Success and failure in nuclear proliferation network strategies

Abstract

All proliferation networks use a menu of strategies, with varying success, to get around the attempts of non-proliferators to stop them. In this paper, I use a theory based on the economic geography of illicit transnational networks to explain North Korea and Iran's respective success and failure in building nuclear weapons. Both used similar strategies in their procurement networks: strategic structuring, obfuscation, and arbitrage of regulatory capacity. All these strategies trade off security and control for proliferators as they cooperate with non-state actors. While North Korea was able to use third-party brokers and arbitrage a number of different countries, Iran was forced into dependence on co-ethnic brokers and fewer transshipment countries. This resulted in territorially flexible North Korean networks that sacrificed some amount of security, and geographically limited Iranian networks that were relatively secure but susceptible to interdiction. The end result was North Korean success in proliferation network strategies, and Iranian failure. I conclude with theoretical implications for the study of illicit political economy and non-proliferation, and policy implications for non-proliferators.