Nuclear Order-Setting

nuclear-order-setting measures structural power over the rules of the nuclear order — who decides "who may and may not hold weapons," who authors the non-proliferation regime, and who controls the safeguards machinery others must submit to. The structural question is: who sets the terms of the global nuclear architecture? — not who holds the largest arsenal. For Strange, possession has ceased to be the structural variable at all.

Strange treats the deterrence regime and non-proliferation architecture as structural, and explicitly separates rule-setting from possession:

• "Mutual nuclear deterrence can be part of the structure of security and at the same time the greatest potential threat to security." (Strange 1994, p.48)
• The non-proliferation lever: superpowers' "efforts to use control over the technology and materials necessary for nuclear power stations as a lever to get others to promise not to use their help for military purposes and to submit to international inspection" (Strange 1994, p.56) — i.e. holders setting the rails for everyone else. Strange names the regime by which this is done — the "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)" — and tracks which states signed, refused, or acceded (China, France, South Africa, India, Pakistan), making rule-authorship and accession the structural variable (Strange 1994, p.56).
• Possession is no longer the structural variable: "It is no longer possession of nuclear weapons but the know-how to produce and the means to deliver them that matters and is hard to control." (Strange 1994, p.56) Strange even notes ex-Soviet republics found "possession of nuclear weapons gave them significant bargaining power" — relational leverage, not the structure (Strange 1994, p.56).

Deciding "who may/may not hold weapons" is the defining structural act of provision-on-terms applied to the nuclear domain.