Emergent countries and nuclear proliferation : an illustration of the teleological biases in international relations and their effects

What are the relations between the emergence of a state on the international scene and nuclear proliferation ? The claim that the acquisition of nuclear arms systems is a condition or consequence of the emergence of a state is here called into question on the basis of a tripartite analysis. First, at the methodological level, Edward Carr's original intuition concerning the teleological aspect of the discipline of international relations is reaffirmed by establishing on the basis of six precise indicators the homology between a received understanding of nuclear history as the history of proliferation and developmentalist thought, both of which are teleological. It is then demonstrated at the empirical level that many proliferating states have not in fact emerged while some emergent states have not chosen to acquire nuclear arms systems. At the policy level, finally, it turns out that the correlation between emergence and proliferation is not just incomplete and unsound : if its aim is to identify suspects of proliferation in order to better prevent the latter, it can in fact prove counter-productive. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po