| For more than fifty years the international community of states has struggled to create a system to safeguard nuclear weapons and prevent their proliferation. Following the first successful detonation of a nuclear device in New Mexico and subsequent use against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it became apparent to states' governments that these weapons represented a departure from the destructive capabilities of earlier weapons so significant that a new paradigm regarding their construction, deployment, transfer and use was urgently needed. To this end an international regime has been created to prevent or control nuclear proliferation. The regime is manifested in a range of multi- and bilateral treaties and international institutions, as well as states' efforts to harmonize their internal policies to converge on the goal of nuclear weapons control.; Although to a great extent discounted in American thinking about international relations, regime theory remains a vibrant field of study overseas, particularly in Europe. Regime theory attempts to explain why states accept the sovereignty compromise immanent in cooperation with other states or, alternatively, why states choose not to cooperate even in situations where such actions would be clearly advantageous.; At present, the nuclear nonproliferation regime is being destabilized by a number of factors, including claims by North Korea that it is in possession of a nuclear weapon, the high probability that Iran is at the threshold of acquiring a weapon, the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, the degree to which weapons materials and facilities are inadequately secured throughout the states of the former Soviet Union, and the trend in United States foreign policy toward unilateralism, military hegemony, and reneging on treaty obligations, evidenced in abrogation of certain treaties, failure to ratify others, and deployment of weapons systems that contravene formerly binding nonproliferation commitments.; This study is intended to accomplish two purposes: (1) to examine the nonproliferation regime with regard to its robustness and ability to remain effective in the face of a significant defection, and to identify that factor that is contributing most to its present instability, and (2) to develop a comprehensive overview of the current state of regime theory for use as an analytical method. |
