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Erika Simpson (Western University) : Nuclear weapons and NATO: Is it safer to deter or to disarm? CPSA/ISA-Canada section on International Relations

Session: C1(b) - Governing Weapons

Date: May 31, 2016 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location: Science Theatres 64 | iOS / Outlook Discussant/Commentateur: Gavin Cameron (University of Calgary) Abstract: Debates about whether to retain or abolish nuclear weapons have intensified. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) maintains its nuclear weapons are essential to the alliance’s security. NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept reasserted in 2014 that, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.” Conversely, many observers of the negotiations regarding the United Nations (UN) Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) argue the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) in the 28-member NATO alliance are obliged to move NATO’s posture toward nuclear disarmament rather than deterrence. The resarch project analyses the arguments in favour of the alliance’s continued reliance upon nuclear weapons and the arguments against its current security policy. The research project investigates the systemic-, state- and individual-level factors that interact to produce longstanding policies as well as divisive debates about NATO’s nuclear weapons. A core objective is to explain debates concerning NATO’s nuclear weapons in the context of global negotiations at UN headquarters between 1995 and 2020 about nuclear proliferation and disarmament. Two research questions are investigated: What are the distinguishing features of the NATO security policy, specifically what are its objectives, goals, and instruments? What multilateral initiatives at the UN by coalitions of Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals have attempted to change longstanding nuclear policies? The research project explains the struggles over nuclear weapons and NATO’s security policy – and this short paper asks whether the levels-of-analysis approach is still useful for explaining NATO’s security policy. Introduction: Research Project, Nuclear Weapons, NATO and the NPT (forthcoming book)

In the post-Cold War era, debate over the role of nuclear weapons in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has intensified.1 While some argue that the Alliance should move its posture toward nuclear disarmament rather than deterrence2, nuclear weapons play a prominent role in NATO’s strategy and thinking.3

The last quarter-century is especially interesting because the Alliance reaffirmed its commitment to relying upon nuclear weapons in its 1991 “Strategic Concept.” Paragraph 46 of this document states: “Nuclear weapons make a unique contribution in rendering the risks of aggression against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable. Thus, they remain essential to preserve peace.”4

In a development that was lost sight of in the media’s focus on the Kosovo crisis, the NATO Summit in Washington in April 1999 announced a broad-ranging review of NATO’s nuclear weapons policy. In December 2000, NATO released its report on “the Paragraph 32 process” reaffirming the central tenet of the Strategic Concept - nuclear weapons are “essential”. While the NATO document made it clear that the Paragraph 32 process was

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finished, NATO included specific commitments to further public and internal engagement on the question in response to Canadian insistence. In this context, the Alliance’s offer to “broaden its engagement with interested NGOs, academic institutions and the general public”5 was taken by some NGOs and member governments to mean that efforts should continue and accelerate to bring NATO policy and intention in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

During the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the very same countries that pledged an “unequivocal undertaking” to the total elimination of nuclear weapons, reaffirmed in the December 2000 NATO document that nuclear weapons were “essential”. The “contradiction” between NATO’s completed arms control review and the NPT treaty - that not only explicitly forbids the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapons states, but includes an unequivocal commitment to nuclear disarmament - immediately provoked ongoing debates.6 In Canada, for example, the chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative (MPI), Senator Douglas Roche, argued that since all the states in attendance had endorsed the NPT, including all NATO member states, NATO could no longer claim its nuclear weapons to be “essential”. 7

Between 1995-2015, there was considerable pressure from coalitions of states and NGOs including the Article VI Forum, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the MPI, the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) and some Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) to change NATO’s policy. Diplomats and high-level NGO representatives involved in the NPT Review Conferences, held every five years, pressured NATO diplomats to rethink their ‘Article VI’ commitments.

The contradiction between NATO’s arms control review and Article VI provoked diplomatic debates during many NPT preparatory committee (PrepCom) meetings and NPT Review Conferences (RevCons). Diplomats and high-level NGO representatives argued NATO could no longer claim its nuclear weapons were “essential” and urged NATO to rethink its policy.8 But the reissued 2010 NATO Strategic Concept reasserted that, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.”9

Many systemic-level events raised further questions and controversy about NATO’s nuclear strategy. In September 2001, NATO declared its full backing for the United States in its war against terrorism and invoked Article 5, raising concerns about how NATO would translate this decision into operational action.10 The issue of NATO expansion also provoked more debate when member states decided to admit former Eastern European candidates to the Alliance - and extend Article 5’s collective defence provisions and NATO’s nuclear umbrella.11 As many analysts in favour of closing NATO’s nuclear umbrella pointed out, Russia viewed an expanded NATO as threatening and a disincentive to reducing its strategic- and intermediate-range nuclear forces.12

Adding to the debate about NATO’s security policy, some distinguished world figures argued that the risk of retaining nuclear arsenals in perpetuity far outweighed any possible benefit imputed to nuclear deterrence. Many saw multilateral organizations, like ICAN, the MPI and the NAC as bold attempts to encourage NATO and NPT diplomats to break free from their Cold War mind-sets and move rapidly to a nuclear weapon-free world.13

Conversely, many bureaucrats, defense ministers and parliamentarians believed that to protect peace and prevent war or coercion, the Alliance had to maintain for the foreseeable future an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces.14

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The 2012 NATO Deterrence and Defence Posture Review’s assertion that nuclear weapons are the “supreme guarantee of the security of the alliance” led to more debates at the NPT PrepCom and RevCon meetings between 2012-15.15

The 2015 NPT Review Conference ended in debacle and deadlock, with no agreement on a final document.16 Faced with Russian recalcitrance over Crimea and Ukraine, NATO began to strengthen its conventional and nuclear defences along the Polish and Baltic borders, modernize the B-61 bombers that carry tactical nuclear weapons, and Russia announced it might deploy nuclear missiles to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea if the U.S. upgrades its nuclear weapons in Germany.17

There will be considerable public attention on NATO’s 70th anniversary in 2019 which will coincide with controversies surrounding the failed 2015 NPT Conference. As we march toward the NPT 2018 and 2019 Preparatory Committee meetings culminating in the 2020 NPT Review Conference, it is important to understand the national-, individual- and systemic-level factors that interacted to produce controversy concerning NATO, nuclear weapons and the NPT. Arguments in favour of and against the alliance’s continued reliance upon nuclear weapons

The research project and other chapters of this book build on two lines of research pursued in the past two decades. First, it extends my study of the implications of NATO enlargement and alternative strategies to enhance international security. I have published analyses that explain the benefits and costs of NATO expansion18 and that generate creative defence options19. Over the past decade, I widened my analysis to include current controversies, past debates, and future issues concerning NATO’s nuclear strategy and the NPT.20 Using SSHRC research funds, I interviewed policy-makers at NATO headquarters and discovered that, in the final weeks of negotiation, Canada was the only country that pressured NATO to change its deterrent policy, despite the public rhetoric from Germany and Norway.21 Accordingly, I focused on the countries and NGOs most insistent on changing NATO’s deterrent policy within NPT review processes. Most of my research on NATO was facilitated by professional contacts gained during my tenure as a NATO Fellow and based on frequent visits to NATO headquarters in Brussels in 1989, 1991, 1995, 2001, 2006, and 2011.22 However, due to my involvement with the MPI, Pugwash Canada and PNND, many interviews concerning state- and individual-level opposition to NATO’s nuclear policy were conducted at the NPT PrepCom meetings in 2009 (NYC), 2012 (Vienna), 2014 (NYC)23 and during the NPT RevCons at UN headquarters in 2005, 2010 and 2015.24

The second foundation comes from work I began in my PhD dissertation, culminating in a book and a number of articles on the role of belief systems in influencing Canadian foreign and defence policy.25 This research demonstrated the importance of understanding the impact of individual-level belief systems—shared assumptions about the nature of the threat, the usefulness of nuclear weapons, and the utility of deterrence strategy—upon Canadian defence policy between 1957-1991. For example, in order to appreciate the reasons that Canada supported NATO by acquiring nuclear weapons, and then chose to disarm itself, my first book explores the shared and competing belief systems of Prime Ministers and key policy-makers over time. This research project uses a similar ‘instrumental model of analysis’ and broadens my research across more levels of analysis.

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Two scholarly debates A core objective is to contribute to two scholarly debates concerning NATO’s role. How

did NATO’s continued reliance upon nuclear deterrence enhance or undermine global disarmament negotiations?26 What multilateral initiatives by NATO member states, or coalitions of NNWS, helped maintain or change longstanding nuclear policies?27 Five research questions are investigated: (1) At the systemic-, state-, and individual-levels of analysis, who were the influential actors and what were the significant factors that determined NATO’s security policy between 1991-2015? (2) At the systemic-, state-, and individual-levels of analysis, who were the powerful actors that attempted to influence the debate and change NATO’s policy? (3) What were the distinguishing features of the NATO security policy that was already in place, specifically its objectives, goals, and instruments, and what changes were proposed to transform NATO’s nuclear policies? (5) What strategies and defence options did the Article VI Forum, ICAN, the MPI, the NAC, the NAM, PNND and certain NNWS pursue in terms of maintaining and/or changing NATO’s security policy?

To address these questions, the project is organized around three research themes: (I) a systemic-level analysis of relations between NATO (a regional military alliance), the NWS (such as Russia and the United States), and the NNWS (such as Austria, Canada, Norway, and Poland); (II) a state-level analysis of key government policies toward NATO’s nuclear posture, and the role and interaction of key NGOs within those states; (III) and an individual-level analysis of some influential world leaders and opinion-makers, who either defended or criticized NATO’s nuclear strategy, and a discussion of their shared or competing belief systems. Theoretical framework

Three bodies of scholarly literature are relevant to this study of NATO’s security policy: (I) system-level analysis28; (II) state-level analysis29; and (III) individual-level analysis30. Each of these theories provides insights into the factors that explain NATO’s continued reliance upon nuclear weapons and the debate surrounding the Alliance’s security policy.

Beginning with the broadest method, (I) a system-level analysis suggests that NATO’s security policy can be explained by factors that influence the system as a whole and by the characteristics and proclivities of the system itself. The longstanding allocation of tactical nuclear weapons among NATO member states, the dependencies promoted by extended deterrence relationships, and the distribution of strategic and tactical weapons worldwide and within NATO’s regions, are some of the general factors used in system-level analyses. The dynamic created both within and by the system then shapes the relations of states and individuals.

