CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Budjeryn, Mariana |
|---|---|
| Title | The Power of the NPT: International Norms and Nuclear Disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, 1990-1994 |
| Summary | There is a lingering disagreement among scholars on how the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) affects nonproliferation and disarmament outcomes. Drawing on constructivist scholarship this dissertation locates the nonproliferation discourses at the cusp of domestic and international political spheres, and examines the role of the NPT in the cases of nuclear disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, these newly independent states inherited parts of world’s largest nuclear arsenal and were met with the expectation of the international community to disarm and join the NPT as non-nuclear-weapons states. The three states proceeded along very different paths toward fulfilling these expectations. Engaging the previously untapped archival sources, this dissertation reconstructs the nuclear discourses in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine and argues that, while much of decision-making about the fate of their nuclear inheritance was embedded in the negotiation of their new identity as a sovereigns state vis-à-vis Russia and the West, the NPT affected their denuclearization through a range of normative mechanisms by guarding a separate normative space for nuclear possession, allocating the burden of proof, providing the normative grammar of denuclearization, and legitimizing the pressure exerted by their interlocutors to conform with the nonproliferation regime. |
| Supervisor | Astrov, Alexander |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/budjeryn_mariana.pdf |
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