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proliferation. States are driven by very different sets of considerations and calculations
when they acquire and relinquish nuclear weapons. Take, for instance, the matter of
prestige in an international arena as a motivating factor behind a state’s nuclear behavior.
Conventional realist and neo-realist explanations of nuclear proliferation contend that
nuclear weapons enhance and bolster a state’s prestige as they augment a state’s military
capability. Consequently, the desire to gain more prestige on the international arena
would theoretically motivate states to acquire nuclear technology. However,
considerations of prestige work in reverse as well. As the post-Soviet cases and the case
of South Africa have demonstrated, retention of nuclear weapons would have damaged
the states’ prestige in the international arena and could have earned them a classification
of rogue states whose actions were not to be trusted and whose incorporation into the
world political and economic community could be prevented. Prestige as an explanation
thus works both ways. What this suggests is that proliferation and denuclearization
should not be treated as mirror images of the same phenomenon. Rather, international
relations scholars need to identify and develop new sets of conceptualizations and
theories dealing with nuclear reversal. The case studies presented in this paper are a step
in that direction.
The second theoretical implication that pertains directly to the explanatory model
proposed by this paper is that an anti-nuclear consensus in a country (particularly at the
leadership level) is a necessary and sufficient condition for the initiation of the nuclear
reversal process. The case studies have demonstrated that such consensus existed in the
former Soviet states and was present at the leadership level in South Africa. However,
once the process of denuclearization had begun, the nature of a state’s relationship with a
Convention