Krause, Keith and Andrew Latham. "Constructing non‐proliferation and arms control: The norms of Western practice". Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.19, No.1 (1998): 23-54.

Krause, Keith and Andrew Latham. "Constructing non‐proliferation and arms control: The norms of Western practice". Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.19, No.1 (1998): 23-54.

• Since the end of the existential Communist threat in 1989, Western states have attempted to construct a comprehensive non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament regime [NACD], which would reduce new diverse sources of insecurity -- esp. WMDs. This project has been largely constructed as rational and benign, with Western actions as being for the greater good, and opponents of NACD regimes being irrational or aggressive (23, 35).
• The beliefs, norms, and assumptions underlying these NACD regimes are shaped by exclusively Western experiences, mainly from the Cold War. The NACD regimes share the following beliefs:
• a belief in the necessity of nuclear deterrence coupled with an acknowledgement of the non-utility of major war and the mutuality of security (24).
• a commitment to an ongoing step-by-step negotiating process that put a premium on rational, technocratic, and managerial negotiating strategies and evaluations of security (24),
• an emphasis on formal negotiated arms control agreements that incorporated such ideas as 'balance' or 'parity' (24)
• an acceptance of the need for transparency and robust verification or compliance-monitoring as stabilizing measures (24)
• a willingness to engage in confidence- and security-building processes that might transform threat perceptions and indeed political relations (24).
• a focus on proliferation as the principal threat to global security, and a commitment to non-proliferation rather than global disarmament (25).
• a belief that Western preponderance is the key to international peace and stability (25),
• a renewed attention to regulating 'inhumane' and 'uncivilized' weapons (25).
• Western experience with arms control has lead Western leadership to believe that security arrangements must be mutual to be effective, with unilateral measures only resulting in new situations of insecurity (33).
• Western conceptions of arms control began with the Hague Conferences around the turn of the 20th century, and expanded greatly after the Second World War. The arms control regime is structured around a belief that arms races are a factor in exacerbating or causing conflict. The arms control regimes during the Cold War came out of this logic, as effective arms control would decrease the chances of war, the destructiveness of that conflict, and the cost preparations (26-27).
• Beginning with the 'Hot Line' agreement of 1963, the USA and the USSR entered into a number of arms limitation treaties. These treaties created a consensus among both the Soviet and American alliance structures about the norms of arms control. Arms control was defined by the normalization of mutually assured destruction, deal-making interactions, expert knowledge on defined issues, and military parity (27-30).
• This same joint understanding of the issues of arms control are shared today by the republics of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, and have been incorporated into these security policies as well as those of the traditionally Western bloc (34).
• The idea of a balance of forces, or the 'unwinnability' of a conflict are important factors in arms control regimes is a Western idea coming from the Cold War. Indian security studies, for example, considers that military preponderance, even if unbalanced, provides the deterrence necessary in arms control (30).
• The norm of verification of compliance as a necessary part of arms control regimes developed later, connected with a belief that non-Western countries could not be trusted. The need for verification developed out of a deep distrust during the Cold War, the Western tradition of collecting 'scientific' knowledge (31).
• The trust necessary for arms control regimes only developed at all out of a joint recognition by both the US and Soviet Union that some kind of arms limitation was beneficial to prevent nuclear holocaust. Unsurprisingly, this deep fear is not existent everywhere, leading many countries to resist verification (31).
• The introduction of confidence building measures into the NACD regimes of the Cold War were instrumental in decreasing tensions and introducing measures to reduce fear which are now commonplace. First instituted during the Helsinki Accords, these measures included informing states of upcoming military exercises, inviting outside observers to exercises, and exchange professional and military staff (32).
• Scholarly opinion is divided on why confidence building measures reduced the threat of conflict between traditionalist and transformationalist schools. Traditionalists argue that the measures reduced the threat of surprise attacks and clarified potential crisis situations, whereas the transformationalists argue that the process of implementing the measures reduced tensions and humanized the enemy in addition to strategic benefits (33).
• The Western experience with the success of confidence building measures has caused many Western policy-makers to believe that conflict can be resolved through dialogue (33).
• Western military doctrines and perceptions of threat were deeply shaped by the Soviet Union, leaving a 'threat vacuum' in security studies following the collapse of the USSR. Instead of reducing armament, Western states focused on previously neglected issues and reorientated to face these new threats to global order (35-36).
• The Soviet Union was replaced as an adversary with a range of 'rogue states' which had hostile intent, large conventional forces, and WMDs. These rogue states are simultaneously described as 'expansionist' or 'totalitarian' successors to the Soviet threat, and 'irrational' or 'uncivilized' as members of the Orient (37-38).
• The real behavior of these states has not changed since the end of the Cold War, but Western understandings of their place in the world system -- from minor actors to dangerous threats -- have changed radically since the USSR disappeared as an enemy (38).
• The West has constructed a new system of 'facts' since the collapse of the USSR, which designated essentially contestable interpretations of threat into 'facts'. The most prominent being the construction of the belief that the possession of WMDs by a 'rogue state' automatically constitutes a threat to the West (38).
• Drawing on Cold War strategies, Western policy-makers constructed a four-point solution to increasing security in the unipolar world by counter proliferation:
• Denial: focuses on preventing rogue states from acquiring WMDs, their delivery systems or enabling technologies. It is centred on the construction of export control regimes (such as the Missile Technology Control Regime [MTCR], Australia Group, Wassenaar Arrangement and the Nuclear Suppliers Group) as well as more universal agreements such as the CWC and the NPT (40).
• Disarmament: focuses on the forcible disarmament of rogue states. It involves internationally supervised destruction of WMD capabilities. It has only been recently employed in the case of Iraq" (40).
• Deterrence: involves the use of nuclear and high-technology conventional weapons to deter rogue states from developing or using WMDs, either against civilian targets or against deployed military forces (40).
• Defence: involves the development of capabilities (such as anti-ballistic missile systems) to defend against the WMDs of rogue states (40).
• Underlying the contemporary NACD regime is the belief that the West, and specifically the USA, should be responsible for promoting global security. Moreover, NACD regimes as a whole split countries into categories of 'trustworthy' and 'untrustworthy' based on disputed criteria in determining which nations have the right to possess certain weapons and technologies (40-41).
• The logic behind these regimes is that some countries are morally superior, and can therefore be trusted with certain military technologies, while those same technologies are dangerous in the hands of designated 'rogue states'; the designation of 'rogue' created by the privileged set of countries (41).
• This is demonstrated by the lack of Western support for total nuclear disarmament, with Britain, the US, and France arguing that their possession of nuclear weapons is necessary for global security and the maintenance of order, even though the same weapons are 'dangerous' and 'threatening' in the hands of others (42).
• The NACD regimes evolving after the Cold War have extended beyond WMD to include the use of 'uncivilized' or 'cruel' weapons, such as anti-personnel land mines. It is unclear, however, what makes land mines more cruel that other weapons in the essential cruelty of war (42).
• These new categories of 'civilized' and 'uncivilized' created by the West in its designation of certain weapons created new ways for the 'civilized' West to set itself apart from other states, and thereby continuing holding itself up as the standard of civilization (43).
• Western interest in humanitarian weapons in wartime was minimal during the Cold War, with the author suggesting that the difference between capitalism and communism provided enough moral superiority that the West did not need to focus on humanitarian causes, and has only reappeared in the aftermath of the Cold War (44).
• Understanding the specific Western cultural context from which many assumption and practices in NACD regimes appear is important in getting Western policy-makers to observe why certain practices may not apply well to other areas of the world and to avoid dismissing objectors as 'evil' or 'immoral' (46).