Over the past 50 years, existing nonproliferation treaties and initiatives have proved remarkably effective in preventing the emergence of additional nuclear-armed states. But nonproliferation efforts are at an inflection point: the risk of additional states developing nuclear weapons or the capabilities to produce them quickly, is growing. It is time to rethink and broaden the U.S. strategy for preventing proliferation, including elevating new tools and perspectives.
States adversarial to the United States have posed the most serious proliferation threats over recent decades. The typical U.S. strategy for dealing with those threats combined coercion (primarily economic sanctions), a diplomatic off-ramp that traded nuclear restrictions for relief from punitive measures, and the threat of force if a state proceeded with weaponization. This approach contributed to modest successes, such as Libya’s agreement to abandon its nascent nuclear weapons program in 2003 and Iran’s negotiation of a nuclear deal in 2015.
But this strategy is ill-suited to respond to the next wave of likely proliferators: U.S. partners, such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Attempts to sanction and isolate these states would inflict high economic and security costs that U.S. policymakers would likely be unwilling to pay. Future proliferators are also more likely to take a different path to the bomb, making the typical U.S. approach more challenging to employ. States like Iraq and Syria attempted to covertly develop nuclear weapons in violation of their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Discovery of illicit programs provided a clear indication of a state’s intent to weaponize. Future proliferators, however, are likely to advance NPT-compliant civil nuclear programs to the threshold of nuclear weapons, allowing them to move quickly to weaponization.
In response to these shifts, the United States needs to rethink its nonproliferation strategy and broaden its strategic toolkit to better address emerging threats. This could include deemphasizing tools that cause humanitarian suffering and embedding nonproliferation approaches within broader regional peacebuilding initiatives designed to reduce tensions. Specifically, a new toolkit should include:
- Tailor sanctions. Over the past two decades, Washington has increasingly relied on broad economic sanctions to punish states, under the widespread assumption that increasing pressure will lead a state to capitulate. Research, however, suggests this type of sanctioning strategy often does not affect state behavior. Broad sectoral sanctions also inflict a devastating humanitarian cost, even when there are carve-outs for aid. More targeted sanctions could focus on identifying and denying access to chokepoints, the materials and technologies a state needs for a nuclear weapons program but cannot produce domestically.
- Employ positive inducements. U.S. policymakers have generally dismissed the role inducements can play in preventing proliferation or view them incorrectly as ‘rewarding’ destabilizing activities. But evidence suggests they can create buy-in for negotiations and demonstrate the benefits of a deal when used early in a negotiation process. Inducements can also maintain and even strengthen the U.S. relationship with the proliferator, which will be a key priority for policymakers if the state is a close U.S. partner. Inducements could include direct investments, security assurances, aid, or cooperative projects.
- Expand nuclear cooperation. Engaging states in proliferation-resistant nuclear cooperation agreements could enable the United States to secure more stringent nonproliferation commitments by the partner states and influence the direction of civil nuclear activities. U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements also build ties between epistemic communities, which are important channels of transparency and insight into planned nuclear trajectories. Part of this approach should include refraining from granting exemptions to long-standing nonproliferation norms for national security purposes.
- Connect nonproliferation approaches within broader dialogue and engagement. Transactional nonproliferation agreements that trade nuclear restrictions for sanctions relief are less sustainable if they are not paired with broader efforts to address a given country’s security concerns, including the factors that push states to weaponize. It is not always feasible to include broader issues in nuclear agreements, but the United States should consider parallel negotiating tracks on other issues that could spoil a nuclear agreement and/or support for regional processes and dialogues to reduce related
tensions.
Additional nuclear-armed states are not a foregone conclusion, but the risk of proliferation is likely to grow in the coming years – adding further complexity to an already difficult nuclear weapons landscape. Adapting and broadening the U.S. strategy now to anticipate the changing threat landscape can help reduce the risk of more states acquiring the bomb and the possibility of nuclear use.
Download a PDF of this issue »
Kelsey Davenport is the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a member of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies advisory board, and a 2011 graduate of the Kroc Institute’s master’s program in International Peace Studies, now part of the Master of Global Affairs program at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.
