The Foreign Policy Essay: Moral Values and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons
Editor’s Note: The latest reporting suggests the United States and Iran are inching closer to a deal on their nuclear program, but will they succeed and will it stick? The answer to this question depends in part on why Iran and other states seek nuclear weapons. Thomas E. Doyle, II, a professor at Texas State University, draws on his new book to argue that moral values—a quest for prestige, influence, and respect—drive states more often than is recognized and that these motivations must be understood for any nonproliferation deal to succeed.
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Published by The Lawfare Institute
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Editor’s Note: The latest reporting suggests the United States and Iran are inching closer to a deal on their nuclear program, but will they succeed and will it stick? The answer to this question depends in part on why Iran and other states seek nuclear weapons. Thomas E. Doyle, II, a professor at Texas State University, draws on his new book to argue that moral values—a quest for prestige, influence, and respect—drive states more often than is recognized and that these motivations must be understood for any nonproliferation deal to succeed.
First, it is evident that moral values play a significant role in the public statements and policy justifications of states that have acquired nuclear weapons. Second, it is also evident that officials use such statements and justifications to convince their domestic and foreign audiences, and especially their critics, that their nuclear decisions were “necessary” rather than the result of a difficult choice among competing moral and political values of relatively equal force.
When the French acquired nuclear weapons in 1960, Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France and other officials unsurprisingly used the term “national security” as a justification. However, their other statements frame “security” more in terms of national “grandeur” in the context of past or prospective national humiliations. One official said that the French nuclear weapons program was about “…the metaphysical survival of France ... and that moral, political, and historical annihilation would be seen as worse than only the physical destruction. France must be prepared to risk the latter to save her honor, save her identity.”[i] In this statement, the moral value underwriting the term “security” is the very identity of being French in a world where France mattered less to the workings of international politics. Mere territorial integrity is insufficient. It is the validation of French grandeur and the continuation of that legacy that matters, even if territorial integrity itself must be put at risk.
In the case of India, the 1998 acquisition of nuclear weapons was only “tangentially about security.” Instead, the nuclear weapons’ “significance is emotional [and] the target is not China and Pakistan. It is the soul of India.”[ii] The significance was precisely in the idea that now India “counted” in the region and the world. Clearly, Indian “grandeur” counts as a driver of New Delhi’s decision to nuclearize.
If we compare these two countries, we see that the French and Indian justificatory statements are united on the point of a moral imperative to secure national identity, and specifically to overcome the national humiliations each had experienced in the past. Moreover, their need to prevent future national humiliation can often lead to an emphasis on the moral principles of justice and fairness within international treaty regimes. Of particular concern are the humiliating inequalities which attend the distinction between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” in the NPT regime.
The French and Indian cases are enlightening when it comes to understanding the Iranian government’s nuclear ambitions. Like France and India, Iran’s motivations for having a robust nuclear fuel cycle are linked significantly, but not solely, with a notion of “Persian grandeur.” It is important to remember that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s first nuclear decision was to order a halt to the former Shah’s nuclear program and declare nuclear weapons inconsistent with Islamic moral values. It was only after the Iraqi use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops during the 1980-88 war, and the subsequent refusal of the United States to allow the Iranian complaint over that use of weapons of mass destruction to reach the UN Security Council, that Iranian leaders reconsidered their stance on nuclear weapons.[iii] Even so, the most important drivers of Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions have been social coherence, national identity, and prestige.[iv]
My attention to these three instances of morally-driven nuclear weapons pursuits is not meant to take away from those pursuits which have a more prominent “strategic” objective—such as the 1998 Pakistani nuclear tests [v] or the reality that many states have multiple, complex motives for pursuing, or not pursuing, nuclear weapons.[vi] Rather, it is meant primarily to highlight that which has not yet been adequately appreciated: that state officials publicly justify their nuclear choices in order to address a background conflict of political values which cannot easily be divorced from moral values. In short, moral and strategic reasons are active in many nuclear pursuits.
