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"Despite the global spread of nuclear hardware and knowledge, at least half of the nuclear weapons projects launched since 1970 have definitively failed, and even the successful projects have generally needed far more time than expected. To explain this puzzling slowdown in proliferation, Jacques E. C. Hymans focuses on the relations between politicians and scientific and technical workers in developing countries. By undermining the workers' spirit of professionalism, developing country rulers unintentionally thwart their own nuclear ambitions. Combining rich theoretical analysis, in-depth historical case studies of Iraq, China, Yugoslavia and Argentina and insightful analyses of current-day proliferant states, Achieving Nuclear Ambitions develops a powerful new perspective that effectively counters the widespread fears of a coming cascade of new nuclear powers"--

AbstractThis introductory article to the symposium first presents and then critiques the protean power concept of the Katzenstein and Seybert volume. Although the volume underestimates the value of rational choice models to explain some cases of protean power, it rightly demonstrates that our conventional theoretical toolkit insufficiently anticipates many such disruptions. Drawing on the examples of post-World War I veterans' movements and India's 1998 decision to test nuclear weapons, I argue that the protean power research agenda should focus on the reciprocal relationship between radical uncertainty and psychological and behavioral rigidity.

AbstractKatzenstein and Seybert's Protean Power offers a fresh perspective on the concept of power in international relations (IR) theory. Standard IR theory defines power as control power, which exists in the world of calculable risk. But IR must also grapple with protean power, which exists in the world of incalculable uncertainty. In this symposium, scholars representing a variety of theoretical perspectives evaluate the concept of protean power as it stands now and as it should develop in the future.

Nuclear weapons proliferation is at the top of the news these days. Most recent reports have focused on the nuclear efforts of Iran and North Korea, but they also typically warn that those two acute diplomatic headaches may merely be the harbingers of a much darker future. Indeed, foreign policy sages often claim that what worries them most is not the small arsenals that Tehran and Pyongyang could build for themselves, but rather the potential that their reckless behavior could catalyze a process of runaway nuclear proliferation, international disorder, and, ultimately, nuclear war.

The basic insight of the "veto players" literature from comparative politics—the more veto players, the more policy rigidity—has been nearly absent from the study of nuclear proliferation. Yet, when states need mutual agreement among a large number of veto players, this greatly lengthens the odds against radical nuclear policy change. The veto players perspective helps to explain the historical resilience of Japan's fifty-year pursuit of a complete nuclear fuel cycle for exclusively peaceful purposes. Although a long line of Japan observers have focused on statements by Japanese politicians suggesting the possibility of redirecting some of the country's large nuclear estate toward military ends, Japan's traditional nuclear policy has in fact become increasingly entrenched over the years, given the rising number of institutionalized veto players in its nuclear policymaking arena. This point is relevant not only to the long-standing question of whether Japan will acquire nuclear weapons, but also to the post-Fukushima disaster question of whether Japan will exit the nuclear field entirely.