A (II) state-level analysis emphasizes the nature, characteristics, and history of countries in maintaining and changing NATO’s security policy. Subsumed under the state-level, domestic factors affecting different nations’ behaviour include the type of government and how it operates, levels of NGO and citizen participation in shaping NATO policy, and the adaptability of the state to both internal and external pressures and changes. At this level of analysis, the characteristics of the bureaucratic machine also affects different nations’ defence policies, which in turn affects NATO’s policy.

The (III) third and final level of analysis examines the role of individuals in shaping NATO’s policy. An individual-level approach to understanding NATO’s posture seeks to

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understand the shared beliefs and assumptions of many policy-makers, referred to as belief systems, and it considers the impact particular individuals had on shaping NATO policy-making and the strategies of various coalitions and states.

Each of the above frameworks operates at different levels of analysis, giving priority to particular relationships and dynamics in explaining NATO’s security policy. However, it is crucial to appreciate the interdependence of systems, states, and individuals operating at different levels. Accordingly, this project’s theoretical approach blends the insights of these three approaches.31 From the systemic-level literature, it takes a concern with structural constraints on NATO’s policy between 1995-2015, and equally an awareness of the international trends accompanying global disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation. From the literature on state-level approaches, it draws a focus on interactive bureaucratic learning processes, as well as the reciprocal influence of allied countries and cultures of cooperation or non-cooperation shaping defence policy. From the individual-level literature, it illuminates belief systems which coalesce to support the nuclear option - ‘NATO defenders’ - and underlying assumptions and values that propel powerful individuals to question NATO’s security policy - ‘NATO critics’. Is the levels-of-analysis approach to explaining NATO’s security policy still relevant today?

Can combining different levels of analysis produce a theoretical framework that is sufficiently explanatory, descriptive, and illuminating? Instead of taking a reductionist approach - focusing on one or two levels of analysis32 - it is crucial to understand the interdependence of system-, state- and individual-level factors operating to shape and constrain NATO’s security policy. A multi-level, multi-variate explanation that ties together many levels of analysis blends insights and results in a stronger explanation of trans-Atlantic relations between North America and Europe in the quarter-century since the end of the Cold War. The reminder of this paper explains it remains relevant to understanding NATO’s security policy to use a levels-of-analysis approach. NATO’s security policy and the concept of ‘security’

The concept of security has so far remained largely central to the discipline of International Relations (IR) but continues to be perplexing given its essential ambiguity. Security has come to mean so many different things within NATO that it may have no precise meaning at all. The concept cannot be abandoned but we must think more deeply about how NATO’s security is enmeshed in different levels of analysis – at the individual-, state- and systemic-levels of analysis - and how different strategies could more effectively enhance security.

To engage in critical theorizing around security at different levels is still relevant to the world and the discipline today - and combats the risk of leaving dangerous global developments surrounding security dilemmas, security complexes and security regimes solely to the fundamental realist discourse of power/threat and its largely state-centred militaristic solutions. Significant policy decisions affecting NATO’s nuclear weapons cannot be fully explained by the narrow foci of the individual- and national-levels since international issues are influenced by a wide variety of entangled factors. Accordingly, what can the discipline of IR contribute to our understanding of security? And conversely, what does security mean for the study and practice of NATO’s politics? Such large questions cannot be adequately answered in one book or paper, such as this one, but it is possible to analyse the concept in

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greater detail, and encourage further study and reflection. The remainder of this article, therefore, offers a reassessment of security using a level of analysis approach that is arguably still relevant to the world and the discipline today. IR narratives about security and NATO

Some of the discipline’s core concerns, namely, security, self-help and survival are enmeshed in IR narratives that widen the scope of IR into intellectual incoherence. During the Cold War, to teach and learn security studies was to speak of national security. ‘National security’ and ‘defense policy’ were generally interchangeable terms.33 The concept of security was often referred to in no uncertain terms: politicians referred elusively to measures which needed to be taken in order to increase national security and individuals frequently used the term to describe a particular feeling of well-being or to denote a state of financial health. But now security has come to mean so many different things to different people that it may have no precise meaning at all. The concept cannot be abandoned but we must begin thinking more deeply about how security is enmeshed in different levels of analysis – and how next-generation global-level thinking promises to create future possibilities and solve traditional security puzzles.

In a seminal conceptual piece of security, Arnold Wolfers characterized security as an ‘ambiguous symbol’ and drew attention to the potential mischief which the ambiguity of the symbol could cause. In a significant moment for the discipline, he argued that ‘while appearing to offer guidance and a basis for broad consensus … (the concept of security) may be permitting everyone to label whatever policy he favours with an attractive and possibly deceptive name.’34 If Wolfers was correct - and security is potentially a deceptive symbol - then our choices are to avoid using the concept entirely - or to begin chipping away at the analytical problems underlying the way the concept of security is conceived of. This section of the paper seeks to understand the way the concept of security has been treated in the past - and to offer some concrete suggestions as to some methods or strategies which could be used to reassess security in the future.

Levels of Security?

Take the different levels of security as an example. Besides experimenting difficulties with putting forward precise definitions of security35, analysts have found it especially challenging to compare one ‘level’ of security with another36, and to conceive of states as simple individual units, like people.37 The individual level of analysis considers how individual actions influence state behavior in the international realm. It assumes that individuals matter for foreign policy making and that policy makers’ beliefs and assumptions are important. For instance, what is seen to be a threat to security at the individual level might not be significant at the national level of analysis, or threats to security which occur at various levels, both state and individual, may be responded to at multiple levels of analysis.38 Furthermore, there is not necessarily any connection between measures taken to enhance security at one level and increments in security at another level - that is, an increase in the aggregate of security among individual citizens does not always translate into greater security for the state or for the leaders of a state.39

Newer concepts of security reflect a contemporary reality, where humans, non-humans, beliefs and assumptions co-exist in complex, possibly threatening relations. To provide a

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critical rendering of the conception of threat is to, as James Der Derian writes, ‘…reinterpret – and possibly reconstruct through the reinterpretation – a late modern security comfortable with a plurality of centres, multiple meanings, and fluid identities.’40

Nevertheless, making a distinction for analytical purposes among levels of security can help in thinking more clearly about different aspects of security: in particular, distinctions among the ‘national’, ‘individual’ and ‘systemic’ levels of analysis are made here because these specific typologies promise to offer considerable exploratory power. The rest of this paper, therefore, is divided into three sections. In each section, the ‘traditional’ approach to the concept of security at that level is considered; some of the more recent contributions to the concept of security at that level of analysis are overviewed; and then some suggestions are provided regarding methods of reassessing either individual, national or systemic security are made. The National Level of Analysis The ‘traditional’ approach to security at the national level is embodied in what is referred to as the ‘realist’ paradigm. For the realists, it is basically a Hobbesian world with no escape from eternal conflict. The realist vision of national security is based on lessons from history which teach that security is best obtained through preponderant military strength, through the ability to threaten attack by superior forces and through the demonstration of resolve rather than conciliatoriness in the face of the enemy or the irrational ‘Other.’ There is a good deal of variation in how individual realist scholars conceptualize the concept of power but power is conceived of as the end and the means – power is the currency of IR just as money is the currency of economics.41 Realists can trace through history incidents which demonstrate the para bellum doctrine that ‘if you want peace, prepare for war.’ In a similar sense, realist orthodoxy assumes that if a nation wants security in an anarchical world, obtaining superiority of power in the form of weapons is the most preferred strategy.42 Nations are advised, for instance, by the ‘classical’ realist thinker Hans Morgenthau to seek the maximum amount of power obtainable under the circumstances because ‘all nations must always be afraid that their own miscalculations and the power increase of nations might add up to an inferiority for themselves which they must at all costs avoid.’ 43 The most popular and influential of these later narratives was Kenneth Waltz’s ‘neorealism’ concept which was repeated in a number of iterations including John Mearsheimer’s ‘structural realism’ concept.44 Waltz developed ‘defensive’ realism, arguing that states generally want to survive and seek to enhance their security to the degree necessary to achieve this. Mearsheimer’s ‘offensive’ realism maintains that states are as flawed as individual humans in a state of nature; their ongoing quest for power and domination over the system causes instability, even when a notional balance of power is in operation.45

The realists’ preoccupation with obtaining security through superior strength in a largely anarchic world order is seen in definitions of national security which emphasize a nation’s ability to deter or sustain an attack. For example, Walter Lipmann writes that: “A nation is secure to the extent to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war, and is able, if challenged to maintain them by victory in such a war.”46 Realist national security policies within NATO

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The realist preoccupation with security through military strength is also manifested in many national security policies of which an apt illustration is the national security policy of the United States during the presidential years of Ronald Reagan. The origins of the Reagan administration’s national security policy can be found in the founding statement of the Committee on the Present Danger. In the statement, the Soviet Union is perceived to be the principal threat to national security: ‘The principal threat to our nation, to world peace, and to the cause of human freedom is the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup.’47 Consequently for the Reagan administration, every aspect of U.S. national security policy was judged on its capability to protect the United States’ military from the perceived Soviet threat. Since the Reagan years, many other politicians and self-professed ‘realists’ have defined national security in excessively military terms and resorted to rhetoric about the enemy whenever they speak about security. Perhaps diplomats and politicians have found it easier to focus the domestic public’s attention on military threats to security, real or imagined, rather than on non-military ones. Certainly it has often been easier to build a consensus on military solutions to national security problems than to obtain agreement on other instruments of influence that a country can bring to bear on problems that it faces. While the elites of nuclear weapons states continue to privilege possession of nuclear weapons as an acceptable risk in an Hobbesian international system, other perspectives suggest otherwise. One other explanation attributes the militaristic rhetoric surrounding NATO’s security to deep psychological images of the enemy. Patrick Blackett has written that ‘once a nation bases its security on an absolute weapon, such as the atomic bomb, it becomes psychologically necessary to believe in an absolute enemy.’48 In other words, it is first psychologically necessary to believe in an absolute enemy before a nation can base its security on atomic weapons or weapons of mass destruction – a nation’s representatives would not tolerate such kinds of defence unless they held stark, menacing images of the enemy.49 The psychological roots of enemy imagery initially received scant attention in the literature,50 but findings in the field of attribution theory regarding ‘mirror imaging’ indicate that enemy images are the product of human tendencies to believe only the worst about our enemies (and the best about ourselves) and to deny information about the enemy which conflicts with strongly-held images.51 If NATO policy-makers reject the realist assumption that military strength must be the primary characteristic of any national security policy, what are some other emerging visions of national security? Liberals, arms controllers, disarmers and nuclear abolitionists in many non-aligned and aligned NATO countries argue that military capability remains associated with national security in the minds of most people because of images that are carry-overs from a time in which they once had some relationship to international society, however, in reality, ‘burgeoning growth of military capabilities has been the chief source of insecurity.’52 Chief among the various alternative approaches to national security is the idea that disarmament, trust and verification – rather than a grown in military capabilities - can contribute to national security.53 For disarmers, liberals, ‘doves’ and ‘idealists’ the very process of arming increases tensions and exacerbates hostilities. Indeed, the dynamics of such processes are described by liberal (now English School) professors John Herz and Herbert Butterfield as a ‘security dilemma.’ Reduced to its essentials, the concept of the security dilemma states that attempts by

