International Relations
Online ISSN : 1883-9916
Print ISSN : 0454-2215
ISSN-L : 0454-2215
The Frontier of International Relations 12
Correlation between Nuclear Nonproliferation in Europe and Nuclear Proliferation in East Asia: Negotiations of West German Nuclear Issue and the Consequences
Kiyohisa SHIBAI
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2015 Volume 2015 Issue 180 Pages 180_98-180_110

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Abstract

This article explores the mutual interaction of nuclear nonproliferation negotiations in Europe and nuclear nonproliferation negotiations in East Asia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Previous studies separately surveyed European nuclear proliferation and East Asian nuclear proliferation. These studies,however, focusing on one specific area respectively cannot completely answer the question as to why the Soviet Union and the United States changed their nuclear policies as well as to why the results of the nuclear nonproliferation negotiations in Europe and East Asia became symmetric. This is because there is a clear fact that the Soviet Union supported Chinese nuclear development and the United States planned NATO nuclear sharing and the MLF, which partly allowed West Germany to “possess” nuclear weapons at first. In order to answer these questions adequately, I treat both areas’ nonproliferation negotiations as a series of negotiation and show a new hypothesis that the Chinese nuclear issue was dealt promptly to settle the West German nuclear issues.
The Soviet Union, which greatly feared that West Germany would acquire nuclear weapons, indicated that it would discourage Chinese nuclear development in return for the United States to do the same regarding West Germany’s nuclear policy. The Soviet Union promoted building trust with the United States and succeeded with the result of West Germany ratifying the PTBT and the NPT. In contrast to Europe, East Asia failed in achieving nuclear nonproliferation. What are the causes of such a symmetric outcome? West Germany and China both needed nuclear deterrence for their national security, especially against threat from the Soviet Union and/or United States. The United States offered West Germany security assurance and kept mutual confidence, but the Soviet Union unilaterally demanded that China abandoned its nuclear development in order to promote nuclear nonproliferation negotitations with the United States without any compensation. This act resulted in losing China’s trust because the Soviet Union’s top priority was to stop West Germany, and thus treated China’s nuclear issues as one of the means to achieve this goal.
Does settling West Germany’s nuclear issue in the form of mutual cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union indicate that their negotiations were excellent? If we turn our eyes towards the correlation between European negotiations and East Asian negotiations, we can understand that they are not necessarily superior negotiations like non-cooperative games which all countries gain profit, but rather,unequal negotiations that the cost for the agreement in Europe was passed to negotiations in East Asia, and the European negotiation became one of the causes of the failure of nonproliferation in East Asia.

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© 2015 The Japan Association of International Relations
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