Atomic Ambiguity: Event Data Evidence on Nuclear Latency and International Cooperation

• Author: Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark,Eleonora Mattiacci,Rupal N. Mehta
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211036926
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 66(2) 272 –296

Atomic Ambiguity:

Event Data Evidence on

Nuclear Latency and

International

Cooperation

Eleonora Mattiacci

1

, Rupal N. Mehta

2

,

and Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark

3

Abstract

How does dual-use technology influence cooperation? This study explores how the

development of nuclear latency (the technological precursors to nuclear weapons)

affects U.S. cooperative overtures toward its possessors. We argue that the

ambiguous nature of nuclear latency creates uncertainty about the intentions of its

possessors and impacts cooperation. Using event data, we find that a state’s pos-

session of overt lab-scale enrichment and reprocessing facilities is significantly

correlated with greater cooperative overtures from the United States toward that

country. These overtures may serve as effective tools to counter nuclear pro-

liferation among these states. Yet, when latent states engage in a concerted effort to

keep their facilities secret, both at the lab and a more advanced “pilot” stage, this

relationship is reversed. These results carry important implications for the impact of

emerging, dual-use technologies on international security broadly.

Keywords

nuclear proliferation, cooperation, international cooperation, nuclear weapons

1

Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

2

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE, USA

3

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Eleonora Mattiacci, Amherst College, Clark House, Amherst, MA 01002, USA.

Email: emattiacci@amherst.edu

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211036926

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Article

Mattiacci et al. 273

Introduction

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) left Iran with nuclear

latency—critical technologies useful for bu ilding nuclear weapons, following a

political decision to do so (Mehta and Whitlark 2016; Whitlark and Mehta

2019). Despite looming concerns over the future of the nuclear deal, Iran joins a

community of states that maintain the capabilities necessary to facilitate either a

civilian energy program or a weapons arsenal. What are the implications of this

capacity for strategic stability? Beyond security outcomes, is it possible for latency

to improve interstate relations, in as much as latency might be leveraged to incen-

tivize states to halt their weapons pursuits? These critical questions remain

unanswered.

This study focuses on one such question and aims to move beyond the literature’s

outsized focus on technology and conflict: how does the acquisition of nuclear

latency influence international cooperation? The possibilit y that latency may be

associated with cooperation is well-grounded in the existing scholarship. There is

substantial literature on the role of technology, such as nuclear weapons, encoura-

ging cooperative or information generating mechanisms between states (for exam-

ple, Glaser 1994; Long 1996). It is similarly possible that latency has cooperative

implications. Given that nuclear latency produces doubt about a state’s intentions—

peaceful civilian application or weapons aspirations—we argue that this ambiguity

may incentivize the United States to seek to cooperate with some, but not all, latent

states.

Nuclear latency is the ability to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium (ENR),

the processes necessary to produce the fissile nuclear material central to a nuclear

weapon’s core. Historically, thirty-one states have been latent at one or more

periods during their nuclear development (Furhmann and Tkach 2015, 444). This

is compared with the thirteen states once or currently armed with nuclear weap-

ons.

1

The existing latency literature, though offering important findings, remains

nascent and incomplete (Sagan 2010; Fuhrmann and Tkach 2015; Mattiacci

and Jones 2016; Mehta and Whitlark 2016, 2017; Volpe 2017; Smith and Spaniel

2018).

Our research advances this scholarship with two contributions. First, while much

of the existing work explores latency’s connections to international conflict, this

study examines latency’s potential relationship to international cooperation. Perhaps

unsurprisingly, the development of the latency scholarship mirrored the weapons

literature in focusing mostly on the conflict related aspects of the phenomenon, such

as interstate disputes, deterrence, and compellence (Furhmann and Tkach 2015;

Mehta and Whitlark 2016, 2017). But this conflict-based focus is likely incomplete.

As our analysis demonstrates, there are both theoretical and historical reasons to

believe that, like weapons, latency may offer its possessors avenues to bargaining,

cooperation, or engagement, beyond or in lieu of pathways to conflict. Second,

analyses to date have relied on large-scale, aggregated, state-level behavi or that

2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)