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the state or the individual to gain security through power accumulation tend to provoke the insecurity of others, which in turn threatens the security of the other side. Thus, the security dilemma describes the measures and countermeasures each side takes which can incite a vicious spiral of increasing insecurity.54 The most obvious manifestation of the security dilemma is an arms race: one nation’s attempt to enhance its security through stockpiling weapons may stimulate the nation’s imagined irrational Other to obtain more weapons, with the final result that there is less security for both sides. 55 The security dilemma at the nation-state level of analysis The original liberal/idealist ideas underlying the security dilemma – that one nation’s attempt to enhance its security through power accumulation may threaten the security of others – engendered an entire alternative school of thought during the 1980s which proposed enhancing NATO’s security by decreasing or eliminating an nation’s preponderant power – that is, through unilateral or bilateral disarmament. Essentially, the argument was that radical disarmament can enhance national security by reducing each side’s fears about pre-emption, accidental war and miscalculated attack, and thus contribute to greater security overall.56 Also significant was the notion that disarmament can free resources conducive to development, which can in turn enhance national security. Thus, the Final Document of the 1987 United Nations Conference on the Relationship between Disarmament and Development stated that: “A process of disarmament that provides undiminished security at progressively lower levels of armaments could allow additional resources to be devoted to addressing non-military challenges to security, and thus result in enhanced overall security.”57 Many thoughtful commentaries have argued since 1987 that security for the alliance countries in Western and Eastern Europe as well as North America no longer means simply devising defences against invasion or nuclear destruction. Space constraints make it impossible to revisit the discipline’s past and update dominant discourses on existential threats and the security dilemma for a new age.58 Suffice it to say IR found its voice during the Cold War – when apocalyptic extinction from nuclear war was a commonplace vision. Accordingly strategies based on disarmament seemed to hold the promise of higher levels of security overall. This research project asserts that IR should once again re-examine the traditional debates on arms control and disarmament with an emphasis on appreciating their impact on our current ideas of what specifically constitutes security, particularly NATO’s security. In many contemporary dialogues about security, the Cold War lives on in the minds of Cold Warriors who have re-emerged in the present generation. It is now well known among NATO policy-makers, for instance that even the regional use of nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan, for example, could lead to over 44 million direct and indirect deaths, producing global environmental changes unprecedented in human history.59 The prospect of nuclear annihilation and the destruction of human civilization continue to be dominant discourses at NATO and the UN during the latter stages of the new Cold War.60 Alternative security and NATO Another influential approach that emerged at the UN in 1987 was the concept of ‘alternative security.’ Alternative security describes a plethora of defence measures including neutralism, non-alignment, nuclear-weapons free zones, civilian defence, non-nuclear neutral

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zones and non-provocative conventional defence measures.61 According to a prominent exponent of alternative security methods, Ulrich Albrecht, there was no consensus as to the exact conceptual meaning of ‘alternative security,’ or ‘alternative defence’ as it is sometimes referred to, ‘but this lack of conceptual clarity, like that of democracy of socialism and other political bywords, does not impair [its] political appeal.’62 Despite its ambiguous nature, the main underlying purpose of proposals for alternative security was to gradually wean nations and leaders away from their dependence on force for security, not by the direct process of abolishing weapons and the military but by the more indirect strategy of substitution. Less threatening ‘non-provocative’ weapons, ‘civilian-based’ defence systems, ‘transarmament’ plans and a shift toward ‘disengagement’ were all alternative security measures which were meant to act as interim substitutes for present-day defence systems, which were by and large based on nuclear weapons.63 And yet, there existed robust debate about whether there was enough evidence to warrant shifting from nuclear to alternative security. Beyond the technical difficulty of disarming, the search for alternative security reflected deeply political questions about deterrence and whether it could work.64 In hindsight, the various proposals for alternative security and retaining nuclear deterrence were intended to enhance the security of large as well as small states. Advocates of alternative security systems mainly lived in small and middle-power states but they sought changes in the national security policies of all states so that if a war should come, and if a war was fought on one’s own territory, the preservation of the society and environment would be possible because comparatively fewer harmful types of weapons would be relied upon for defence. And they were criticized for being politically naïve, because they equated the existence of alternative security systems with an end to warfare. Newer strategies to enhance different nations’ security within NATO Beginning in the 1980s newer strategizes to enhance or maintain national security began to primarily emphasize economic, environmental, political and social threats. For example, it came to be more often asserted that a nation’s security depended just as much on its economic health and on its ability to cope with unexpected domestic problems as on its military preparedness. Some argued that national security policy must also include emergency plans to cope with such threats as interruptions in the flow of critically-needed resources. Concerns about security included worries about a drastic deterioration in environmental quality, food shortages, and the dwindling of the global supply of resources. Unprecedented national disasters and humanitarian crises, along with violence in Third World countries and urban conflict - -exacerbated, by the presence of large numbers of poor immigrants and unemployed workers – all became part of the security debate. All these types of threats could endanger the quality of life of a nation and needed to be considered and prepared for in the formulation of every NATO ally’s national security policy.65 (Though all these newer emphases on security included debates on economic, societal and human security, their influence on the larger debates and theories in IR surrounding security remained relatively marginal compared, for example, to the ‘balance of power’ literature in security studies).66 Discussing the ways in which the concepts of alternative security and newer types of threats - including ‘primacy’67- learned how to co-habitate in a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar world68 is not a simple task. One healthy corrective to traditional realist preoccupations with

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defining national security in terms of stockpiling weapons was to begin to define national security policy in terms of the fears which a nation’s adversaries had – that is, to try to recreate the fears which NATO’s enemies could have - and then attempt to alleviate those fears and insecurities. In this regard, the old Jewish saying ‘Fear the man who fears you’ was of special relevance: one must try to understand the fears felt by other states in order to increase one’s own national security. Finally at the nation-state level of analysis, it was also evident that security policies which attempted to prepare for unexpected natural, economic and social disasters could, in the end, prove to be more efficacious NATO policies than either the realist, disarmament-oriented or alternative security proposals that were being circulated.69 The Individual Level of Analysis

Philosophers have long grappled with the concept of security, the roots of insecurity and the conditions which contribute to security. In the original trope of ‘security’ from Hobbes to Rousseau onwards – the most ‘traditional’ theories of international relations present perfect security as an ideal which humans will never be able to achieve because of the difficulties of negotiating peace among individuals to achieve security. Hobbes puts forward, perhaps, the most pessimistic exposition of mankind’s condition of insecurity. For Hobbes, men must live without security - except for what their own strength and inventiveness can supply them with - whenever men live in a condition of anarchy or ‘Warre’. According to Hobbes, in such condition there is “… continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”70

Furthermore, complications are created by the fact that, according to Rousseau, most methods for self-protection which are undertaken in order to increase the individual’s own sense of security simultaneously menace others. For Rousseau, “so that many wars, even offensive wars, are rather in the nature of unjust precautions for the protection of the assailant’s own possessions than a device for seizing those of others.71

Both Hobbes and Rousseau are preoccupied by the condition of physical insecurity in which man finds himself – for Hobbes threats to man’s physical security, indeed man’s survival, are derived from man’s fearful nature and the lack of an overarching authority, while for Rousseau continual physical insecurity is dictated by uncertainty about the motives of others. But such threats to man’s physical security are not the only kinds of threat relevant to individual security.

First-generation IR literature and the notion of security

Much of the first-generation IR literature begrudgingly accepted the notion that security should be broadened. No longer could the discipline deny the interconnected risks between physical and psychological security, or maintain an image of security built upon clean divisions between psychological reality and physical unreality. The broadening cluster of security topics included debates about environmental and psychological security, even the human right to security. There was no real doubt that homo sapiens have a basic right to physical security: a right not to be subject to murder, torture, mayhem, rape, or assault.72 Yet even in societies where physical security was relatively assured, it was shown that individuals could feel powerfully insecure. They could feel insecure because of a low sense of self-worth, because of perceptions of threat to their families or because of concerns arising out of larger

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issues including apocalyptic fears about population growth, world hunger, or threats to the environment. Although these sorts of fears might not, in the short-term, threaten the physical security of the individual and indeed, might be products of the individual’s exaggerated fears, they nevertheless exerted pernicious effects.73 Newer emphases on NATO’s security included debates on economic, societal and human security; so now their influence on the larger debates and theories in IR surrounding security are highly influential. Most North American and European professors that teach national/international security courses incorporate newer literature about climate change, food shortages, disease, global health, civil war, poverty and inequality and resource scarcity.74

Implicit in these different assumptions about individual security is Robert Cox’s famous maxim that theory is always for someone and for some purpose. Because no theory exists in itself, it is more important to ‘examine it as ideology, and to lay bare its concealed perspective.’75 In a limping and muddled fashion, the first wave of contemporary analyses of security attempted to incorporate the notion of subjectively-perceived security into intersubjective constructions of security. One can go back to the early years of IR – post-World War One and find mention of security. For instance, Wolfers ultimately defines security in ‘an objective sense as the absence of threats to acquired values,’ and ‘in a subjective sense, as the absence of fear that such values will be attacked.’76 The political philosopher Christian Bay distinguished further between two types of subjective security: ‘subjective external security’ refers to the degree of consistent reassurance the individual senses in that he or she, or the loved ones, are objectively secure; and ‘internal subjective security’ refer to the security deriving from self-acceptance and self-insight.77 Other more contemporary concepts of subjective security arose principally at the end of the Cold War, including Richard Ullman’s classic criticism of the narrowness of Cold War era national security. In his article, ‘Redefining Security’, Ullman argued that defining national security merely (or even primarily) in military nomenclature conveys a profoundly false image of reality that causes states to concentrate on military threats and to ignore other and perhaps even more harmful dangers - and it contributes to a pervasive militarization of state interactions that in the long run can only reduce global security.’78

Do individuals matter for crafting security policy?

