Technology-Denial Regimes

technology-denial-regimes measures structural power as the coordinated denial of technology and knowledge to others — authorship of export-control regimes, the reach to enforce them on allies and third parties, and the criticality of what can be withheld. The structural question is: who can deny others access to critical technology, and make others enforce that denial? This is Strange's "negative capacity to deny… to exclude others" (Strange 1994, p.119) given its concrete institutional home: COCOM and its successors (Wassenaar, entity lists, chip controls) — the live US–China technology-denial dynamic.

Strange names denial-of-access as the foundational Knowledge lever, and gives it a concrete regime example in COCOM:

• the lever: "whoever is able to develop or acquire and to deny the access of others to a kind of knowledge respected and sought by others… will exercise a very special kind of structural power" (Strange 1994, p.30)
• it is often the negative capacity that dominates: knowledge-structure power "lies as much in the negative capacity to deny knowledge, to exclude others, rather than in the power to convey knowledge" (Strange 1994, p.119)
• the concrete regime: the US "set up in Paris a committee on trade with Communist states (COCOM)… an organization of its NATO allies directed to draw up and apply a co-ordinated list of forbidden export items" (Strange 1994, p.173)
• the structural enforcement layer: the US used "its political influence over its allies (derived from their dependence on US defence) to discourage trade with the Soviet bloc" (Strange 1994, p.173) — the security structure leveraged to enforce knowledge-denial.
• Strange returns to COCOM as the archetype of structural denial: states act "denying trade to enemies or potential enemies, as in COCOM" (Strange 1994, p.186) and again references "the multilateral COCOM organization" (Strange 1994, p.187) — confirming it as her standing example of coordinated, multilateral technology-denial.