Suspended in 2025/26
IR372      Half Unit
Nuclear Non-proliferation and World Politics (Special Topics in International Relations)

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course will apply theories of international relations to explain why some states have pursued nuclear weapons whereas most others have abstained. What is the role of the nonproliferation regime, major powers, international norms, democracy, and globalization on decisions to acquire or renounce nuclear weapons? How do international institutions, major powers and other states respond to violations of international legal commitments not to develop nuclear weapons? What is the relative effectiveness of sanctions and positive inducements in persuading states to abandon nuclear weapons programs? Countries under focus will be North Korea, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Iraq, Libya, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Egypt, among others. There will be simulations of negotiations geared to dissuade actual or potential nuclear proliferators from pursuing such designs.

9 hours of lectures and 14 hours of classes in the Winter Term.

1 x Essay (1,500 words) and 1 x Essay Plan (1 page) in the Winter Term. 

Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2007)

William Potter and G. Mukhatzhanova, “Divining Nuclear Intentions” International Security 33, 1 (2008)

Nicholas L. Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions,” International Organization  68, No. 4 (2014): 913-944.

Nicholas L. Miller, “Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?” Security Studies 23, No. 1 (2014): 33-73.

Nina Tannenwald, The Vanishing Nuclear Taboo? Foreign Affairs November/December 2018.

Etel Solingen (ed.), Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Essay (100%, 3000 words)