Redefining security starting at the individual level of analysis meant considering how individual behavior and perceptions could influence state behavior and affect international outcomes. This body of literature assumed that individuals matter for crafting foreign policy and that policy makers’ belief structures – for example about nuclear weapons and deterrence - were important.79 Since the individual leader is the last authority in policy making in terms of almost every state-level decision, as such, decisions are influenced by their beliefs, perceptions and understanding. For example, Lopovici suggests deterrence is actually an intersubjectively-constituted game in which state elites are socialized, therefore deterrence is actually a social construct amenable to change.80 Scholars who adopted a more constructivist perspective also developed individual-level theories that argued some individuals make ‘big decisions’. As Jacques Hymans contends: ‘various voices in society may sound strong pro-or-anti bomb notes; but the responsibility for choosing wisely is much heavier for the top leaders into whose hands the ultimate choice actually falls.’81

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The impact of critical theory on contemporary debates about security policy

Clearly, new concepts of security began to incorporate subjectively-rooted assessments of security. But discussing the ways in which they now cohabit is not a simple task. Stephen Walt famously wrote in 1991 that security studies should only ‘focus on the threat, use, and control of military force.’82 But critical theory began to examine the social and political conditions as a whole, leading to the re-emergence of the examined subject. It considered the historical and social conditions which led to the evolution of a particular order, its contradictions, and the potential for alternative orders.83 It was much more concerned with contributing to contemporary debates about the end of the world, or mass extinction by rejecting the epistemological, ontological and axiological assumptions of realism – whether classical or structural – that privileged the state as the necessary referent object, and military force as the logical solution. Whereas security formerly referred primarily to an objective measure of physical security, any assessment of individual security had to now include an assessment of the individual’s own sense of security.84

But were subjective and objective aspects of security actually separable in any meaningful way? It is evidently difficult to disentangle subjective assessments of security from subjectively-arrived at objective measures of insecurity, in part because any objective assessments of security are themselves the products of analysts’ own subjectively-derived ideas about the conditions, probabilities and nature of security. As R.B.J. Walker wrote in 1997, ‘If the subject of security is the subject of security, it is necessary to ask, first and foremost, how the modern subject is constituted and then ask what security could possibly mean in relation to it.’85 Walker was pointing to the failure of IR to think of a different world; not in the utopic sense of building a perfectly secure world community, but of thinking through the realisation that security is far more complex, interactive and confusing than IR had yet imagined. Subjective security at the individual level remains undertheorized

The discipline of IR came of age during the Cold War underneath the threat of nuclear annihilation, and some philosophers formally introduced the term subjective security in the early 1990s. Therefore, in order to understand more fully the components of contemporary notions in IR about individual security, it is most appropriate to explore more fully some facets of subjective security, which remains under theorized. In this regard, there are a number of problematic aspects to subjective security which militate against its conceptual usefulness. First, there remain some doubts about whether absolute subjective security is indeed desirable. For instance, Christian Bay pointed out that it may be the case that ‘modest amounts of anxiety may be necessary to keep humans alert and agile, intellectually and emotionally.’86 Secondly, we are not certain whether humans require some basic level of subjective security in order to function nor do we know what effect inadequate amounts of security can have on an individual. For example, Abraham H. Maslow argued that every human being has two forces within him. One set of forces clings to security or safety; the other set of forces seeks to grow and gratify higher needs involved with intellectual and emotional ‘being.’ What this meant, according to Maslow, was that in the choice between giving up safety and giving up growth, safety will ordinarily win out: ‘safety needs are prepotent over growth needs.’87 It remains unknown to what extent the individual’ subjective security needs must be satisfied before the individual can become a fully functioning human being. And it is not simply that the problems with assessing subjective security stem from the profound

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differences among individuals in terms of security requirements. Robert Jervis’s research on the cognitive and motivational processes of human psychology showed that individuals differ widely in their subjective security requirements. According to Jervis, there were two aspects to assessing subjective security requirements: first, individuals differed about their perceptions of threats to their security requirements and second, people differed about how much they valued increments of security; thus a person facing relatively the same threatening conditions as another might experience a relatively higher sense of insecurity, or some individuals might be more willing to pay a higher price to gain increments of security than others.88 If Jervis is correct, and each individual’s subjective security needs differ, then this would seem to imply that strategies and methods which seek to enhance NATO’s security at the individual level would need to be tailored to each individual. This is a daunting – daresay impossible task - and there exists robust debate about whether enhancing security at the individual level is, if not impossible, at least practically unattainable. However, it must also be remembered that what is practically important is not to somehow attain high levels of absolute subjective security for each individual, but to devise methods and strategies which to some degree improve the individual’s sense of security. In order to do so we need first to understand that subjective security is in practical terms immeasurable, except insofar as subjective security denotes the absence or relative amelioration of subjectively-felt insecurity. Different degrees of insecurity among different individual policy-makers regarding NATO policy

Unsurprisingly, it is important to assess the different degrees and kinds of individual insecurity. Beyond the technical difficulty of devising policies and strategies which alleviate or eliminate individual insecurities, the individual’s subjective security can be enhanced in a round-about way. In this context, therefore, strategies which enhance subjective security are any actions or policies which ameliorate, remove, or reduce the individual’s perceptions of insecurity.

Accordingly this is primarily a qualitative research project based on an instrumental model of analysis. Two methods of investigation are used: interviews and textual analysis. There are several reasons for making interviewing central to the research program. Access to written documents, including minutes of meetings, faxes, and emails, is difficult due to many countries’ adoption of stricter rules concerning access to information about security policy. Interviewing was essential to discover the roles played by different actors, and their perceptions of the levers of change and decision-making processes. Interviewing also advanced the research process with each round helping to identify new contacts.

Extracts from these interviews are supplemented with relevant government documents and speeches; policy documents from NGOs and individuals; accessed and classified documents; transcripts of interviews; and internet and media commentaries. Relevant documents were obtained at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and at the NPT Preparatory Committee and NPT Review Conferences between 2000-2015, and used to track the varying influence of different state- and individual-level actors, the evolution of positions held by different actors, and critical decisions affecting outcomes.

Based on an instrumental model of analysis, the evidence was assessed with attention to its particular context. The instrumental model (compared to the ‘representational’ model)89, works with the assumption that speeches and public documents by politicians and bureaucrats

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may be designed to influence the general public. Therefore, highly-classified documents, minutes of closed meetings, verbatim responses to interviews, and recorded transcripts are considered more valuable than official departmental policy, official memoirs, or interviews conducted months or years later

Many thoughtful commentaries have argued that what can be attempted is to listen to ‘accounts of danger’ that highlight how the very domains of ‘inside/outside’, ‘self/other’, and ‘domestic/foreign’ are experienced – and how these spaces are made possible and constituted through the articulation of the threat. David Campbell theorized this position clearly in his seminal work, Writing Security.90 For these reasons, a variety of new labels have been proposed as ways to more accurately reflect the special characteristics of security, including ‘human security’.91 Common causes of insecurity Many kinds of personal insecurity under NATO auspices have common causes – such as alienation, foreboding of apocalypse, fear of nuclear war, fear of a first-strike – and it is possible to illuminate different belief ‘structures’ or belief systems For example, a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia – involving just one-fifth of their current arsenals – has been estimated to produce 770 million direct casualties, with indirect effects via ozone depletion and climate change eliminating the majority of the human population and reducing many of the remainder to a hunter-gatherer existence.92 Fears about such an existential threat of the first order for world order have been substantially ameliorated with the end of the Cold War, although such fears still exert a hold over all NATO decision-makers and UN diplomats.

On the other hand, the risk of ‘broadening’ security threats at the individual level beyond subjectively-felt fears is to interject levels of incoherence into the concept, eroding any lucid understanding of what we mean when we discuss individual security. In other words, to see human security (and human insecurity) everywhere is to hold it nowhere. The limitless interpretation of individual human security troubles even those firmly on the ‘reflectivist’ side of things. R.B.J. Walker writes that in the new post-Cold War paradigm, the difficulties of reigning in the concept of security have left it ‘embarrassingly limp and overextended.’93 Nevertheless it is useful to take an individual level approach to understanding NATO and security policy.

The Systemic Level of Analysis During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, diplomats and politicians came to realize that a nation’s security could be more effectively enhanced through global cooperating and by forming multilateral alliances with other nations. Achieving primacy no longer mattered as much because of the cost of warfare. For instance, during the twentieth century various coalitions of nations formed which were referred to as ‘balances of power,’ ‘concerts’ or ‘alliances.’ There developed an extensive literature on the order and structure of alliances in the international system. Each coalition sought to expand the power and security of each member nation-state by uniting its military force with other like-minded states. Another modern twentieth century version of this kind of coalition was referred to as a ‘regional security system’ with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Warsaw Pact, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and

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the Organization of American States being the most prominent examples of such regional security systems. 94 Liberals also emphasized the ‘democratic peace theory’ — the idea that democratic states have rarely chosen to fight each other. Liberal theorists also examined economic interdependence in their efforts to understand and integrate levels of analysis mechanisms to achieve peace and security in international affairs.95 Underlying all these types of interdependent coalitions there remained the conviction that national security is best preserved and enhanced through alliances which can boast of, or demonstrate, preponderant military strength. In a sense, security was still seen as a ‘zero-sum’ game where increases in the military security of one alliance or bloc make the other side less secure.

