International Law Only Binds the Weak | Ask the Professor

0:03 Hi, this is John Meersheimer, and I'm back today to answer questions from channel members. And the question that is on the table comes from at Camron Rosvan. And he asks a question about the NPT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. And this is his question: if international law has no real enforcement, what does the NPT actually offer a non-nuclear state?

0:40 I'm trying to understand the logic of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from the perspective of a smaller country. International law seems to lack meaningful enforcement. The UN can pass resolutions, but compliance depends largely on the interests of the major powers. A country that refuses to give up its resources or align with those powers can face sanctions severe enough to cripple its economy, and no legal mechanism appears able to protect it.

1:20 Now that's the question. And it's an excellent question. And actually, some of the comments in the question have direct bearing on what I'm going to say in answering it. Now, it's important to start by distinguishing between major powers and minor powers, to use the questioner's rhetoric. If you're talking about major powers or great powers, it's important to understand that they actually create institutions.

1:53 It's not the minor powers, it's the great powers, the major powers that create institutions. And the NPT is an institution. And embedded in any institution are the laws that the questioner is asking about. So it's important to understand right from the get-go that institutions and laws are effectively synonymous.

2:18 And what happens is that the great powers create these institutions because they believe that they are in their interests. And of course, they write the rules to serve their interests. And this is one of the reasons that great powers are actually quite enthusiastic about institutions. They are valuable instruments of statecraft.

2:46 Very importantly, when those rules that are embedded in those institutions are at odds with what a great power thinks is its national interest, the great power will violate the rules. And in this case, there is no enforcement mechanism. There's just no question about that. The great power, which writes the rules, can disobey the rules if it sees fit, and there is no higher authority that can punish me, can punish it.

3:25 Think about the UN Security Council. It's a really good example of how institutions work. You have this organization called the UN. And inside the UN, you have the General Assembly, which includes virtually all of the states that are in the UN. But you also have the UN Security Council, which has five countries on it.

3:51 And inside the UN Security Council, which is a very powerful institution in the context of the United Nations, countries like the United States and Russia and China, just to take three great powers, they have the ability to veto anything that the United Nations wants to do that that great power finds unacceptable.

4:19 So what you see is that the United Nations, and here we're talking mainly about the UN Security Council, was set up to protect great powers from being forced to obey rules or decisions that they don't like. And that's the way international institutions work. There is, in effect, no enforcement mechanism when it comes to dealing with the great powers.

4:46 Now, minor powers, it's a completely different story. They do not write the rules. This is not to say that they don't sometimes benefit from the rules, and one could argue they oftentimes benefit from the rules, but they don't write the rules. But more importantly, for the question that's on the table, they have to obey the rules in almost all cases, because there is an enforcement mechanism when it comes to minor powers.

5:15 So you see, the point that I'm making here is there is no enforcement mechanism to speak of when it comes to major powers. But when it comes to minor powers, there is an enforcement mechanism. And it's important to understand that that enforcement mechanism is not the institution itself. It's the great powers that built or created the institution.

5:40 It's the great powers that do the heavy lifting when it comes to enforcement, because those great powers, by definition, are strong enough to enforce the rules. The institution itself has hardly any power. It's the great powers that created it that have the might, both economic and military, to enforce the rules.

6:10 Now, let me talk a little bit about the NPT to illustrate the points that I've just laid out to you. The NPT was created in 1968, mainly by the United States and the Soviet Union. 1968 is the height of the Cold War. And the United States and the Soviet Union are the only two great powers on the planet.

6:39 And they have huge nuclear arsenals, but they're very concerned, both of them are, at making sure that other great powers, uh, or I should say other minor powers in the system, or let me put it differently, they have a great deal of interest in making sure that other states that don't have nuclear weapons don't acquire them.

7:04 So what the United States and the Soviet Union do is they come together and they create this institution that is designed to prevent nuclear proliferation. It's designed to prevent non-nuclear states from becoming nuclear weapon states. So it's these two superpowers, or the two great powers in the system, that basically create the institution, or to put it in slightly different terms, create the rules or laws that the minor powers have to obey.

7:38 Now, why do the minor powers have to obey the rules? Because the United States and the Soviet Union will enforce them. The United States, as I'm sure all the viewers know, has gone to great lengths over time to use its military might and its economic might to prevent proliferation. The same thing is true of the Soviet Union in its day and Russia today.

8:05 Russia has no interest in seeing nuclear proliferation take place, nor does the United States, nor does China. And therefore, those great powers will work to enforce the NPT. And the minor powers, by and large, have no choice but to play along with the rules. Now, there are exceptions, of course, and North Korea is a glaring exception because the North Koreans withdrew from the NPT and developed their own nuclear arsenal.

8:42 But by and large, this institution has been very successful. And again, it was set up by the United States and the Soviet Union because it was in their interest to prevent non-nuclear states from acquiring nuclear weapons. And it has been very effective. But there is, again, to go back to where I started, no way that you are going to find any international institution that has significant coercive leverage over the great powers, or to put it in slightly different terms, that can punish a great power if it disobeys the rules.

9:22 That concludes my comments on the NPT and the whole question of how minor powers and major powers or great powers relate to international institutions. Thank you for listening.