapons. A quarter-century after the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) came into being, the states possessing chemical weapons have destroyed all of their declared stockpiles. (Yes, “declared” is an important qualifier, but the achievement is still a very significant one.) In his article, Alexander Kelle highlights the creation of the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) and the development of an “attribution norm”—under which the OPCW draws conclusions not only on whether chemical weapons were used but also, once use is confirmed, on the identity of the countries that used them. Kelle sees the IIT as a crucial adaptation of the CWC regime and argues that the investigation and attribution work of the IIT should be incorporated into the programmatic work of the OPCW.
Robert J. Hughes takes a cross-regime approach in looking into the question of what determines responses to noncompliance in the realms of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. He ultimately concludes that the two critical factors are the scale of the incident and the identity of the perpetrator. In particular, Hughes says, if the noncompliance is by a state that is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council or a close ally of one of those five states, “there is fundamentally no viable mechanism for enforcement using punitive measures within the mandate of the UN Security Council.” He argues that potential future treaties, such as ones that might impose limits on the use of artificial intelligence or cyber warfare, “could be designed to delineate between small-scale and large-scale incidents and explicitly identify different compliance-enforcement models, as appropriate.”
Issues of adherence to regime standards also undergird the piece by Sidra Hamidi and Chantell Murphy—but their article suggests that the definitions on which those standards are based may not be as firm and clear-cut as they are often portrayed to be. The two scholars use an approach based on “technopolitics” to examine reactions, particularly by the United States, to the pursuit of certain fuel-cycle technologies by Iran and South Korea. The article concludes that “[a]ppreciating the entanglement of technology and politics, rather than theorizing the primacy of one over the other, helps construct and sustain an international community in which nonproliferation efforts can flourish.”
In our final research article, Adam N. Stulberg and Jonathan P. Darsey challenge some of the conventional wisdom on international nuclear trade. On the basis of their research, they argue that “the US nuclear industry’s declining market performance has not triggered a dangerous ‘race to the bottom’ between Russia and the United States” in the nonproliferation rigor of their agreements for peaceful nuclear cooperation. Rather, “Moscow since 2008 has steadily elevated the quality and consistency of the nonproliferation restrictions it includes in its bilateral cooperation agreements.” Stulberg and Darsey see “strategic complementarities” in the paths the two countries are taking in negotiating these agreements with their partners in nuclear trade.
In our book-review section, Magdalena E. Stawkowski writes about Togzhan Kassenova’s Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb; Mario E. Carranza covers Michael Krepon’s Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise, and Revival of Arms Control and David A. Cooper’s Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age: Between Disarmament and Armageddon; and Or Rabinowitz reviews Alexander Lanoszka’s Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation.
The issue concludes with an In Memoriam for Michael Krepon, who for decades was one of the leading voices on a variety of issues in nonproliferation and disarmament. Among Michael’s notable qualities was his ability to write lucidly and compellingly about these issues. George Perkovich’s piece is thus a particularly fitting tribute to Michael, deftly capturing the complexities of the man.
As we wrap up Volume 28, I would like to thank all the experts who served as peer reviewers for the period covered by this volume of the Nonproliferation Review. We are all indebted to these reviewers for the thought and effort that they put into their work.
Finally, on an administrative note, our more eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that we have started publishing author biographies at the end of articles. We believe the new approach will better serve you, our readers. Because a few of the articles in this issue appeared online before we adopted this policy, we are publishing a Contributors section that includes all the authors featured in this issue, whether or not their article already contains a biography. Future issues of the journal will not include a Contributors section.