In forty years, France has become an ardent defender of nuclear non-proliferation, less out of pacifism than through tactical choice. In international competition, this position is also a way of contesting American hegemony.
The question of nuclear non-proliferation occupies a preponderant place in international political agendas: evidenced by its regular appearances in the speeches of heads of state, on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, or on one of the international press. In the name of global security, transfers of knowledge and nuclear technologies are subject to regulations, violation of which can lead to economic or even military sanctions.
Unlike most works on this theme, Florent Pouponneau’s work is neither interested in the consequences of the dissemination of nuclear weapons, nor in the motivations of so-called proliferating States, but in the transatlantic relationship which links Paris to Washington and , with it, to the concrete modalities of international political competition. According to him, the question of regulating military nuclear power constitutes only one of the manifestations of larger mechanisms, a “game within a game” (p. 80).
Coming from a thesis in political science, the work engages in a subtle reflection on the way in which political and bureaucratic processes, national and international, are articulated in the production of a foreign policy. This approach is informed by a solid empirical investigation into the French policy of non-dissemination of nuclear weapons.
What the international context does to diplomatic practices
The objective is to explain how France gradually renounced, from 1974, an export policy characterized by the sale of nuclear installations and materials abroad, in favor of a policy of promoting the norm of nuclear non-proliferation. What is happening within a state apparatus for it to place a long-criticized norm at the center of its diplomatic action? To resolve this enigma, the author tackles the thorny question of the causal relationships which link transformations of the international context to diplomatic practices. The debate is old and opposes theorists who explain foreign policy based on competitive bureaucratic logics internal to States and those who consider them as the product of the structure (multi-, bi- or unipolar) of the international system. The strength of this work lies in its ability to shed light on the way in which these two dimensions work together in diplomatic spaces.
The author offers a critical reading of the work of Graham Allison and Kenneth Waltz, which he brings into dialogue with classic authors of political sociology (chapter 1). From this discussion, he develops a theoretical framework designed to think about the entanglement of the national and the international. The bias is to observe the effects of transformations in the international system in the ways in which actors operate, rather than just in the distribution of resources.
The author bases his demonstration on a historical comparison between two periods, which correspond to two stages of French foreign nuclear policy. The first period (1974 to 1981) refers to the implementation, limited and ambivalent, of more restrictive controls on nuclear exports. The second period (2002-2009) is that of a policy now favorable in law and in practice to the control of nuclear exports, which led Paris to show itself in the face of Iran in 2007 more intractable than the United States, the original promoters. of this standard. This division aims to “isolate” two specific moments of public non-dissemination policy which correspond to two states of the international context.
The French challenge to American power
Behind the refusal of the non-proliferation norm as well as its promotion, the author recognizes two different forms of the same practice of contestation or rebalancing (balancing) of American power (p. 51). Beyond the security issues associated with it, non-proliferation is an opportunity to “score points”, to bargain for support or to differentiate oneself vis-à-vis Washington. The author proposes to explain the regularities and variations of these diplomatic practices (described in chapter 2) through two axes which he neither opposes nor hierarchizes: the transformations of the internal conditions of development of French foreign policy ( chapter 3) and the effects of the international context (ie the dissolution of the Soviet Union) on the calculations, practices of diplomatic actors and the result of their action (chapters 4 and 5). The methodological interest of the work lies in its capacity to associate transformations in diplomatic practices with developments in national and international social spaces.
