RE: NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: WHY STATES PURSUED THE BOMB AND HOW U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AFFECTED STATES DECISION-MAKING

This paper discusses why countries decided to pursue nuclear weapons and explore to what extent U.S. foreign policy factored into such decision-making. Three theoretical models were considered with regard to providing a rationale for either attempted or successful nuclear proliferation: the security model, the reputational model, and the domestic/political model. This research tests the thesis that regardless of the type of government, economy, location, conventional military strength, as well as the depth of foreign relations with the United States, states are more likely to pursue a path to nuclearization to counter perceived geopolitical threats of an existential nature, if robust security guarantees are not assured. To test this thesis, three sets of case studies are used: allies (South Korea, Israel, France), adversaries (Iran, Iraq, North Korea), and loose allies (Pakistan, India). The central conclusion drawn from this thesis and its exploration of theoretical models and relevant case studies has shown that although security alliances are often viewed as being problematic due to a past likelihood to entangle countries and entrap them in broader conflict, as seen in both world wars, the opposite is true, as their value has shown to be key in furthering global efforts to counter nuclear proliferation. With the exception of the French nuclear program, which can be best explained by the reputational model, the security model is most suited to explain the rationale of states’ nuclear pursuits. The combination of strong, sustained security alliances, along with offers of civilian nuclear cooperation, have led to dozens of states, even those outside NATO, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, to refrain from producing nuclear weapons, despite their technological capabilities, supporting the second conclusion that latent nuclear powers are discouraged and disinterested in weaponizing their programs, regardless of the ease of doing so, as to remain in the protection of a superpower. While security guarantees are currently the largest inhibitor of nuclear proliferation, with China’s rise, this next, bipolar stage in geopolitics may require greater emphasis on economic ties in conjunction with existing security guarantees to prevent the emergence of additional nuclear states