Embracing Ambiguity: Classification, Rule Violations, and International Politics

• In Event: Compliance and Defiance with International Law

Abstract

How do states react to other states' apparent violations of international laws and norms? Existing scholarship focuses on punishment and, more recently, information obfuscation or revelation as responses to such behavior. We focus on a prior step: assessing whether ambiguous events constitute a violation of relevant international rules in the first place. We theorize that states face a trade-off between protecting a regime's strength and its scope. Classifying ambiguous actions as a violation -- but failing to punish them -- threatens the strength of a regime but avoids legitimizing exceptions or loopholes. Classifying an event as a non-violation, in contrast, better insulates a regime but risks setting a precedent that others may copy in the future. We analyze our theory of ambiguous events and classification in the nuclear non-proliferation domain, using a case study of India's 1974 "peaceful nuclear explosion." Drawing on declassified American internal documents, we find strong evidence that the trade-off that we identify influenced U.S. decision-makers as they debated how to classify India's ambiguous nuclear explosion. Washington ultimately embraced ambiguity by choosing not to reject India's classification, allowing the "peaceful" label to soften the blow to the nascent non-proliferation norm.

Authors

• Allison Carnegie, Columbia University

• Austin Carson, University of Chicago