Benoit Pelopidas

French nuclear idiosyncrasy: how it affects French nuclear policies towards the United Arab Emirates and Iran

This article elaborates the notion of ‘nuclear idiosyncrasy’ as a specific understanding of what nuclear weapons and energy are, what they stand for and what they can do. It then assesses the persistence of nuclear idiosyncrasy over time and its effects on French nuclear policies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran. Based on interviews in France, Geneva and the UAE, this article contributes to three debates within foreign policy analysis and nuclear history. Is a regional approach necessary to understand the framing of foreign policies in the twenty-first century? Does a change in leadership fundamentally affect the orientations of nuclear policies? Are the risks of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and the measures to prevent it similarly understood by all the players in the international community? First, it shows that French nuclear policies in the Middle East are not shaped by dynamics specific to the region as the often invoked notion of an ‘Arab policy of France’ would suggest. Secondly, in-depth analysis leads one to reject the idea of a major change between the nuclear policies of Presidents Chirac and Sarkozy. Thirdly, persistent French nuclear idiosyncrasy leads also to rejection of the idea of convergence towards a shared understanding of the proliferation threat in the Middle East.

When Empire Meets Nationalism : Power Politics in the US and Russia

Contents: Introduction Part I The Apostles of the Empire: Intellectual Genealogies: Neoconservatives, old and new From Eurasianism to neo-Eurasianism, nostalgia for the Empire. Part II Imperial Calling and Nationalism: Anatomy of the Empire: imperial nationalism? American history through the neoconservative looking glass: imperial calling derived from nationalism The Empire, neo-Eurasianists and Russian nationalism. Part III Geopolitics of Imperial Invocations: Between Cynicism, Ideology and Incoherence: Islam Turkey and central Asia The Middle East Conclusion: the impossible Empire of ressentiment Afterword: changing people, continuing patterns? Selective and thematic bibliography: Index.

CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda, by John Mueller. Oxford University Press, 2009. 336 pages,

UK Nuclear Interests: Security, Resilience and Trident

27.95. Les armes nucléaires: Mythes et réalités [Nuclear Weapons: Myths and Realities], by Georges Le Guelte. Actes Sud, 2009. 390 pages, €25.

Over the Horizon Proliferation Threats

Over the last eight years, discussions about the UK’s national interest have set the goal of building a ‘resilient nation’ (Omand 2005). The idea of ‘resilience’ has, or seems to have, superseded ‘security’ as a primary way of defining the UK’s national interest. Resilience was thus at the heart of the Conservative Party platform in 2010 (‘A Resilient Nation’) and remained at the core of the two key strategic documents published in 2010: the National Security Strategy (Cabinet Office 2010a) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (Cabinet Office 2010b). In each, resilience appears as one of the two overarching goals that the UK has set as its national interest. In their foreword to the National Security Strategy, David Cameron and Nick Clegg thus state: ‘at home, we must become more resilient both to external threats and to natural disasters’ (Cabinet Office 2010a, p. 4).

Nuclear Weapons Scholarship as a Case of Self-Censorship in Security Studies

Forecasting nuclear proliferation remains high on the international policy and intelligence agenda. So, less than two years after the publication of a two-volume study edited by William Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, the Security Studies Series at Stanford University Press has published another edited volume focusing on future proliferation threats. The structure of this volume is fundamentally different from the one employed by Potter and Mukhatzhanova. It is more directly policy-oriented than rigorously theory-driven. Lavoy and Wirtz’s volume also is broader in scope – it includes chemical and biological proliferation threats. The first part of the book presents a set of detailed case studies. These encompass both countries that often receive attention in the literature, such as Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, South Africa, Taı̈wan and Japan, and several that were absent from the previous volume or have received insufficient attention to date: Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma. The second part of the book is dedicated to policy tools and opportunities for ‘fostering nonproliferation’. This new study confirms the finding of the previous one: a cascade of nuclear proliferation is highly unlikely. This finding is worth repeating, given that the idea of a proliferation cascade persists in policy circles and in discussions even though it is rarely supported by empirical analysis. The key finding relevant to the cascademyth is that, by 2020, the world will likely count only one more nuclear-weapon state – Saudi Arabia. Of course, this is not inevitable, but the decreasing influence of the US in the region and the acquisition of a nuclear-weapon capability by Iran might lead the Saudis to develop their own capability. Riyadh’s current lack of nuclear infrastructure would not be a strong obstacle given the wealth of the Kingdom and the availability of sellers of nuclear technology. Venezuela also raises suspicion, but the author of this chapter, Etel Solingen, remains cautious due to Chavez’s illness. She expected the 2012 presidential elections to lead to a sweeping change in the domestic political calculus of future rulers. That Chavez’s victory happened after the publication of Lavoy and Wirtz’s volume only increases the incentive to focus on