Canadian Nuclear Weapons Program And The Current Policy Behind The Nuclear Program

Two main theorists of international relations, Kenneth Waltz and Scott Sagan have been debating on the issue of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. In their book The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, they both discuss their various theories, assumptions and beliefs on nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons. To examine why states would want to attain/develop a nuclear weapon and if increasing nuclear states is a good or bad thing. In my paper, I will discuss both of their theories and use a case study to illustrate which theory I agree with and then come up with possible solutions of preventing a nuclear war from occurring.

When one thinks of Canada, he/she is most likely to stereotypically comment on a subject regarding hockey, beavers, maple syrup, and cold weather. However, not many stop and wonder about how Canada became the peaceful nation it is today. Throughout Canada’s relatively short and brief history, it has managed to flourish into a strong and powerful nation. Canada’s peaceful identity has been formed with meaningful historic events that have occurred throughout our history.It’s identity has been characterized by Lester B. Pearson's role during the suez canal, their involvement in the Vietnam war, and its engagement in peacekeeping missions around the world.

When assessing the global strategic environment, the major changes between 1971 and now is the types of perceived threats to national and international security. In 1971, when the White Paper on Defence was released, the world was dominated by the United States and the USSR, and there was a consensus that the major threat Canada feared the most was a nuclear war

Given the progress of globalization, international security has become an entailment that all countries must work on in order to guarantee the perennity of world peace. However, this quietude is threatened by the growing menace of nuclear proliferation. Canada, as a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since 1969, leads anti-proliferation campaigns to ensure global disarmament.

Heavily influenced by foreign affairs, even as Canada grew more distinguished in their own independence, international conflicts continued to be a leading factor in shaping Canada’s identity as a country. Canada’s various stances when it comes to the Suez Canal, and First and Second Iraq wars, are excellent examples of the progress Canada has made within their foreign policy, as they’ve developed as a country over time. Advancing further away from blindly following connected powers like Britain and the United States, Canada finds its ways to show its uniqueness in the face of these conflicts.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC, was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. Prompted from a need to regulate the uses of nuclear material in private and commercial applications after World War II, the United State government developed the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946. The law established in 1946 created a monopoly, through the United States government, on nuclear research and development into military aspects of nuclear energy. By 1954, Congress passed a new Atomic Energy Act that would change the focus of research and development from military uses to energy production and commercial applications. The AEC wanted to push the commercial energy production so that the United States would stay ahead in the scientific

As the 20th century comes to an end, Canada is a transcontinental nation whose interests and representatives span the face of the globe and extend into every sphere of human behaviour. However this was not always the case. When the four colonies of British North America united to create Canada on July 1, 1867, the new country's future was by no means secure. Canada was a small country, with unsettled borders, vast empty spaces, and a large powerful neighbour, the United States. Confronting these challenges was difficult for the young country. Though Canada was independent in domestic matters, Britain retained control over its foreign policy. Over the next fifty or so years, Canada's leaders and its

Blackwell acknowledges the debate between the credibility of nuclear deterrence and argues the change in the logic of deterrence in current situations from the one in the Cold War. He provides data that explains the trend of the reduction of US nuclear weapons, which is , he argues, continually changing the circumstances in nuclear deterrence.

In today’s world, the way a nation reigns superior above all other nations can be traced back to their nuclear stockpile. The possession of nuclear arms has become a notable problem amongst global powers and small, undeveloped nations because of the potential arms race that could ignite, raising significant concern in national security. Furthermore, countless arguments have been made by researchers suggesting that the injection and possession of nuclear weapons has had a beneficial impact on the nature of society because it keeps nations from challenging one another. One of these arguments being the Nuclear deterrence theory which “constitutes a potent argument in favor of maintaining existing nuclear arsenals (that is, deterrence contributing

Carl Sagan very memorably likened the nuclear arms race to “two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline – one with three matches, the other with five.” This scenario underscores the false sense of security, the fallacy of nuclear superiority, and the danger posed by the proliferation and mere existence of weapons capable of achieving nuclear holocaust and widespread destruction. This essay will analyze and acknowledge the grounds for supporting/tolerating nuclear proliferation using the cases of Israel and Iran as examples, while arguing that theoretical grounds for proliferation do not outweigh the actual and potential risks of escalation to nuclear war, nuclear miscalculation or accident, or nuclear technology falling into the hands of increasingly sophisticated terrorist groups.

The controversy over Iran’s stockpile of LEU and enrichment facilities has been the driving force behind the deliberations between Iran and the P-5+1 for the past 10 years. Iran claims that its program’s intentions are peaceful and that they have every right to nuclear energy. Iran continues to fight for its program and for the respect it deserves among its international peers. Iran also feels that it is being held against a standard that India, Pakistan and Israel did not face from the international community as they gained nuclear weapons (Shenna 2010, 356). While each entered the nuclear community in their own way, the international

The roots of China’s nuclear program dates back to the early 1950s with Mao Zedong in power and his desire to establish a nuclear weapons program during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis as a strategy to increase his political and diplomatic credibility against the United States and the rest of the world. China’s first advance on nuclear weaponry occurred in the early 1960s with the first nuclear test. Years later, the state made remarkable advances in the field of nuclear weapons field by launching the first nuclear missile in the late 60s and detonating its first hydrogen bomb in 1967 (Yun Zhou, 2011).

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s conquest for nuclear energy technology commenced during the 1950’s, inspired by U.S President Dwight Eisenhower’s program called “Atoms for Peace”. This program fabricated a plan in which the U.S Atomic Energy Commission would lend Iran as much as 13.2 pounds of low-enriched uranium in order to further develop their nuclear industries, including health care and medicine.i Two years following the agreement, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi established the Tehran Nuclear Research Center at the Tehran University, and the United States to arranged to supply a five-megawatt reactor. Several years later, in July of 1968, Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

The United States is currently spending $35 Billion a year; which is 14% of the defense budget, or it is $96 million a day, because of the nuclear efforts of which about $25 million goes for operation and maintenance for the nuclear arsenal. The rest of the money is spent on cleanup, arms control verification, and ballistic missile research, which all of that, just adds to the cost greatly. President Obama revealed a budget that includes more than $220 million in cuts for nuclear security programs in the next fiscal year. One of the largest reductions is going to come to the International Material Protection and Cooperation program, and which it works to

Nuclear weapons have been a point of contention ever since their discovery. At the turn of the century however, as developing country’s in the semi-periphery, such as India, began pursuing these nuclear weapons for their own national security, and the countries in the core have focused efforts toward nuclear nonproliferation agreements while they maintain nuclear power. From a world system theory approach, these countries in the core were attempting to maintain economic regional control over nuclear have-nots, justifying on the basis of what we now know to be the unfounded fear of international nuclear conflict. India’s decision to go through with nuclear testing was motivated by a growing domestically political desire for international influence along with being a response to a discriminatory disarmament agreement which conceded privilege to nuclear-haves, failing to reduce or eliminate stockpiles of nuclear weapons in these states along with neglecting to establish security for the nuclear-have-nots.