From proliferation to renunciation: Why some states give up nuclear ambitions while others do not.

摘要

Nonproliferation studies tend to treat "rollback" and "restraint" identically as they both seek nonproliferation. The two, however, represent the difference between change and continuity. A state's reversal of its nuclear program that already crossed the nuclear threshold is a great change whereas a non-nuclear state's affirmation not to develop nuclear weapons is continuation of nonproliferation. Reiss (1995), Paul (2000), and Solingen (2007) have contributed significantly to answering the rollback question. However, a central piece of puzzle remains missing, that is, the causal spark that led those states to go another step of renouncing nuclear weapons when they could have remained proliferated.;To fill the gap this dissertation proposes a diversionary-compliance hypothesis. It is based on a premise that what is deemed extremely valuable as a nuclear weapon is never forsaken, but only exchanged with something of an equivalent value---a leader's political life. When a leader confronts a legitimacy crisis, he/she gestures international cooperation by renouncing nuclear weapons in the expectation of receiving international help for his/her political survival. Renunciation thus is an act of diversion as the primary objective is more survival than nonproliferation. Simply put, nuclear weapons are likely to remain intact without a legitimacy crisis.;A leader has three options when faced with a domestic problem: crackdown, diversionary-war, and diversionary-compliance. What steers a leader to diversionary-compliance is when three conditions are present: a legitimacy crisis, hegemonic pressure, and a domestic-international aligned opposition. Of these conditions, the aligned opposition is vital in that the leader confronts two adversaries at once in a situation where seeking international cooperation becomes more advantageous for survival than seeking other options.;The hypothesis is compared with two alternative explanations---the realist/security view and the identity/norms view---and tested on five cases by historical process tracing: South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and India. The results show that the hypothesis was confirmed by three cases (South Africa, South Korea, and India). It particularly gave a better answer to the South Korean case where two alternative explanations failed. For the cases of Argentina and Brazil, however, the alternative explanations fared better.