ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on John Steinbruner's original learning types. It aims to assess the analytic utility of the three types concerning the complex problem of change in non-proliferation activity. The three types of learning are: structural realism, cybernetics, and instrumental learning; belief systems and constrained learning and expert-generated knowledge and causal learning. The chapter explains the several respective shifts in superpower strategies to slow the spread of nuclear arms. It examines the sources of US-U.S.S.R. and global collaboration against nuclear proliferation. The chapter suggests that states must learn causally in order to establish a universal non-proliferation consensus and the coordination that is needed to effectively inhibit the diffusion of nuclear weapons. US non-proliferation policy in the first decade of the atomic era was not an outcome of causal learning. Moscow's unsettling experience with China fueled a major reappraisal of its nuclear export policy and pushed non-proliferation upward in the hierarchy of Soviet foreign policy aims.
