The Problem of Proliferation
There is a controversy as to the meaning of proliferation. Proliferation is the process of deadly weapons being bought and sold in the market place of corruption and greed. Government leaders are playing a deadly game by implementing creation of foreign policies that are set to obtain goals, yet sponsor actions that contradict those goals. The chapter argues that we must be able to evaluate the facts and separate them from our emotions concerning the situation.
The Problem of Defining Proliferation
Henry Sokolski stated in 1993 that even the intelligence community has not been able to define the term proliferation adequately. The military, intelligence agencies, terrorist organizations and diplomats will all define the term differently because of their different perspectives. Although there is controversy in the exact meaning, I feel that the basic meaning is evident, which is nations who do not possess the deadly weapons of mass destruction attempt to obtain them by illegal methods.
The Threat of Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the most feared form of proliferation, while terrorism is the most feared force that is suspected of having the ideological motivation ant the ways that the knowledge and resources are obtained to make it a real threat. A non-proliferation treaty was signed by a group of nations whom called themselves the “Nuclear Club.” This group considers themselves as being the arbitrators of the control of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. There are states who argue this saying that they have the right to possess the weapons for their security. Scott Sagan argues this idea fearing that it may cause a chain reaction with other nations obtaining and even making their own nuclear weapons. Proof of this theory was made clear when explosions occurred during testing of weapons by Pakistan and India in May of 1998.
The contradictions have been made evident and public in several articles and reports. In in 1995 the United States Department of Strategic Command suggested that the U.S. should give, as part of it’s persona that it will become “irrational and vindictive if it’s vital interest are attacted”. USA Today, in 1997 contained two articles in the same paper that contradicted each other. One of the articles stated that Chinese Military is developing high-tech weapons to win a war against the United States and the other was the US may sell nuclear technology to China. In 1998 Joseph Douglas Jr.
Shambaugh, David, “Lifting the EU Arms Embargo on China: An American Perspective”, Discussion paper prepared for the CSIS/SWP conference “China’s Rise: Diverging U.S.- EU Approaches and Perceptions,” Berlin, April 28-29, 2005
Seventy-one years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power is rarely recognized as a solution to the energy crisis. Instead, it is associated with the most violent pits of Hell: warfare. The demands of warfare exhaust the scientific community and deplete its resources, as well as decimating the human population.
Scott D. Sagan, the author of chapter two of “More Will Be Worse”, looks back on the deep political hostilities, numerous crises, and a prolonged arms race in of the cold war, and questions “Why should we expect that the experience of future nuclear powers will be any different?” The author talks about counter arguments among scholars on the subject that the world is better off without nuclear weapons. In this chapter a scholar named Kenneth Waltz argues that “The further spread of nuclear weapons may well be a stabilizing factor in international relations.” He believes that the spread of nuclear weapons will have a positive implications in which the likely-hood of war decreases and deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Although there
Nolan, Janne E. 1999. An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press.
Nuclear weapons are a problem that the world is facing today as countries want to have their
China is the most populous state in the world, with over 1.3 trillion inhabitants (Central Intelligence Agency 2010). Because of its large population base, China also has the largest military and a booming economy that is third only America and Japan in terms of GDP; however, economic trends show that Japan’s economy is stagnating, while the American Chinese economies continue to spike upward (Google, Inc. 2010). Despite its growing economy and large military force, China lags behind America in technology and naval power. Chinese Admiral Wu Shengli said, “The Navy will move faster in researching and building new-generation weapons to boost the ability to fight in regional sea wars under the circumstance of information technology” (Xuequan 2009). This quote shows that China wants to remain a regional sea power, and not develop a blue-water navy that can compete with the American navy. Furthermore, a Popular Mechanics article showed the world that China was stealing American military “leap ahead” technology, or technology that is decades ahead of Chinese technology (Cooper 2009).
“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs.
The realism that will be the focus of this paper is that of Kenneth Waltz. Kenneth Waltz presents his theory of realism, within an international system, by offering his central myth that, “Anarchy is the permissive cause of war”. Kenneth Waltz’s central myth helps answer the question as to why war happens in the first place. During the cold war, there was a heightened sense of insecurity between Russia and the United States due to presence of nuclear weapons. The Movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb used cold war tension between the two countries to tell the story of a general who went crazy and decided to unleash his fleet of nuclear bombers onto Russian military bases.