Iranian leaders understand their legal commitments under the NPT, which forbid them from having a nuclear weapons program. They also believe that avoiding future national humiliation is a prime directive with moral import. The value of being Iranian, of being Shi’a, in a region surrounded by Sunni and Arab hostility—not to mention the hostility expressed by Israeli officials and many in the United States—has significant moral content. Moreover, Iranian leaders are quite sensitive to the humiliating inequality at the nonproliferation regime’s insistence of remaining non-nuclear armed while Israel’s opaque nuclear arsenal is tolerated. Indeed, these moral values are existential values, and like France’s preference for metaphysical survival over mere territorial integrity, this helps explain why Iran is willing to risk so much by refusing to appear to be obsequious in the face of Western nonproliferation demands.
The upshot for the Iranian nuclear negotiations, as I see it, is that Iran will not (and should not) be convinced to willingly or peaceably abandon their nuclear program unless the United States and the other negotiating partners offer reliable proposals that effectively address Iran’s moral and strategic concerns. Admittedly, such proposals are not easy to cobble together, nor are they easy to advance without producing major disputes domestically and within the P5+1 group of states.
That said, one might initially think that negative security assurances (i.e., promises not to invade or attack Iran) along with some package of economic incentives might be sufficient to get willing Iranian compliance on nuclear abandonment. I am not so sure. Such measures do not clearly address the questions of Iranian identity, the moral imperative of avoiding national humiliation, and questions of fairness of status and treatment in the NPT regime, which the Iranians have often emphasized. An Iranian bomb program is likely to continue to be a living option if its enemies continue to demonize the clerical leadership or Iranian Shi’ism, continue to demand from Iran near-perfect compliance with the nonproliferation requirements of the NPT while excusing the P5’s avoidance of the NPT’s disarmament requirements, or continue to exert strong nonproliferation pressures while simultaneously putting no visible pressure on Israel to declare its nuclear arsenal or disarm itself. Alternately, willing and peaceable Iranian nuclear rollback is much more likely once Iran’s character and identity are not securitized and once the multiple sets of nuclear double standards are replaced by the norm of equality among sovereigns.
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Forty-five years after the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force, and 20 years after it was renewed indefinitely by its states-parties, the United States and many of its allies remain intensely concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons to states like Iran. Conventional academic wisdom holds that the drivers of nuclear weapons pursuit are almost entirely based in the amoral search for security as defined by power. And even if international norms play a role in nuclear ambitions, those norms are anchored in politics rather than morality. These views seem to me to be mistaken.
First, it is evident that moral values play a significant role in the public statements and policy justifications of states that have acquired nuclear weapons. Second, it is also evident that officials use such statements and justifications to convince their domestic and foreign audiences, and especially their critics, that their nuclear decisions were “necessary” rather than the result of a difficult choice among competing moral and political values of relatively equal force.
When the French acquired nuclear weapons in 1960, Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France and other officials unsurprisingly used the term “national security” as a justification. However, their other statements frame “security” more in terms of national “grandeur” in the context of past or prospective national humiliations. One official said that the French nuclear weapons program was about “…the metaphysical survival of France ... and that moral, political, and historical annihilation would be seen as worse than only the physical destruction. France must be prepared to risk the latter to save her honor, save her identity.”[i] In this statement, the moral value underwriting the term “security” is the very identity of being French in a world where France mattered less to the workings of international politics. Mere territorial integrity is insufficient. It is the validation of French grandeur and the continuation of that legacy that matters, even if territorial integrity itself must be put at risk.
In the case of India, the 1998 acquisition of nuclear weapons was only “tangentially about security.” Instead, the nuclear weapons’ “significance is emotional [and] the target is not China and Pakistan. It is the soul of India.”[ii] The significance was precisely in the idea that now India “counted” in the region and the world. Clearly, Indian “grandeur” counts as a driver of New Delhi’s decision to nuclearize.
If we compare these two countries, we see that the French and Indian justificatory statements are united on the point of a moral imperative to secure national identity, and specifically to overcome the national humiliations each had experienced in the past. Moreover, their need to prevent future national humiliation can often lead to an emphasis on the moral principles of justice and fairness within international treaty regimes. Of particular concern are the humiliating inequalities which attend the distinction between nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” in the NPT regime.