However, newer approaches to enhancing security at the global level also began to emphasize that the pursuit of security could no longer be conceived of as a zero-sum game. New systemic-level thinking stressed that nations - and opposing blocs of nations - shared interests; interests which, if threatened or destroyed, would be detrimental to the security of both sides. Therefore strategies which increased the security of one side, and in doing so also added to the security of the other side, were actively sought – it was, so to speak, a global security game which would need not add up to zero. Common security, Security communities and complexes

Some other emerging concepts of global security emphasized the existence of common interests and ‘common security’. The primary shared interest of nations was to avoid nuclear war, and in this regard there were many proposals which sought to establish a type of ‘common security’ based on nuclear-weapon free zones and negotiated conventional balances. The report of the Palme Commission on Common Security, for instance, proposed as a medium-term measure the creation in Europe of a battlefield nuclear-weapons free zone and a 150 kilometres wide disengagement zone on both sides of the NATO-Warsaw Pact demarcation line.96 But there were also other proposals for security which were based on more general, shared interests. For example, Karl Deutsch developed the concept of ‘security communities’: groups of states which develop reliable expectations of peaceful relations between them and which do not expect or fear the use of force (e.g. Canada and the U.S).97 Famed IR theorist Barry Buzan considered the emergence of ‘security complexes,’ in which the security interests of a group of states are linked together so closely (e.g. Western Europe) that their national securities cannot realistically be considered apart from one another, with the result that they seemed to lie in an ‘oasis’ of relative security compared to the rest of the ‘fractious’ international system.98 Buzan also explored interlinking concepts of fear with security across different levels of analysis.99 More recent explorations by Buzan and Ole Wæver suggest macrosecuritizations, or security moves that aim to frame security issues, agendas and relationships on a system-wide basis, based on universalist constructions of threats and/or reference objects.100 But one problem with the proposals in favour of establishing common security, security communities and security complexes was that they all required close physical proximity and/or a degree of cultural commonality among the members; one did not speak of a security community between Pakistan and Paraguay for instance. In this respect, too many proposals inclined more toward regionally-based rather than system-level conceptions of

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security. They reflected a new reality where proposals to enhance worldwide security were necessarily based on territorial proximity for their success. Security regimes The term ‘security regime’ was coined, however to describe the existence of tacit or explicit rules, principles and decision making procedures which exist in order to preserve or enhance shared security interests among any and all nations and among international organizations. A security regime was said to exist when nations or organizations coordinated their behavior according to shared principles, social norms, values, procedures and rules.101 For instance, when Nation A and Nation B sought to control the arms competition between them by making up rules and setting up interdependent decision-making bodies which constrained each nation’s pursuit of larger stockpile of weapons, they were said to be engaged in establishing a security regime (e.g. the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came to be referred to as an arms control regime). Besides acting as a constraint on each nation’s behavior, continued adherence to the regime’s rules and principles would encourage each nation to gradually develop more stable expectations about the other’s behavior. Thus, by specifying what constituted their shared interests and then by seeking to coordinate their action so as to ensure outcomes based on their shared interests, security regimes sought to strengthen the security of their members, which could number anywhere from two to hundreds of member nations and organizations. Some examples of successful security regimes were the various arms control agreements between the superpowers (e.g. INF, SALT, START, ABM treaties) and various conventional weapons agreements (e.g. Geneva Convention, Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention, Landmines Treaty, Cluster Munitions Treaty). A resounding strength of security regimes was that their creation and maintenance did not rely on ‘altruistic’ or ‘conciliatory’ behavior. Systemic-level thinkers had been criticized early on in the past for their utopian illusions about international behavior and their unwarranted faith in the selfless qualities of human nature.102 But the kind of global thinking which advocated the creation of security regimes – like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or the United Nations Outer Space Treaty - relied on a nation’s self-interest or ‘enlightened self-interest’ in order for regimes to come into being. Security regimes were based on the shared and enlightened self-interest of nations in averting war, sharing the global commons, and preserving peace. All of this reflected the heretofore failure of IR to think of a different world - based not on varieties of national selfishness - but on new images and values inherently built upon forging connections among humans, states and global systems. Moreover, security regimes proved not to be necessarily stable or durable institutions; one nation might violate the rules of the regime if it was in its self-interest to do so (e.g. the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was a party to the NPT but announced its withdrawal in 2003). Therefore, it was easy to surmise that the members of a security regime must permanently remain on guard against powers arising from within the regime which threatened to violate its rules and procedures - and they should also be prepared to defend themselves against other nations outside the regime which could issue military threats or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.103 Securitization

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A few systemic-level thinkers advocated other sorts of objectives which could combat these kinds of threatening scenarios. They suggested the first priority of a global security perspective would be to guarantee that life, global health and humankind’s survival meant that a nation must demonstrate conciliatoriness (but not appeasement) in the face of threats from other nations or blocs bent on attacking using weapons of massive destruction. Given the stakes involved, more isolated voices taking a systemic-level perspective on security took the viewpoint that in the face of a sufficiently dangerous and potent threat, the sovereignty and independence of a nation-state had to be sacrificed for the sake of human survival.104 More profoundly though, there was a need to reconsider the logic of the traditional security problematique. Realists had suggested that for a viable theory of international relations to exist we needed to focus on a third, higher level. As Kenneth Waltz pointed out in 2010, ‘The repeated failure of attempts to explain international outcomes analytically – that is, through examination of interacting units [levels 1 and 2] – strongly signals the need for a systems approach.’105 The academics belonging to the Copenhagen School of Security Studies such as Barry Buzan and Ole Waever have been credited with rejecting a realist approach at the systemic level and forming the concept of ‘securitization in the 1980s. To securitize an issue, politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or something that is above politics. When an issue is securitized it is ‘presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure.’106 Thus, security was bound up with concepts of identity, securitization sectors and regional security complexes. In general, securitization was the most important concept and undergirded the meta-theoretical framework of the Copenhagen school.107 Alliances, coalitions, security communities, regional security complexes, security regimes and securitization can help transform the nation-level fixation with the nation-state’s security into a preoccupation with first ensuring world survival, universal well-being and systemic-wide security. Viewing the world through the prism of the whole Earth system – made more evident through the pictures of Earth taken from space - was to recognize the cumulative interactions, overlaps and intersections among different levels of analysis. The complex, interlinked sets of exchanges among various parts of the Earth system were seen by some to include humans, non-humans, objects, beliefs and ideas. Indeed, humankind’s evolution toward a systemic-level and global perspective on security meant - for a few idealist and ‘dovish’ voices - that even the contemplation of an attack against one part of the globe - using weapons of mass destruction - should be unimaginable - and certainly would be - a few generations hence - unheard of and inconceivable. In their view, the trajectory of ideas surrounding nuclear deterrence was already showing a great acceleration such that ideas like mutual assured destruction were fast becoming outdated concepts relegated to the old worlds of strategic studies108 and post-world two war pop culture.109 Epistemological and ontological problems with three levels of analysis It is admittedly problematic to think that in a strictly fixed world - governed by implicit and explicit beliefs about causality – that there should be merely three fixed levels of analysis in the study of IR. Puzzles that perplex humans, arguably, cannot be easily reduced to empirically-measurable factors at different levels of analysis when such factors are always

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layered, intertwined and entangled. The advantages of purporting to take a scientific reductionist approach are tantalizing – but the reality is that the different levels interact with each other so much they are difficult, if not impossible to differentiate. Rather than fruitlessly search for ‘necessary and sufficient causes’ at the individual level of analysis, we should recognize there are ‘causal complexes’ and there may be many different complexes capable of co-producing the same kinds of results. As Heikki Patomäki at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs points out, ‘If we view causality and explanation in critical realist terms, the levels-of-analysis problematic loses most of its edge. There is no longer much room for the three substantial ‘levels of analysis’; in their stead we are faced with qualitiatively different kinds of contexts of social action.’110 Indeed Patomäki says the concept should be eliminated altogether and notes that R.B.J. Walker pointed out in 1991, in a footnote, that the levels-of-analysis distinction “is nothing more, nor less, than a vertical articulation of a modern Western view of horizontal spatiality.’111 Since then others have critiqued the level of analysis approach for its basis upon Western ideas about epistemology and ontology that are fundamentally out of place in IR.112 According to James Lee Ray, writing in 2001 for example, “The international system, for example, can serve as a unit of analysis, but it has no purposes or goals, nor does it exhibit any behavior that might serve as a target for explanatory efforts.’113 All of this sort of emphasis on the disjointed nature of dividing up our analysis into different levels suggests that perhaps we should refrain from reifying the levels-of-analysis approach due mainly to the dangers of adopting reductionist/deductive explanations of IR. But then what are we left with? If we are interested in understanding NATO’s security policy, the levels of analysis approach is relevant to this goal. That is because it makes common sense to distinguish between ‘internal’ (endogenous) and ‘external’ (exogenous) forces. Furthermore, it is useful to distinguish further between ‘domestic’ (e.g. state-civil society relations and state bureaucracies) as opposed to ‘international’ factors (e.g multilateral negotiations, world markets, world history, etc). The anatomy of international crises has also divided, and re-divided again into systems, bargaining and decision-making.114 In turn, Wendt-inspired constructivists rely on the distinction between micro- and macro-levels of structure to provide accounts of ideational structural change.115 We strive to do all this because the human mind needs to divide up and organize reality somehow. Since no one researcher can possibly understand, categorize and explain without developing a typology - a categorizing device – then returning to recycle a levels of analysis approach is one way of understanding the ‘reality’ (or ‘story’) of NATO’s nuclear weapons. Conclusion To conclude, the conceptual broadening of security that states and scholars have undertaken during and since the end of the Cold War has grown beyond classical concepts of security that were located within traditional parameters and Westphalian scopes of analysis. The privileging of the Cold War’s concept of security and the concept’s uneven intellectual history has meant the term now looks wholly different than what IR was used to dealing with. At the individual-level, security concepts moved beyond discussions about the differences among physical, objective and subjective security to incorporate newer ideas like human security. At the national-level of analysis the intersubjective construction of security moved beyond concepts related to self interest and enlightened national self-interest to embrace

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heterogenous and cosmopolitan notions more relevant to common security and security regimes. At the systemic level, security has expanded to incorporate security communities, security complexes, security regimes and securitization - ideas about interdependent levels that move beyond traditional parameters and Westphalian scopes of analysis. In order to reach a better understanding of the concept of NATO’s security policy, the differences among the national, individual and systemic-level approaches to security were considered. To engage in critical theorizing around ‘security’ at the national level combats the risk of leaving dangerous global developments surrounding security solely to the realist discourse of power/threat and its largely state-centred solutions. At the individual level it was explained that the focus on individual physical security and on objectively and subjectively-defined concepts of security was gradually broadened by attention to shared insecurities and fears. Moreover the systemic level-of-analysis approach is recognizing that significant policy decisions cannot be adequately explained by the narrow foci of the individual- and national-levels. International issues are influenced by a wide variety of factors; indeed, all levels of analysis need to be considered together to obtain accurate understandings of questions in hand. Each level of analysis offers specific insights into state, local, and international level policies. Taken together, state-, individual- and system-level lenses can provide fairly complete views of different puzzles. Acknowledgements The author thanks the participants of the Canadian Peace Research Association and the Canadian Political Science Association at the 2016 Conference of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Calgary. She acknowledges the valuable feedback received from Cameron Harrington, Sakhi Naimpoor, Barry Scott Zellen, and her colleagues in the department of political science at the University of Western Ontario. Funding: This work is based upon research supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the SSHRC do not accept any liability in regard thereto. Author Biography Erika Simpson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, the Vice-President of the Canadian Peace Research Association and a former Vice-Chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group, the national affiliate of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Her work explores the intersections among security, nuclear proliferation, arms control and disarmament. She has recently published in Journal of Nuclear Energy Science & Power Generation Technology, OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, MPC Journal, Municipal World, Peace Magazine and Peace Review. She is a regular columnist for Postmedia, the largest newspaper chain in Canada. Her first book was titled: NATO and the Bomb and was published in 2001 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Her next book on is tentatively titled, Nuclear Weapons, NATO and the NPT

