ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that the careful and timely use of international legal rules in an evolving construction of sovereignty may permit nuclear weapons to be gradually excluded from outcomes of interest in global politics and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament increasingly institutionalized as essential elements of twenty-first century statehood. Sovereignty has evolved over the last few decades to accommodate nuclear weapons in diverging ways. While membership in the so-called "nuclear club" has grown, membership in the non-nuclear weapons club has grown much faster. States emerged from the feudal order as the most relevant unit of world politics because they were the political unit most capable of concentrating violence. States have seemingly unlimited incentive to maintain effective control of nuclear weapons in that the use of these weapons could have existential consequences for the state. Anecdotal evidence suggests that nuclear nonproliferation has been used to assert sovereign independence of states whose sovereignty has been compromised in international politics.