The analysis thus shows how international dynamics owe their propagation in local social spaces to multiple micro-logics specific to national bureaucratic and political games (p. 229). To illustrate this, F. Pouponneau traces the transformation of collusions within the state apparatus and the progressive institutionalization of non-proliferation as a new type of nuclear expertise. It depicts, for example, the competitive bureaucratic games which led in the 1970s to a reconfiguration of the division of labor between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) to the detriment of the latter’s autonomy in matters of nuclear export (p. 98). In the context of these struggles, the norm of non-proliferation appears as a resource for diplomats, and provides them with the opportunity to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
The author is interested in the transformations of the international system induced by the dissolution ofUSSRand tracks their effects on the calculations and practices of the actors. From a detailed observation of behavior, it demonstrates that the same non-proliferation norm can be used differently depending on the games and the local actors who mobilize it. The author therefore establishes three elements. First, actors can conform to an international norm without believing in it, ie in a tactical mode (p. 58). The officials of CEA are caught in the game of the non-proliferation norm without having decided or anticipated it. Called in 1991 to evaluate the nuclear activities discovered in Iraq, they gradually identified the institutional interests they may have in supporting this norm. Then, the strategies, alliances and competitions observed around a standard form configurations that go beyond the borders of national bureaucratic apparatuses (p. 102). Finally, the importation of law and American foreign policy does not necessarily mean submission – even unconscious – to this doxa which can be used to resist the dominant (p. 143). The representations, the resources of the actors, but also the bureaucratic routines, the alliances and the struggles are worked by international dynamics; this work, however, involves multiple and contrasting logics of appropriation. The contingency of these local games nevertheless remains subject to limits against which the “best player can do nothing” (p. 229).
An international division of diplomatic labor
The author draws on the study of French diplomatic maneuvers vis-à-vis Iran from 2003 to 2009 to amend the conception, considered too mechanical, of international social change developed by Kenneth Waltz. The investigation is thus put at the service of a more daring reflection on the definition of the contemporary international political system (unipolar/multipolar) and the way in which it structures foreign policies.
For French leaders, the Iranian issue is an opportunity to “count” in the regulation of international affairs. The actions undertaken to increase France’s influence, however, lead to the reproduction of power inequalities in favor of the United States and demonstrate the limits imposed on the actors’ actions (p. 193). In 2007 for example, despite French efforts to strengthen sanctions against Iran and to move closer to Washington, transatlantic cooperation remained limited. Like Kenneth Waltz, F. Pouponneau associates the observable gaps between the diplomatic actions adopted and their results with the alterations produced, like a distorting screen, by the international system. The author thus demonstrates that the transatlantic relationship, and more generally international alliances, are “structurally delimited” (p. 184), in other words subject to constraints which “shape the policy and those who claim to produce it” (p. 25 ). The roles (of protester or follower) that France plays in the regulation of international affairs are linked to differences in position within the international system, rather than solely to the decisions of leaders.
Waltz defines these positions based on the unequal distribution of resources between functionally similar units of the international system. This approach, which amounts to counting the number of great powers, poses certain problems. It in fact presupposes a mechanical regulation of power balances whose empirical demonstration seems impossible. The author amends Waltz’s definition based on the notion of “unequal distribution of political responsibilities” (p. 182). The idea is as follows: the inequality of resources produces a differentiation of tasks between States which allows only some to carry out political activities. The author thus replaces the Waltzian hypothesis of an anarchy of the international system with that of the “international division of political labor” (p. 183). However, it moves away from a harmonious conception of the division of labor and the idea of cooperation between great powers in the management of global problems. This functional differentiation is on the contrary a source of clashes, including between great powers.
The work therefore offers a stimulating modeling of the international space, capable of taking seriously both the institutional existence of state apparatuses and the plurality of sectoral logics that run through them. This research strategy makes it possible to observe the (ambiguous) effects that international socialization produces on these differentiated spaces. However, the richness of the demonstrations offered sometimes gives rise to some frustrations.
Thus, the author’s proposal to follow the processes of division of labor inside and outside the state apparatus gives rise to unbalanced developments (p. 50). External processes are only the subject of short tables on the practices and effects of multilateral arenas. Finally, if conflicts transversal to state apparatuses are at the heart of the hypothesis, the practices of protest revealed are the subject of descriptions whose ambiguity is sometimes embarrassing. We are thus first shown that the effects specific to multilateral arenas can force the actors of a State to adopt contestation practices independently of their intentions (p. 222). Further on, the author insists on a “structural effect” which this time intervenes by sanctioning “disadjusted” protest practices (p. 190), thus participating in the reproduction of mechanisms of domination (p. 193). If these propositions are not incompatible, the explanation of their links and their respective weight would have been desirable.