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Endnotes 1For a flavor of the debate between 1991-2015, see many reports and press releases sorted by title and date published on NATO’s homepage, and Regina Cowen Karp, ed., Security without Nuclear Weapons? Different Perspectives on Non-Nuclear Security, Oxford University Press, 1992; Ken Booth, ed., Statecraft and Security: The Cold War and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, 1998; Ian Anthony and Johnny Janssen, The Future of Nuclear Weapons in NATO, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2010; Tarja Cronberg, Nuclear-Free Security: Refocusing Nuclear Disarmament and the Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2010; David Krieger, Jurgen Scheffran, Alyn Ware, and Judge C. G. Weeramantry, Securing A Nuclear Weapon-Free World Today: Our Responsibility to Future Generations, World Future Council, 2010 2For a few examples, see: John Burroughs, The (Il)legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice, Munster: Lit Verlag, 1997; Merav Datan, Felicity Hill, Jurgen Scheffran and Alyn Ware, Securing Our Survival: The Case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, [1999], 2007, available here at The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy; Robert Green, The Naked Nuclear Emperor: Debunking Nuclear Deterrence, Christchurch: New Zealand, 2000; Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998; and The Carter Center. "The Atlanta Consultation III: Fulfilling the NPT." Atlanta, Georgia, Middle Powers Initiative, January 20 - 22, 2010 3For example, see North Atlantic Treaty Organization [hereafter NATO], “Washington Summit Communiqué.” para. 46, 24 April 1999; “Lisbon Summit Declaration.” para 30, 20 November, 2010; Report on Options for Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs), Verification, Arms Control and Disarmament. December 2000; Active Engagement, Modern Defence, Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. November 2010; “U.S. Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A Fundamental NATO Debate.” Report for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, May 2010; “Wales Summit Declaration.” September 5, 2014. All documents sorted by title here at NATO 4NATO, “Washington Summit Communiqué,” para. 46, 24 April 1999 5NATO, NATO Report on Options for Confidence and Security Building Measures, December 2000 6For example, interviews of NATO policy-makers included [in alphabetical order by last name]: Dr. Rob McRae, Director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University [interviewed when he was Canadian Ambassador to NATO 2007-20011]; Dr. Guy Roberts, ret’d [also interviewed twice when he NATO’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Weapons of Mass Destruction Policy]; Dr. Michael Ruhle, Emerging Security Challenges Division [interviewed when he was Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen]; Dr. Jamie Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges [also interviewed when he was Director of Information and Press]; Mr. Ted Whiteside, Acting and Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy [and also interviewed when he was Secretary of the North Atlantic Council and also when he was Director of the NATO Weapons of Mass Destruction Centre] 7Due to space constraints, details pertaining to delivered speeches and speaking notes that were not published online are not cited here. Many contributions to this perspective could be cited, including for example: Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, “Review of NATO’s Non-Proliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament Policies,” Notes for an Address to the North Atlantic Council Meeting, Florence, Italy, May 24, 2000; Ambassador (ret’d) Douglas Roche “The Middle Powers Initiative,” Memorandum for NGO Consultation, Geneva, 2 May, 1998; “Analysis of NPT Prepcomm III,” May, 1999; “Senator Douglas Roche Reports on the NPT Review Conference,” April 24-May 20, 2000; Doug Roche and Ernie Regehr, “Canada, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons,” paper presented for Pugwash/Science for Peace seminar, March 17, 2001, etc.

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8For some analysis of these various pressures, see dozens of reports and speeches commissioned by various NGOs including, for example, in 1999: Fisher, Cathleen S. “Reformation and Resistance: Nongovernmental Organizations and the Future of Nuclear Weapons.” Henry L. Stimson Center: Report No. 29, May 1999; Robert Green and the Middle Powers Initiative, Fast Track Zero Nuclear Weapons, Cambridge: Middle Powers Initiative, 1999. Speeches tend to be posted online at the embassy’s website: for example, see Igor S. Ivanov, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Russian Federation, “Statement at the NPT Review Conference”, New York, April 25, 2000. For more recent reports, see for example Edmond Seay, “NATO’s Incredible Nuclear Strategy: Why U.S. Weapons in Europe Deter No One,” Arms Control Today, November 2011; Rolf Nikel, “The Future of NATO’s Nuclear Weapons”, Nuclear Policy Paper, No. 9, November 2011 available here at the British American Security Information Council. 9NATO, “Wales Summit Declaration”, para. 50, September 5, 2014 10On NATO’s reaction, see for example: Erika Simpson, “Canada’s NATO commitment: Current controversies, past debates, and future issues,” Behind the Headlines, vol. 57, no. 2/3 (winter/spring 2000), pp. 20-27; Erika Simpson, “Terrorism and the Attack on America,” Address to the Women’s Canadian Club, London, September 13, 2001; “The Consequences of September 11 for Canadian Foreign Policy,” Paper for the Pugwash Annual General Meeting, Ottawa, October 20, 2001; “NATO’s Nuclear Strategy”, Paper for the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association, Regina, June 7, 2002; “Canadian Security Policy Post-9/11”, Address to King’s College, London, February 20, 2002. 11On issues surrounding NATO expansion and Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, see for example, Erika Simpson “The Looming Costs of NATO Expansion in the 21st century.” International Journal, vol. 54, no. 2 (spring 1999), pp. 324-39; “Canada’s Defence Costs will Jump with NATO Expansion.” Peace Research, vol. 30, no. 1 (February 1998), pp. 1-10 and for recent analysis, see U.S. Department of Defense, The Security and Defense Agenda (Future of NATO), As delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Brussels, Belgium, June 10, 2011. 12This issue was rarely discussed until recently. For example, see Erika Simpson, “Russian weapons a world concern,” London Free Press, August 10, 1999 (also in “The greater threat from Russia” Metro Europe, August 10, 1999, p. 6); “Expanding membership of NATO could be Risky.” London Free Press, January 29, 1997; Erika Simpson, Address to “Parliamentarians and NATO” at a conference on “Pugwash, Parliamentarians and Political Will: Advancing the Agenda for Abolition Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament International Conference and Council Meeting” hosted by Middle Powers Initiative and Pugwash Peace Exchange at Thinkers Lodge, Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada July 12, 2008; Nikolai Sokov, “Nuclear Weapons in Russian National Security Strategy” in Stephen J. Blank, ed., Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present and Future U.S. War Army and Strategic Studies Institute, November 2011; and Miles Pomper and Nikolai Sokov, “NATO’s Post-Ukraine Nuclear Policy: The NATO Summit”, The National Interest, September 4, 2014 13For instance, widely-publicized appeals for a nuclear-free world included: General Lee Butler, “A voice of reason,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1998; George P. Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2007 and “Toward a Nuclear-Free World,” The Wall Street Journal., Jan.15, 2008; President Barack Obama., “Remarks of President Barack Obama,” Prague, Czech Republic: White House Press Release, April 5, 2009, available here at Arms Control Association; Helmut Schmidt and Sam Nunn, “Toward a World without Nukes,” The New York Times, April 13, 2012; UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, “The United Nations and Security in a Nuclear-Weapon-Free-World: The Secretary-General’s five point proposal on nuclear disarmament,” January 18, 2013, available at UNODA 14For example, Simpson interviewed and corresponded with many high-level decision-makers on this, including for example Dr. Christopher Ford, then the U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation whom she interviewed at the NATO Seminar on Proliferation Issues, Vilnius, Lithuania, April 18, 2007. For a flavour of his strong views in an open-source document, see Christopher Ford, “Debating disarmament: interpreting Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons”, The Nonproliferation Review, vol. 14, no. 3, 2007, pp. 401-428. 15For example, Oliver Meier and Paul Ingram, “The NATO Summit: Recasting the Debate over U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe,” Arms Control Today, May 2, 2012; Simon Lunn and Ian Kearns, “NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture Review: A Status Report,” ELN NATO Policy Brief, No. 1, February 2012; Ingeborg Breines, Ingeborg. “NATO and Russia in the Baltic Sea Area”, Speech to the International Peace Bureau, Helsinki, September 5, 2015, available here at Pressenza International Press Agency

