The Effect of Nuclear Weapons on International Security: Part One of Two

Abstract

This essay will seek to apply the advances in thinking, made possible by rational models, to the problem of nuclear security.  Firstly this essay will use the structural approach, pioneered by Kenneth Waltz, to attempt to develop a state-centric rational model of international relations.  This will  give the essay a strong rational model to build upon.  The essay will then attempt to  infer from this model some nominal lessons about nuclear security.  The combination of these inferences, and the basic model, will then help develop the assumptions used in the game theory chapter.   The game theory used will draw on economic models of monopoly and bargaining to develop, through modelling, a greater understanding of nuclear proliferation.  The essay will then attempt to create an imaginative and innovative approach, which appears nominally to be unique in international relations literature.  After developing thismulti-stratal model, the essay then seeks to examine its weaknesses by exploring Foucault ideas on rationality. By trying to weaken this essential assumption of rationality this essay will try and better understand the limits and scope of the game theory and rationalist models.  Furthermore, by examining Iran, with the aid of our newly formed model, this essay hopes to consider the practical applications of a rationalist approach.  In doing so it shall form a prescriptive policy, which is tightly bounded within the limits of the model.

Contents

Chapter 1 Structural Realism base, with a logical frame to climb on

P5-13

Chapter 2 Game theory – Why chess players do not mate themselves

P14-24

Chapter 3 How Madness and Sexuality can ruin games

P25-30

Chapter 4 Iran’s nuclear weapons – when games meet reality

P31-42

Figure

P45-48

Bibliography

P49-50

Do Nuclear Weapons  Improve International Security?

The post cold war era saw the fear of nuclear conflict dwindle along with the imminent military threat from the USSR.  However, with the rise of so called ’rogue states’ like Iran looking to join the nuclear club, alongside the perceived threat of nuclear terrorism.  The nuclear proliferation and conflict issue seems of renewed importance.  This essay will seek to utilise game theory and a broad rationalist approach within a neo-Realist structural framework to examine whether nuclear weapons add to international security or simply represent a threat to the world.  By doing this the essay will hope to formulate a multi-stratal theoretical model based on rational assumptions that might be used to guide policy in the area of nuclear weapons and their proliferation.  To explore both the practical and theoretical limitations of our theory, this essay will also draw on ideas from Foucault to bring into focus the limits of rational theories by questioning the key assumptions on which they rest.  Given this model, put into the context of its limitations, this essay will then examine a specific case study, in the form of Iran, and consider the  practical, and prescriptive implications of our model But also its possible limitations when applied to a real situation.  It is important to note that this essay will seek to avoid the possible psychological, sociological, decision making route that it could go down. In favour of a model building approach that treats such concerns as exogenously derived.  It will also consider in isolation a  classical interstate security model, thus will not consider human security, morality or ethics.  The aim shall not be to consider if interstate security is a moral good, but simply how it is altered by nuclear proliferation.  Firstly, therefore let us build a structural Realist model, based broadly on the works of Waltz, and Mearsheimer, on which we shall build our game theory model.