NATO Nuclear Sharing System: Change And Management (1954-1966)

This thesis is the historical analyzing one, which aims to explain the nuclear sharing system in the NATO during the early era of the Cold war.The research interests come up from this question: Facing the nuclear dilemma, why is there no big splitting in the NATO, which is against the common sense of the traditional realism theory.From the angel of the self-adapting mechanism of the alliance, the thesis tries to answer three questions. First, as the system which manage and adapt to the nuclear dilemma, how is the authenticity and effectiveness of the system? Second, what are the reasons for the vicissitude of the nuclear sharing system and how does it happen? Third, who and by what means manage the nuclear sharing system?As the answers to the three questions, the article has three parts. Chapter one is the historical basis of the thesis. In this chapter, according to the American declassified documents, the article tried to expose the process of the nuclear sharing system in the NATO from 1954 to 1966. In the middle of 1950s, the Eisenhower administration began to develop the policy to adjust the nuclear dilemma. The most important measure is to build the nuclear sharing system, which aimed to unite the Europe by sharing the control of the nuclear weapon with the European countries. The Kennedy administration made a modest adjust to this established system. The conclusion of this chapter is that the NATO kept its unity in the nuclear dilemma because of its creditable and applicable system of nuclear ownership.The second part of the article is Chapter 2 and 3. in this part, the thesis applies the Alliance Institutional Transformation model to observe and explain the emergence and development of the nuclear sharing system of the NATO. Chapter 2 aims to explain the framework of the Alliance Institutional Transformation. This model explain the reason of the Alliance system, the possible organization and mechanism of Institutional Transformation from the angel of market—organization Transformation. The model exposes that four factor affect the Alliance Institutional Transformation: 1,the cost/benefit contrast among possible Alliance forms; 2,the publicness level of the main security product of the alliance; 3,the balance between the transaction cost of the alliance and the output risk; 4,the alliance member's choice between the operational risk and relational risk which is decided by the organizational surrounding and historical experience/witness. Chapter 3 applies the Alliance Institutional Transformation model to explain the emergence and development of the nuclear sharing system of the NATO in details. It gives the prediction from the four theoretical assumptions and then study the rationality in the case study by the measurement of process tracing and comparative analyzing. The conclusion shows the following four factors can explain the coming up and development of the nuclear sharing system of the NATO. The factors are ,the changing of the cost/benefit of the NATO members, the changing of publicness level of the American nuclear power, the balance of the balance between the transaction cost and the output risk of the NATO member countries, and the American decision maker's choice between the operational risk and relational risk.Chapter 4 and 5 are the third part of the paper. In this part, the thesis uses Alliance Management Model to analyze the measurement used by U.S in the nuclear sharing policy. Chapter 4 describes the Alliance Management Model. This model expresses the alliance members' possible measurements in order to secure the cooperation credibility from the individual and organizational angels. It also answers the following questions: how to secure the security transaction; what is the effect of the formal and informal risk controls in the organizational level; what is the function of the trust-built action in the Alliance. Chapter 5 uses the Alliance Management Model to analyze the meaning of the nuclear sharing policy of U. S. The nuclear dilemma bases on the NATO European countries' doubt on the credibility about American extended deterrence. So to rebuild the credibility is the important part of the policy. The nuclear sharing policy of the Eisenhower administration includes reassurance, hostages and organizational control, and the Eisenhower administration also uses the unilateral trust-built action to give the credible signal to the NATO European countries.