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16On the 2015 NPT debacle, see Erika Simpson, “Could Iran be just the start?” opinion piece in Post Media News Chain (formerly Sun Media), week of April 19, 2015; “The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT): Chaos or Community?”, unpublished paper presented to the Canadian Peace Research Association (CPRA) conference at the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, June 2, 2015; and “The 2015 NPT Review Conference: An Assessment”, presented before many diplomats including four former Canadian Ambassadors to the UN during previous NPT Review Conferences at the Pugwash Conference on “The way forward to a world free of nuclear weapons”, Pugwash, Nova Scotia, July 10, 2015 17Global Zero NATO-Russia Commission, “Removing U.S. and Russian Tactical Nuclear Weapons from European Combat Bases,” February 2012, available here at Global Zero; Tom Z. Collina, “Congress Fully funds B61 Bomb”, Arms Control Today, March 4, 2014; Reuters, “Russia may put missiles in Kaliningrad if U.S. upgrades nuclear arms in Germany: Interfax” September 23, 2015, available here at Reuters edition 18Erika Simpson, “The Looming Costs of NATO Expansion in the 21st century,” International Journal 54, no. 2, spring 1999, pp. 324-39; Simpson, Erika. “Canada’s Defence Costs will Jump with NATO Expansion.” Journal of Peace Research, 30, no. 1 February 1998, pp. 1-10; Erika Simpson, “NATO enlargement costs on rampage,” Metro Europe, August 2, 1999, p. 6 19Erika Simpson. “Canada and the UN Security Council: New Strategies to Advance International and National Security.” Peace Research, 31, no. 2, (June 1999): 79-99; Common Security Consultants, [Erika Simpson and H. Peter Langille], A 1994 Blueprint for a Canadian and International Peacekeeping Training Centre at CFB Cornwallis, (Halifax: Government of Nova Scotia, 1994), 106 pp., reprinted in Eng./French in Minutes of Proceedings of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Canada's Defence Policy, issue no. 21, June 14, 1994, pp. A1-123; H. Peter Langille and Erika Simpson, "Peaceful Conversion: A Training Centre for Peacekeepers," Ploughshares Monitor, December 1991, pp. 10-12; and Erika Simpson, "Redefining Security." The McNaughton Papers. vol. 1 Toronto: Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991 20Erika Simpson, “Canada’s NATO commitment: Current controversies, past debates, and future issues,” Behind the Headlines, vol. 57, no. 2/3, winter/spring 2000, pp. 20-27 21Interviews with Robert McCrae, Deputy Ambassador, and Mike Elliott, Nuclear and Arms Control Issues, Canadian Delegation to NATO, NATO HQs, Brussels, March 19, 2000 22For example, Simpson spoke at 23 Erika Simpson, “New Ideas and Initiatives”, presentation in Conference Room C, UN, NYC, May 8, 2014 and circulated 33-page paper, Erika Simpson, “The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Process: Important Problems and Strategic Solutions” 24 Furthermore many interviews on state- and individual-level opposition to NATO’s nuclear policy were conducted at the NPT Preparatory Committee meetings in 2009 (NYC), 2012 (Vienna), 2014 (NYC) and during the NPT Review Conferences at UN headquarters in 2005, 2010 and 2015. 25Erika Simpson. “New Ways of Thinking about Nuclear Weapons and Canada’s Defence Policy.” Diefenbaker’s Legacy. eds. D. C. Story and R. Bruce Shepard, Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1998; Erika Simpson. “The Principles of Liberal Internationalism according to Lester Pearson.” Journal of Canadian Studies, 34, no. 1, spring 1999, pp. 64-77. 26For a flavour of early debates, see for example: John Baylis and Robert O’Neill, eds., Alternative Nuclear Futures, Oxford University Press, 1999; Stephen Cimbala, Military Persuasion: Deterrence and Provocation in Crisis and War, Pennsylvania University Press, 1994; Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Psychology and Deterrence, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985; Michael J. Mazarr, ed., Nuclear Weapons in a Transformed World: The Challenge of Virtual Nuclear Arsenals, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. For a sense of recent debates, see Lawrence Wittner, Confronting the bomb: a short history of the nuclear disarmament movement Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003; Hans Blix, Why nuclear disarmament matters, MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 2008; Olav Njolstad, ed., Nuclear proliferation and international order: challenges to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011 27On recent analysis of various multilateral initiatives by NATO member states, see for example, Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova and William Potter, “Coalitions to watch at the 2015 NPT Review Conference,” NTI unpublished paper, February 24, 2015, available here at NTI Newsroom and Nuclear Politics and the Non-Aligned Movement, London: IISS and Routledge), 2012. For an overview of various coalitions of NNWS see Douglas Roche, Beyond Hiroshima, Ottawa: Novalis Publishing, 2005; Ray Acheson, “Beyond the 2010 NPT Review Conference: What’s next for nuclear disarmament?”, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, May 30, 2013; and see the newsletters released during the NPT RevCons and PrepComs, available here at the Reaching Critical Will website.

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28Some examples of prominent authors that focus on systemic-level factors affecting nuclear policy include: Michael Mandelbaum, The Nuclear Revolution: International Politics Before and After Hiroshim, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981; Patrick J. Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen, eds., Nuclear Weapons in a Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America, New York: Plenum Press, 1992; Christopher Chyba, “Time for a Systematic Analysis: U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Proliferation.” Arms Control Today, December 4, 2008. 29A sample of state-level literature from a predominantly Canadian perspective since the end of the Cold War could include Paul Buteux, The Politics of Nuclear Consultation in NATO, 1965-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983; Tom Keating and Larry Pratt, Canada, NATO and the Bomb: The Western Alliance in Crisis, Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1988; Lauren McKinsey and Kim Richard Nossal, America's Alliances and Canadian-American Relations. Toronto: Summerhill Press, 1988; D.W. Middlemiss and J. L. Sokolsky, Canadian Defence: Decisions and Determinants. Toronto: Harcourt Inc., 1989; and Erika Simpson NATO and the Bomb: Canadian Defenders Confront Critics, Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001 30Some individual-level analyses that focus or touch upon NATO’s nuclear policies include: Erika Simpson NATO and the Bomb; Cori Elizabeth Dauber, Cold War Analytical Structures and the Post Post-War World Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1993; Beatrice Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Beliefs in Britain, France and the FRG, London: Macmillan Press, 1998; Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: the ultimate preventable catastrophe, New York: Times Books, 2009 31For more discussion of the merits of blending cross-level approaches, see Erika Simpson, "Redefining Security," The McNaughton Papers, vol. 1, Toronto: Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991, pp. 57-75; on the merits of Simpson’s cross-level approach, see Barry Scott Zellen, On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State, and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty, Lexington books: UK, 2009, pp. 16-17. 32For some classical readings on the advantages of taking a reductionist approach for understanding nuclear issues, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954; J. David Singer, "The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations.” World Politics, vol. 14, special issue 1 (October 1961), pp. 77-92; Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979 33Dan Caldwell and Robert E. Williams Jr, Seeking security in an insecure world (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2016), 6. 34Arnold Wolfers, Discord and collaboration, essays on international politics, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965): 147. See also Arnold Wolfers, ‘National security as an ambiguous symbol’, Political Science Quarterly, 67, no. 4 (December 1952): 481-502. 35For example, see Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining security’, International Security 8, no.1 (1983): 129; Marc A. Levy, ‘Is the environment a national security threat?’ International Security 20, no. 2 (1995): 35-62; Stephen Walt, ‘The renaissance of security studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 35, no. 2 (1991): 211-239; Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining security’, Foreign Affairs, 68, no. 2 (1989): 162-177; Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Matt McDonald, ‘Securitization and the construction of security’, European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (2008): 563-587; Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 36Kenneth Waltz referred to ‘images’, not so much levels in Man, the state and war (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); J. David Singer, ‘The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,’ in, The International System: Theoretical Essays, Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba, eds., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961): 77-92; Jack S. Levy, ‘Contending theories of international conflict: a levels-of-analysis approach’, in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and responses to international conflict, Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson, eds., (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1996): 3-24. 37Mike Bourne, Understanding Security (Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan), 2014 38Ronald H. Linden, ‘The security bind in East Europe’, International Studies Quarterly, 26, no. 2 (1982): 155-189. 39Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and macrobehavior (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1978). 40James Der Derian, ‘The Value of Security’, in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995): 26 41 In this paper, the different stands of realist theory will be treated as one group and labeled as ‘realism’ unless otherwise indicated. The literature on realist theory is extensive, but for a better understanding of classical realism see Edward Hallett Carr, The twenty years’ crisis, 1919-1939: an introduction to the study of international relations, (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Hans Morgenthau, Politics among nations: the struggle for power and peace, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973 [1948]); Kenneth Waltz, Man, the state and war (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Theory of international politics, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979); Stephen

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Walt, Revolution and war (New York: Cornell University Press, 1997); and John Mearsheimer, ‘Structural realism’, in International relations theories: discipline and diversity, eds. Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). For a discussion on how different variants of realism can produce alternative predictions in international relations see, Stephen G. Brooks, ‘Dueling realisms’, International Organization, 51, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 445-477. 42Inis Claude, Power and International Relations (New York, 1952); Hedley Bull, The anarchical society: a study of order in world politics (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1977). 43Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth W. Thompson and Robert John Myers, eds., Truth and Tragedy (New Brunswick 1977); see also James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, International/Intertextual Relations (Lexington, Mass., 1989); R.B.J. Walker ‘Realism, Change and International Relations Theory’, International Studies Quarterly, 31, 1987; David Campbell, ‘Recent Changes in Social Theory: Questions for International Relations’, in New Directions in International Relations? Australian Perspectives Richard Higgott, ed. (Canberra: Department of International Relations, the Australian National University, 1988), no. 23. 44John Mearsheimer, ‘Structural Realism’ International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, eds. Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). For more on Mearsheimer’s concept of security, see ‘Back to the future: instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, 15, no. 1: 5-56; ‘The case for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent’, Foreign Affairs, 72, no. 3: 50-66. 45Oliver Daddow, International relations theory: the essentials (London: Sage, 2013): 129. 46P.M. Brown and Walter Lippman, U.S. foreign policy: shield of the republic (Boston, 1943): 51. 47The Committee on the Present Danger quoted in Robert Scheer, With enough shovels: Reagan, Bush and nuclear war (New York: Random House, 1982): 36-52. 48 Patrick Blacknett quoted in Mark Sommer, Beyond the bomb (New York: Expo Press), 1986: 159-160. 49 John P. Holdren, ‘The Enemy Within’, New Internationalist (March 1983) 50 Robert Jervis, The logic of images in international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970) 51 Urie Bronfenbrenner, ‘The Mirror Image in Soviet-American Relations: A Social Psychologist’s Report’, Journal of Social Issues 17, no. 3 (1961): 45-50 52Anatol Rapoport ‘Whose Security Does Defence Defend?’ at Anatol Rapoport.net available at: http://www.anatolrapoport.net/ 53Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Beyond Waltz’s nuclear world: more trust may be better’, International Relations, 23, no. 3: 428-455. 54John Herz, ‘Idealist internationalism and the security dilemma’, World Politics, 2, no. 2: 157-180, 158; Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London, 1951), 21-22. 55John Herz, Idealism and Realism (location: publisher), year, 158; Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London, 1951), 21-22. For updated interpretations of the security dilemma, see for example Lene Hansen, ‘The Little Mermaid’s silent security dilemma and the absence of gender in the Copenhagen School’, Millennium, 29, no. 2, 2000: 285-306; J. Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics: state identity and the security dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations, 12, no. 3: 341-370; Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The security dilemma: fear, cooperation and trust in world politics, (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 56For example, see Charles Osgood ‘Suggestions for winning the real war with Communism’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, (December 1959): 295; Anatol Rapoport ‘Whose Security Does Defence Defend?’, op. cit.; Eugene Carroll, Jr. ‘A New Concept for Security in the Nuclear Age’ in End the Arms Race: Fund Human Needs, (Vancouver: Proceedings of the Vancouver Centennial Peace and Disarmament Symposium), 1986. On the binary Western discourse which seeks to represent ‘their’ weapons as a threat in contrast to ours, see, H. Gusterson, ‘Nuclear weapons and the Other in the Western imagination’, Cultural Anthropology, 14, no. 1: 111-143. 57United Nations Final Document of the International Conference on the Relationship Between Disarmament and Development, (United Nations: New York, 1987): 3. 58It would be impossible to reference all the cutting-edge literature but some significant contributions from the author’s Canadian perspective include: Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals’, Signs, 12, no. 4: 687-718; Mark Neufeld, ‘Pitfalls of emancipation and discourses of security: reflections on Canada’s ‘security with a human face’’ International Relations, 18, no. 1: 109-23. 59Alan Robock, A. ‘Nuclear winter’, WIREs Climate Change, 1, no. 3, 2010: 418-427 60For example, see Toon, Robock, Turco, et al., ‘Environmental consequences of nuclear war’, Physics today, 61, no. 12: 37-42; 61Sverre Lodgaard, ‘Nuclear disengagement in Europe’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, vol. 17, no. 3-4 (1986); Jack Snyder, ‘Limiting offensive conventional forces’, International Security, vol. 12, no. 4 (Spring 1988): 48; Bent

