Regime-making and the Limits of Consensus

Nuclear export policy does not spring untainted from theoretical analyses of the nature of the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation. Such evaluations are certainly a part of the multiplicity of factors lying behind the formulation of policy, but, in this field perhaps more than in others, analyses can also be self-serving and the criteria of political acceptability of technical arguments may shift according to circumstance, interest, opportunity and the real or anticipated actions of others. Yet on the other hand, this is also a policy area in which states have periodically been tempted to launch crusading endeavours in the name of peace and to accept, indeed, substantial costs in terms of lost commercial deals and the erosion of diplomatic capital in order to do so. Given competition between national nuclear industries, the prospects of growing overseas sales laced occasionally with multi-billion dollar contracts, uncertainties and declines in the domestic nuclear power programmes of western countries generally, the high political character of many of the issues involved and the consequent minimal authority of international agencies, the identification of national programmes with national prestige and of certain parts of the nuclear fuel cycle with national survival — given these and other factors, supplier consensus becomes not so much an elusive ideal as an analytical conundrum: puzzling when it happens and, for some on the receiving end of nuclear supply decisions, perturbing.