Search

Currently a key foreign policy problem for the US and the world is the effort to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons. A vital part of the US strategy has been the use of economic sanctions and incentives. Can this work? This paper will compare the current effort to sanction Iran with past efforts against the Libyan and North Korean WMD programs. What lessons can those two cases offer in the current standoff with Iran? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In hindsight it is apparent that the debates and arguments over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Iraq that was evident in the 12 years from Operation Desert Storm (1991) until Operation Iraq Freedom (2003) had became a victim to an unintended confusion between the narrative and the discourse. The many thousands of journalistic accounts can be considered along a range of combinations on a sliding scale of ensuring 100% accuracy or a sensational story that might contain rumors or innuendos when pandering to the demand of populace and indeed editors. Frequently the ability to sustain 100% certainty of evidence made the story not very sensational â€" so journalism was faced with a dilemma. The time-line was many decades of innuendo. Few if any journalists and even not many of their sources actually saw any WMD themselves. Yet the journalists were compelled by editors to cover the overwhelming political intent voiced as rhetoric to wage war. This generated a confusion between "the limits of acceptable speech" - or possible truth whether or not Iraq did or did not have WMD. This confusion led to the discourse of opinion and debate becoming the narrative, which in hindsight proved to be a false narrative â€" no WMD was discovered in Iraq. Part and parcel of how the situation arose was the hazy distinction in newsworthiness between fictional and journalistic narrative on specific events. This is acceptable to journalism, as the populace demand a good story to remain tuned a specific TV channel or read a specific newspaper. The reconstruction of news as a 'story', of information in narrative style abides in the conventional wisdom of journalism. The global culture of 24 hours news channel with a craving populace and intense competition for advertising revenue provokes mass media to provide newsworthiness in a sensational story. This is not acceptable to national security decision-making that requires 100% precise information especially in the case of WMD and in justification for war. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fears of rogue states, the withdrawal of Cold War-era security guarantees, and concerns about availability to terrorist organizations ensure that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction remains a central security issue. Yet despite the vast attention given to nuclear weapons proliferation, surprisingly little systematic scholarship has investigated the proliferation of biological weapons. When and why do states pursue biological weapons, and when do they choose to renounce them? Is the logic of bioweapons proliferation similar to that of nuclear weapons, or does it differ in ways that are important to understand in seeking to stem proliferation? To explore the correlates of bio-weapon proliferation and renunciation, we have constructed a new data-set on biological weapons programs, classifying potential programs into two levels of certainty about their existence and size. Drawing on prominent arguments in the WMD literature, we develop a simple cost-benefit framework to understand the pros and cons of pursing bioweapons, and we evaluate our framework with rare events logistic regression models covering 183 countries. The data analysis reveals surprisingly strong patterns in the spread of biological weapons programs: a threatening external environment and greater involvement in international institutions are related to greater likelihood of a BW program, whereas democracies are much less likely to pursue these weapons. These results are relatively robust to alternate coding of programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case studies on Clinton Administration national security policymaking are an important area for policy relevant research. During the 1990s, there were various attempts by the Clinton Administration to innovate in national security policymaking. Innovations were attempted in peace operations, the interagency process, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Were the 1990s Clinton policy leadership efforts in stopping the threats of WMD proliferation in North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq all policy failures that could have been prevented? Could more effective Clinton Administration policy leadership have made US counterproliferation efforts more successful? This paper focuses on the Clinton Administration?s Counterproliferation Policy Initiative in the 1994 North Korean Agreed Framework Case. The case uses coercive diplomacy theory to examine the existence of a theory-practice gap in assessing Clinton Administration top-down leadership in the 1994 North Korean crisis. This paper?s findings suggest a relatively effective linkage of theory and practice, however, the result is a short term rather than long term policy success. Additional case studies are necessary to further assess the effectiveness of Clinton era executive leadership patterns in Counterproliferation Initiative policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2003 Libya abruptly announced the end of its WMD programs, a decision which has led to rapprochement with the US. What caused this change? Some argue that fear of military intervention swayed Libya. This paper, however, will examine the use of economic sanctions and incentives by the West. It will argue that years of sanctions effectively shifted the regime's baseline expectations to the point that the restoration of normal trade and investment ties became a powerful positive incentive, which was largely responsible for the regime's new policies. This paper will examine the interplay between negative and positive economic linkage, arguing that when sequenced properly the two can work more effectively in concert than either can separately. