Lecture 4 Flashcards
What are Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)?
Atomic, biological, radiological and chemical. Have the ability to inflict massive collateral damage.
Raise moral questions about their non-legitimate, inhuman nature (way in which they kill people). Have a powerful deterrent effect and are portable, relatively easy to make and cheap to produce.
What was the first Nuclear Age?
Cold War
- Nuclear Proliferation Treaty 1968
- Vertical nuclear arms race between the superpowers (bipolar) and missile shields.
- Mutually Assured Destruction
- Superpowers provided security guarantees to allies, limiting proliferation.
- Arms control treaties reduced tensions between superpowers.
What was the second Nuclear Age?
Post Cold War
- Anxiety about nuclear proliferation (combined with fear of loose nukes), ‘rogue states’ and terrorists.
- Continued use of nuclear strategies by established nuclear powers.
- Greater incentives for states to acquire nuclear weapons.
- Greater accessibility of nuclear technology and loose nukes
- Mixed success in terms of limiting proliferation
What is the third Nuclear Age?
Now? - towards a third age?
- Great Power Rivalry
- Revival of Nuclear Utility Power
- Abandoning Arms control? E.g. INF -> Russia & US = security dilemma
- Active proliferation for profit?
What is Arms Control?
regulating the number of nuclear weapons held by nuclear armed states and
What is Nuclear Proliferation?
Spread of Nuclear Weapons, either by acquisition by more states or other actors (horizontal proliferation), or their accumulation by established nuclear states (vertical proliferation)
What is disarmament?
Eliminating nuclear weapons from the calculation of states.
What are arguments for nuclear weapons as promotion for peace and stability?
- Absence of nuclear war; nuclear weapons as symbol
- Effective deterrence; prevention of war
- International stability; preserves balance of power
- Nuclear statesmanship; possession of nuclear weapons can give sense of responsibility
What are arguments against nuclear weapons as promotion for peace and stability?
- Fallibility of deterrence systems; theory of nuclear deterrence is naive
- Danger of nuclear imbalances; no guarantee that vertical/horizontal nuclear proliferation will preserve BOP
- Useable nuclear weapons; no longer only symbolic
- Irresponsible nuclear powers
What four primary norms of Rogue states?
- Pursuit of weapons of mass destruction
- Support/engagement in terrorism
- Assault on human rights with external consequences
- Territorial aggression
What are critiques on the definition of rogue states?
- Very vague definition
- Very subjective
- Who gets to define this?
What is Appeasement?
Acceding to demands of aggressive states to prevent war
What is pre-emption?
A state’s willingness and ability to attack another state that poses an imminent threat to its national security’ (to strike first).
What was George Kennan his idea on containment of Us towards North Korea during the Cold War?
- Strategy of US during cold war
- We need to be careful of containment
- Rules of encountering the SU and China
- Multifaceted containment policy → far beyond just military containment
- argued it was better to focus on certain places and not apply containment everywhere
What was the US strategy towards North Korea and the NSC-68 document?
- Militarization of US foreign policy, rather than multifaceted approach by Kennan
- Defence budget increased by 257%
- Psychological balance of power: a loss for the US in one place, was a loss in the Cold War; SU had to be confronted militarily everywhere
- Gaddis: NSC-68 was a flawed document
