Proliferation assistance

Matthew Fuhrman has an article ("Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements") in the Summer 2009 International Security that argues that giving countries assistance makes it more likely that they will acquire nuclear weapons. Initially this seems like quite a claim. If it were true, it would make assistance with nuclear power much more problematic. It does more than that, it fundamentally undermines the basic agreement on which the NPT is built.

But on closer inspection, there is less here than meets the eye. He gives a very thorough and useful description of the various sorts of help that different countries have received. The three case studies are illuminating. And he has done an impressive statistical analysis of assistance agreements (of which there are hundreds) in which nuclear nations help non-nuclear nations with civilian nuclear power. 

But there are only ten countries that ever decided to build nuclear weapons and then built them. One, South Africa, later had buyer's remorse and dismantled their nuclear weapons. Of these ten, four built their weapons without outside support or help in the form of civilians nuclear power assistance agreements: the United States, Russia, Great Britain and France.

This means that the total number of countries who both received assistance with nuclear power and went on to build nuclear weapons is six. I don't care how careful the analysis, six cases is not enough on which to build reliable conclusions.

Comments

[Philipp Bleek]

Relatedly, it's worth checking out Matt Kroenig's “Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance,” American Political Science Review (February 2009), p. 113-133. In this and related articles and a forthcoming book, Matt finds no relationship between civil nuclear assistance and proliferation, but unlike Fuhrmann, he only counts instances in which civil nuclear assistance was actually provided, not merely nuclear cooperation agreements signed. On the other hand, he finds, intuitively, that sensitive nuclear assistance, i.e. uranium enrichment, plutonium separation, and weapons technology, is a powerful aid to proliferation, and also seeks to explain why states provide it.

[Ward Wilson]

You can read the article at http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Matthew%20Kroenig_Exporting%20the%20Bomb.pdf.