Building Nuclear Force Structures: Alliances, Constraints, and Diplomatic Agency

• In Event: Making Nuclear Choices?

Abstract

What determines how regional nuclear powers build their nuclear force structures? Most studies of nuclear proliferation explain why states build the nuclear bomb and how they do it. What they miss, however, is how states develop the apparatus to deliver these nuclear weapons – a crucial part of operationalizing any nuclear force. This paper posits an original framework to understand nuclear force structure development in regional powers taking into account the co-production of strategy, international diplomacy, and technology. Viewing them as a series of constraints that shape the size and nature of the nuclear force structures of states, I examine three key explanatory factors – the international non-proliferation order/multilateral technology control regimes, allies or the lack thereof, and technological capacity. Through multi-archival historical and interview-based research in India, United Kingdom, and France, I find that states exercise different forms of diplomatic agency in shaping their nuclear force structures. These manifest themselves in the form of networks of interaction among regional powers which – in the face of geopolitical and non-proliferation regime related constraints – produce different parts of regional nuclear force structures. My paper addresses a gap in the scholarship on nuclear proliferation and strategy by mapping out the path that states take to develop their nuclear force structures after developing the nuclear bomb and establishing the role foreign networks in the process. Furthermore, the paper deepens our knowledge of aspects of nuclear proliferation hitherto overlooked by academic and policy discourses.

Author

• Debak Das, Stanford University