The question “what is, or should be, the function of nuclear weapons?” for me is an easy question to answer, there should be no function for them. I find no need for nuclear weapons in the post-cold war era; they are massive genocide machines that have no use in today’s time. During the cold war I can easily find reasons for them to be used but the cold war is now over. But in reality it’s known that this is a huge dream and most likely will never be accomplished to rid the world of nuclear weapons, so in a realist point of view and for the purpose of this paper I’ll say that the only logical (yet not truly logical) means of using a nuclear weapon is through deterrence. In this paper I will talk about how I believe it should be done and what opponents to my view believe. I will also talk about how there are many complexities to nuclear strategy and it’s not as easy as just removing weapons. But the main focus on this paper is what should the function of a nuclear weapon be and that’s deterrence.
The Cold War was a time of great tension all over the world. From 1945 to 1989, the United States was the leader and nuclear power and was competing with the Soviet Union to create huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. However, even though the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons are still a threat. Countries around the world strive to create nuclear power, and they do not promise to use it for peaceful purposes. Some examples of the struggles caused by nuclear weapons include the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s recent nuclear weapon program. Surely, nuclear weapons have created conflict all over the world since the Cold War era.
The United States has committed to defend Taiwan if attacked by China in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, in which the US President Carter officially began diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and gave token recognition to their “One China Policy” and its agenda of reunification. Instead of maintaining a significant deployable military force in the region, the United States has sold billions of dollars worth of arms to Taiwan, from small arms, to ships, fighter aircraft, and patriot missiles. Despite the arms sales to Taiwan and vows to defend it if attacked, the United States also has significant economic ties to both China and Taiwan. Since then, it has been trying to maintain the “status quo” of the current situation. Given these sets of circumstances, China, Taiwan and the United States have much to gain and even more to lose if an armed conflict erupts in the Taiwan Strait.
From the beginning of their establishment, the bilateral relations between the United States of America and China have changed throughout the time. The bilateral relations between the two countries emerged in the 1970’s with the ‘Ping-Pong’ diplomacy and there have been many pauses in their mutual relations. The US and China enjoyed cooperation in economic and military spheres and the mutual relations grew massively during until the end of 1990’s. The heads of the two states began visiting each other’s countries and the economic ties were tightening year by year. However, the issues of human rights and free speech declined mutual Sino-American relations.
Morgenthau goes onto his third method of analysis which is reviewing a state’s usable and unusable power. The most popular example of this is the possession of nuclear weaponry. Nuclear capabilities and that threat of their use is a form of useable power for states like the US and Russia but not for states with underdeveloped nu...
Whenever world politics is mentioned, the state that appears to be at the apex of affairs is the United States of America, although some will argue that it isn’t. It is paramount we know that the international system is shaped by certain defining events that has lead to some significant changes, particularly those connected with different chapters of violence. Certainly, the world wars of the twentieth century and the more recent war on terror must be included as defining moments. The warning of brute force on a potentially large scale also highlights the vigorousness of the cold war period, which dominated world politics within an interval of four decades. The practice of international relations (IR) was introduced out of a need to discuss the causes of war and the different conditions for calm in the wake of the first world war, and it is relevant we know that this has remained a crucial focus ever since. However, violence is not the only factor capable of causing interruption in the international system. Economic elements also have a remarkable impact. The great depression that happened in the 1920s, and the global financial crises of the contemporary period can be used as examples. Another concurrent problem concerns the environment, with the human climate being one among different number of important concerns for the continuing future of humankind and the planet in general.
The universally known federal agency responsible for nuclear weapons is the Department of Defense, which of course, supervises the nation’s armed forces, as well as those military units qualified to control nuclear weapons and their means of delivery; for example, the missiles, bombers and submarines that are used to “deliver” the weapons to their intended targets. Within the Office of the Secretary of Defense are a number of agencies that deal with nuclear weapons concerns from erratic