9
underscore the value of these regimes and norms with respect to persuading states to act
in an ‘accepted’ nuclear fashion
18
. States that do not adhere to the accepted international
nuclear principles or that remain ambiguous with respect to their nuclear capabilities may
regress into an undesirable camp of ‘rogue’ states, subject to political and economic
sanctioning. The three states under examination in this paper did indeed become
signatories to NPT as non-nuclear members in the early 1990s. However, the causal link
between norms and international regimes, on the one hand, and state behavior, on the
other, is unconvincing at best in the post-Soviet cases. As T.V. Paul has pointed out, “a
critical question for regime theorists is at what stage in national decision-making on
nuclear weapons a regime becomes the crucial determining factor”
19
. As the ensuing case
studies will demonstrate, all three of the post-Soviet countries exhibited strong
aspirations to become nuclear-free prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This anti-
nuclear consensus preceded and was independent of the NPT regime or norms of nuclear
taboo. This is not to suggest that international norms and regimes played absolutely no
role in the post-Soviet denuclearization process. Indeed, the fear of being classified as
‘rogue’ and equated with such states as Iraq, for example, did play a limited role in the
decisions to denuclearize. However, norms and regimes do not appear to have played a
dominant causal role in the post-Soviet nuclear reversal. There is thus a need for an
alternative explanatory framework of state behavior with respect to nuclear reversal.
18
An important subset of arguments with respect to international regimes from NPT focuses on the so-
called ‘nuclear taboo’ – see, for example, Tannenwald (1999)
Convention