Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Studies in Security and International Affairs): 22 - Softcover

Maria Rost Rublee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820332356 ISBN 13: 9780820332352

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2009

Synopsis

Too often, our focus on the relative handful of countries with nuclear weapons keeps us from asking an important question: Why do so many more states not have such weapons? More important, what can we learn from these examples of nuclear restraint? Maria Rost Rublee argues that in addition to understanding a state's security environment, we must appreciate the social forces that influence how states conceptualize the value of nuclear weapons. Much of what Rublee says also applies to other weapons of mass destruction, as well as national security decision making in general. The nuclear nonproliferation movement has created an international social environment that exerts a variety of normative pressures on how state elites and policymakers think about nuclear weapons. Within a social psychology framework, Rublee examines decision making about nuclear weapons in five case studies: Japan, Egypt, Libya, Sweden, and Germany. In each case, Rublee considers the extent to which nuclear forbearance resulted from persuasion (genuine transformation of preferences), social conformity (the desire to maximize social benefits and/or minimize social costs, without a change in underlying preferences), or identification (the desire or habit of following the actions of an important other). The book offers bold policy prescriptions based on a sharpened knowledge of the many ways we transmit and process nonproliferation norms. The social mechanisms that encourage nonproliferation-and the regime that created them-must be preserved and strengthened, Rublee argues, for without them states that have exercised nuclear restraint may rethink their choices.

About this title

About the Author

MARIA ROST RUBLEE is a lecturer at the University of Auckland and a former intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820332356
• ISBN 13: 9780820332352
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320