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Sorenson ‘Security implications of alternative defence options for Western Europe’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 22, no. 3 (1985): 197; Howard Peter Langille, Canada’s defence in a world in transition, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1990 62 Ulrich Albrecht, ‘Alternative designs of European security, the Palme Commission Report and the conventionalization of forces’, Derek Paul (ed.), Defending Europe: Options for Security (London, 1985): 144 63 Dietrich Fischer, ‘Invulnerability without threat: the Swiss concept’, Journal of Peace Research, 19, no. 3 (1982); Johan Galtung, There are Alternatives (Nottingham, 1984); Carolyn Stephenson ‘Alternative methods for international security: a review of the literature’, Peace and Change, (Fall, 1981). 64Erika Simpson, NATO and the bomb, op. cit. 65There is a vast literature beginning in the 1990s so for example, on the security challenges of global environmental change, beginning in the 1990s see for example Norman Myers, ‘Environment and security’, Foreign Policy, 74 (1989): 23-41; Gwyn Prins, ‘Politics and the environment’ International Affairs, 66, no. 4 (1990): 711-30; Thomas Homer-Dixon, Environmental scarcity and violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Cameron Harrington and Emma Lecavalier, ‘The Environment and Emancipation in Critical Security Studies: The Case of the Canadian Arctic’, Critical Studies on Security, 2, no. 1 (2014): 105-19 66On the primacy of the balance of power behavior see, Richard Little, ‘Balance of power’, in Contending Images of World Politics, eds. Greg Fry and Jacinta O’Hagan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Richard Little, The Balance of power in international relations: metaphors, myths and models (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); T.V. Paul, James Wirtz, and Michel Fortman, eds., Balance of power: theory and practice in the 21st century (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 67For instance, see Samuel P. Huntington, ‘Why international primacy matters’, International Security, 17, no. 4 (Spring 1993): 68-83; and William C. Wohlforth, ‘The stability of a unipolar world’, International Security, 24, no. 1 (Summer 1999): 5-41 68Kenneth Waltz offers early interesting takes on the stability of bipolarity and the merits of nuclear proliferation in ‘The stability of a bipolar world’, Daedalus, vol. 93, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 881-909 and Kenneth Waltz, ‘The spread of nuclear weapons: more may be better’, Adelphi Paper, no. 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies), 1981; Kenneth Waltz, ‘Nuclear myths and political realities’, American Political Science Review, 84, no. 3: 731-745. For an argument in favor of multipolarity see, Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer, ‘Multipolar power systems and international stability’, World Politics, vol. 16, no. 3 (April 1964): 390-406. For a general discussion of polarity and stability see, Stephen Van Evera, ‘Primed for peace: Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, vol. 15, no. 3 (Winter 1990-1991): 5-57; and Michael Mastanduno, ‘Preserving the unipolar moment: realist theories and U.S. grand strategy after the Cold War’, International Security, vol. 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 49-88. 69 Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, Maryland, 1989); Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, ‘Rational deterrence theory: I think, therefore I deter’, World Politics, 41, no. 2: 208-224. 70 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, C.B. Macpherson, ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1968): 185-186. 71Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe (London: Constable and Company, 1917): 78-79. 72Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980): 20 73Barry Buzan, People, states and fear (Department of International Studies: University of Warwick, 1983). 74TRIP Faculty Survey in United States (September 9, 2014), available: https://trip.wm.edu/charts/#/bargraph/37/1290; Trip Faculty Survey in Canada, available https://trip.wm.edu/charts/#/bargraph/7/1552 European professional concentrations are sorted by country so see the individual surveys for faculty living in Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, etc. 75Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, states and world orders: beyond international relations theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10 (1981): 128. 76Arnold Wolfers, op. cit., 150. 77Christian Bay, ‘Conceptions of security: individual, national and global’, Political Discourse: Explorations in Indian and Western Political Thought (1987): 129-131 78Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, vol. 8, no. 1 (1983): 129 79 Erika Simpson, NATO and the Bomb, (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001): 1-350 80A. Lupovici, ‘The emerging fourth wave of deterrence theory – toward a new research agenda’, International Studies Quarterly, 54, no. 2: 705-732

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81 Jacques E.C. Hymans, The psychology of nuclear proliferation: identity, emotions, and foreign policy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 10-11. 82Stephen Walt, ‘The renaissance of security studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 35 no. 2 (1991): 212. 83Robert Cox, op cit.: 129. 84Richard H. Ullman, op cit. 129; N. Tannenwald, ‘The nuclear taboo: the United States and the normative basis of nuclear non-use’, International Organization, 53, no. 3: 433-468; N. Tannenwald, ‘Stigmatizing the bomb: origins of the nuclear taboo’, International Security, 29, no. 4: 5-49 85R.B.J. Walker, ‘The subject of security’, in Critical security studies: concepts and cases, eds. Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997): 78. 86 Christian Bay, op cit. 87 Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a psychology of being, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968): 47. 88Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation under the security dilemma’, World Politics, 30, no.2, (January 1978): 174-175 and Perception and misperception in international politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 89For more on the differences between the two models, see Erika Simpson, NATO and the Bomb and Deborah Welch Larson. "Problems of Content Analysis in Foreign-Policy Research: Notes from the Study of the Origins of Cold War Belief Systems.” International Studies Quarterly. Vol, 32, no. 2, June 1988, pp. 241-55; on intersubjectivity, institutionalized structures and non-representational belief structures, soee for example, Samuel J. Barkin Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010; Fred Chernoff, “Áttacking the Scientific Approach: Interpretive Constructivism, Poststructuralism and Critical Theory” in Fred Chernoff, ed., Theory and Metatheory in International Relations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 90David Campbell, Writing Security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity(Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). 91Roland Paris, ‘Human security: paradigm shift or hot air?’ International Security, 26, no.2, Fall 2001: 87-102. 92Owen B. Toon, Alan Robock, Richard P. Turco, Charles Bardeen, Luke Oman and Georgiy L. Stenchikov (2007) ‘Consequences of Regional-Scale Nuclear Conflicts’, Science, 315: 1224-1225 93R.B.J. Walker, ‘The Subject of Security’, Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, eds. Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997): 63. 94Richard J. Barnet ‘Regional security systems’ in, Richard B. Grey, International Security Systems (Illinois: Peacock publishers, Inc., 1969). 95James Lee Ray, ‘Integrating levels of analysis in world politics,’ Journal of Theoretical Politics, 13, no. 4 (2001): 355-388. 96Olaf Palme, Common Security: A Programme for Disarmament (London, 1982). 97Karl Deutsch, Political Community at the International Level (Random House, Inc: New York, 1954). 98Barry Buzan has been at the forefront of thinking through the impact at different levels of analysis of the ramifications of security. See Barry Buzan, People, states and fear (Department of International Studies: University of Warwick, 1983), 115. 99Barry Buzan, People, states and fear, 216. 100Barry Buzan, ‘The “war on terrorism” as the new Macro-Securitization’, Oslo Workshop papers, Oslo, 2006: 1; Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver ‘Macrosecuritization and security constellations: reconsidering scale in securitization theory’, Review of International Studies, 35, no. 2 (2009): 253-276. 101Robert Jervis, ‘Security regimes’, International Organization, 36 no. 2 (Spring 1982): 357; Arthur A. Stein ‘Coordination and collaboration: regime in an anarchic world’, International Organization, 36, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 299; Janice Stein ‘Detection and defection: security regimes and the management of international conflict’, International Journal, 15, no. 4 (Autumn, 1985): 599. 102 Discord and Collaboration, op. cit., 164 and Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, op. cit., 43. 103 Arthur Stein, ‘Coordination and Collaboration …’, op.cit. 104For example, Jonathan Schell, The fate of the earth (New York: Avon Books, 1982). 105Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Long Grove, Il: Waveland Press, reissued 2010 [published 1979]): 68 106 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998): 24; Ole Waeer, ‘Securitization and desecuritization’, On Security, op cit. 107Ole Wæver, ‘Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen: new schools in security theory and their origins between core and periphery’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montréal (March 17-20, 2004): 8.

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108A. Lupovici, ‘The emerging fourth wave of deterrence theory – toward a new research agenda’, International Studies Quarterly, 54, no. 2 (2010): 705-732 109Daniel H. Nexon and Iver B. Neumann, eds., ‘Harry Potter and the study of world politics’, Harry Potter and International Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Lifflefield Publishers, 2006); John Mueller, Atomic obsession: nuclear alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 110Patomäki, Heikki ‘How to tell better stories about world politics’ European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 1 (1996): 105-133. 111R.B. J. Walker ‘State sovereignty and the articulation of political space/time’, Millennium: Journal of Interantional Studies, 20, no. 3: 461, note 9, quoted in Ibid., 115 112Barry Buzan and Richard Little, ‘The idea of “international system”: theory meets history’, International Political Science Review 15, no. 3 (1994): 231-255; Nicholas Onuf, ‘Levels’, European Journal of International Relations, 1, no. 1: 35-58; 113James Lee Ray, ‘Integrating levels of analysis in world politics,’ Journal of Theoretical Politics, op cit.: 356 114Glen Synder, Paul Diesing, Conflict among nations: bargaining, decision making, and system structure in international crises, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015): 3-32. 115Own Temby, ‘What are levels of analysis and what do they contribute to international relations theory?’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 28, no. 4 (2015): 721-742