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The War on Iraq in March/April 2003 constituted a major conflict in the international relations during the last years. A ?coalition of the willing?, led by the USA, vanquished Iraq in order to enforce UN Resolution 1441 and dismantle the country from assumed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The conflict over Iraq triggered a deep crisis within Europe. The continent was split into ?Old Europe?, i.e. Germany and France, and ?New Europe?, i.e. the UK, accompanied by Spain, Portugal, Italy and several EU accession countries. Two years later, Iran has come up on the agenda. The country is blamed to build up hidden nuclear plants and to aspire weapons of mass destruction. It is, again, especially the USA that has for a long time been strongly urging to condemn Iran in front of the UN Security Council. The Europeans, by contrast, have tried to persuade Iran to abstain from acquiring WMDs by providing incentives, and accepted an appeal to the Security Council only as a last resort option. Leading European countries in this process are the so-called ?EU3?, i.e. Germany, France and the UK.Obviously, in both crises, there exists a fundamental difference with regards to the behaviour of the Europeans: during the Iraq crisis, Europe was deeply divided. In the Iran crisis, however, there exists a ?European approach? which has the European states have jointly stood up for also vis-à-vis the US. In both crises, moreover, all relevant characteristics are identical: the dominating topic are WMDs; there exists a perceived ?urgency?; both concerned countries are part of the ?axis of evil?; and there has been no support of a potentially peaceful approach by the US during most of the conflict.The obvious puzzle can thus be framed as follows: why is there a difference in the degree of cooperation among European countries in both crises, given the same policy field and comparable conditions?Common explanation are based on domestic structure approaches, point to learning effects or assume neoralist balancing efforts. The paper however argues that none of these explanations not provide a satisfying answer. This is most importantly due to the fact that ? despite a differing public awareness ? both crises nearly coincide and can thus not be clearly separated. The paper proposes an alternative explanation to the puzzle which is based on rational choice and embedded in a regime theoretical framework. The core argument is that, in both conflicts, the Europeans are in a situation that resembles an assurance game. In this game, the highest individual and collective pay-off is earned by mutual cooperation. In both conflicts, this strategy would provide security gains at minimal, i.e. shared costs, be legitimised by the UN and leave bilateral relations untroubled. The trust dilemma entailed in this game however prevents involved players from cooperating, since hierarchies of preferences are mutually unclear. In a consequence, they opt for non-cooperation and reach their goals at individually higher costs. This what the Europeans opted for in the Iraq conflict, when the ? assumed ? security gain was achieved by sacrificing inner-European relations, a developing Common Foreign and Security Policy and the authority of the UN.A classical mechanism to overcome such information asymmetries is a regime. The paper argues that, in the case of Iran, such a regime existed: the ?Critical Dialogue?. In the case of Iraq, it did not. Hence, the hypothesis of the paper is that, since the Europeans had interacted intensively in the realm of the ?dialogue? since the early nineties, they had acquired reliable information on their mutual preferences over Iran. In the case of Iraq, however, the Europeans were unable to judge effectively whether the other in fact had a hidden agenda or not ? and thus opted for defection instead of cooperation... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the dangerous fault-lines along the so-called North-South divide?a shorthand for a cluster of tensions, some of them religious and cultural (?West ?East? as much as ?North South), some of them the between globalist economic modernizers and those who fear being the economic losers in an open world economy ? are exacerbated by U.S. neo-conservative / neo Wilsonian concepts and policies. Opinion surveys around the world show that the reformist message of these policies is received in much of the post-colonial developing world as neo-imperialism in the guise of altruistic tutelage in political and free economic markets. This paper argues that a more forthright foreign policy that connects U.S. interests to world interests which economic South and North and cultural East and West do share, will stand a better chance of overcoming resentments at the U.S. posture of omniscience in how to design and run societies. The paper indicates, elaborates, and analyzes the controversial aspects (including trade-offs and prioritization) of the world interests that are also in the U.S. national interest. They include: the healthy survival of the human species; reducing the role of force in world politics; reducing the amount of poverty and disease in the world; preserving the planet?s temperate climate and husbanding its scarce resources and natural ecologies; a world of cultural and religious diversity; political systems based on the informed consent of the governed and respectful of fundamental human rights ? democracy in its fullest sense ? but varying so as to be consistent with particular cultural contexts; mutual accountability across national borders for how people deal with the planet?s resources and for how they treat with each other. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of UN weapons inspections in Iraq, performed by UNSCOM and then UNMOVIC, varied over time. I shed light on this variation by conceptualizing the inspectors as agents of a collective principal, the Security Council. The ability of the inspecting agents to succeed depended on two factors: their independence, which allowed them to operate without political interference, and their resources, which gave them the capacity to perform their duties. Both variables were subject to continual adjustment over time depending on decisions made by the Security Council. Because decisionmaking required consensus among the Permanent 5, delegation to the inspectors, and thus their ability to perform, tended to match the preferences of the most reluctant of the veto powers. This made it difficult to maintain a consistently effective regime and also allowed Iraq to exploit divisions within the Security Council.I trace the positions of the Permanent 5 over time to show how preferences within this collective principal affected the degree and nature of delegation to the inspectors. I also compare the success of UNSCOM and UNMOVIC to that of the IAEA, a standing body with substantially more independence and resources. This case is intrinsically important since the failure of inspections was one cause of the 2003 war. This study also has larger implications for rationalist theories of international conflict. A curious feature of the second Iraq war is that its initiation followed a willful decision by the U.S. to interrupt the inspections process and the information it provided on Iraqi capabilities. This raises the possibility that states might prefer not to have information that could obviate the need for war or facilitate a bargain short of war, a possibility not considered in the literature. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]