Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb

The central purpose of this article is to challenge conventional wisdom about nuclear proliferation. The author argues that the consensus view, focusing on national security considerations as the cause of proliferation, is dangerously inadequate because nuclear weapons programs also serve other, more parochial and less obvious objectives. Nuclear weapons, like other weapons, are more than tools of national security; they are political objects of considerable importance in domestic debates and internal bureaucratic struggles and can also serve as international normative symbols of modernity and identity. The body of this article examines three alternate theoretical frameworks - called {open_quotes}models{close_quotes} in the very informal sense of the term - about why states decide to build or refrain from developing nuclear weapons: {open_quotes}the security model,{close_quotes} according to which states build nuclear weapons to increase national security against foreign threats, especially nuclear threats; {open_quotes}the domestic politics model,{close_quotes} which envisions nuclear weapons as political tools used to advance parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests; and {open_quotes}the norms model,{close_quotes} under which nuclear weapons decisions are made because weapons acquisition, or restraint in weapons development, provides an important normative symbol of a state`s modernity and identity. Although many of the ideas underlying these models exist in the vast case-study and proliferation-policy literatures, they have not been adequately analyzed, nor placed in a comparative theoretical framework, nor properly evaluated against empirical evidence. Models are compared to their theoretical conceptions of the causes of weapons development, present alternative interpretations of the history of some major proliferation decisions, and contrast the models` implications for nonproliferation policy. 71 refs.