The French and Indian cases are enlightening when it comes to understanding the Iranian government’s nuclear ambitions. Like France and India, Iran’s motivations for having a robust nuclear fuel cycle are linked significantly, but not solely, with a notion of “Persian grandeur.” It is important to remember that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s first nuclear decision was to order a halt to the former Shah’s nuclear program and declare nuclear weapons inconsistent with Islamic moral values. It was only after the Iraqi use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops during the 1980-88 war, and the subsequent refusal of the United States to allow the Iranian complaint over that use of weapons of mass destruction to reach the UN Security Council, that Iranian leaders reconsidered their stance on nuclear weapons.[iii] Even so, the most important drivers of Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions have been social coherence, national identity, and prestige.[iv]
My attention to these three instances of morally-driven nuclear weapons pursuits is not meant to take away from those pursuits which have a more prominent “strategic” objective—such as the 1998 Pakistani nuclear tests [v] or the reality that many states have multiple, complex motives for pursuing, or not pursuing, nuclear weapons.[vi] Rather, it is meant primarily to highlight that which has not yet been adequately appreciated: that state officials publicly justify their nuclear choices in order to address a background conflict of political values which cannot easily be divorced from moral values. In short, moral and strategic reasons are active in many nuclear pursuits.
Iranian leaders understand their legal commitments under the NPT, which forbid them from having a nuclear weapons program. They also believe that avoiding future national humiliation is a prime directive with moral import. The value of being Iranian, of being Shi’a, in a region surrounded by Sunni and Arab hostility—not to mention the hostility expressed by Israeli officials and many in the United States—has significant moral content. Moreover, Iranian leaders are quite sensitive to the humiliating inequality at the nonproliferation regime’s insistence of remaining non-nuclear armed while Israel’s opaque nuclear arsenal is tolerated. Indeed, these moral values are existential values, and like France’s preference for metaphysical survival over mere territorial integrity, this helps explain why Iran is willing to risk so much by refusing to appear to be obsequious in the face of Western nonproliferation demands.
The upshot for the Iranian nuclear negotiations, as I see it, is that Iran will not (and should not) be convinced to willingly or peaceably abandon their nuclear program unless the United States and the other negotiating partners offer reliable proposals that effectively address Iran’s moral and strategic concerns. Admittedly, such proposals are not easy to cobble together, nor are they easy to advance without producing major disputes domestically and within the P5+1 group of states.
That said, one might initially think that negative security assurances (i.e., promises not to invade or attack Iran) along with some package of economic incentives might be sufficient to get willing Iranian compliance on nuclear abandonment. I am not so sure. Such measures do not clearly address the questions of Iranian identity, the moral imperative of avoiding national humiliation, and questions of fairness of status and treatment in the NPT regime, which the Iranians have often emphasized. An Iranian bomb program is likely to continue to be a living option if its enemies continue to demonize the clerical leadership or Iranian Shi’ism, continue to demand from Iran near-perfect compliance with the nonproliferation requirements of the NPT while excusing the P5’s avoidance of the NPT’s disarmament requirements, or continue to exert strong nonproliferation pressures while simultaneously putting no visible pressure on Israel to declare its nuclear arsenal or disarm itself. Alternately, willing and peaceable Iranian nuclear rollback is much more likely once Iran’s character and identity are not securitized and once the multiple sets of nuclear double standards are replaced by the norm of equality among sovereigns.
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Thomas E. Doyle, II is assistant professor of political science at Texas State University. His new book, from which this piece is drawn, is The Ethics of Nuclear Weapons Dissemination: Moral Dilemmas of Aspiration, Avoidance, and Prevention (Routledge, 2015). [i] Beatrice Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Beliefs in Britain, France, and the FRG, New York: MacMillan Press, 1998, p. 97. [ii] Katherine K. Young, “Hinduism and the Ethics of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Chap. 15 in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by Sohail Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, pp. 277-307, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 281. [iii] Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 165-66. [iv] Ibid., p. 181. [v] See chapter 3 of Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. [vi] See Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), 54-86.