Nuclear Reactions

How Nuclear-Armed States Behave

Mark S. Bell

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781501754166
• eBook ISBN: 9781501754180
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Nuclear Reactions analyzes how nuclear weapons change the calculations states make in their foreign policies, why they do so, and why nuclear weapons have such different effects on the foreign policies of different countries.

Mark S. Bell argues that nuclear weapons are useful for more than deterrence. They are leveraged to pursue a wide range of goals in international politics, and the nations that acquire them significantly change their foreign policies as a result. Closely examining how these effects vary and what those variations have meant in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, Bell shows that countries are not generically "emboldened"—they change their foreign policies in different ways based on their priorities. This has huge policy implications: What would Iran do if it were to acquire nuclear weapons? Would Japanese policy toward the United States change if Japan were to obtain nuclear weapons? And what does the looming threat of nuclear weapons mean for the future of foreign policy? Far from being a relic of the Cold War, Bell argues, nuclear weapons are as important in international politics today as they ever were.

Thanks to generous funding from the University of Minnesota and its participation in TOME, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes, available from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

CHAPTER 1

Nuclear Opportunism

How States Use Nuclear Weapons in International Politics

This chapter offers a theory that allows us to understand the way nuclear weapons affect the foreign policy of the states that acquire them. Foreign policy is the portion of grand strategy that deals with a state’s relationships with other states. If grand strategy is the collection of means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve its goals in international politics, then foreign policy is the collection of means and ends with which a state pursues its goals with respect to a given other state.¹ Foreign policy does not therefore simply refer to the day-to-day conduct of a nation’s diplomats, and is not the sole preserve of the governmental institution tasked with conducting bilateral diplomacy (for example, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the US State Department). The definition of foreign policy used throughout this book includes a state’s goals with respect to other states, the strategies it uses to pursue them, and the resources it dedicates to pursuing them. Importantly, foreign policy is dyadic, because a state may have very different foreign policies toward different other states. Thus, a state has a foreign policy toward a particular other state, rather than having a single foreign policy writ large. Nuclear weapons, for example, may affect China’s foreign policy toward Pakistan differently from how they affect China’s relationship with the United States.

The theory I offer argues that the acquisition of nuclear weapons can facilitate (that is, reduce the expected costs of) a range of foreign policy behaviors. In particular, I focus on six foreign policy behaviors that nuclear weapons can facilitate: independence, bolstering, aggression, expansion, steadfastness, and compromise. However, not all states use nuclear weapons to facilitate all of these behaviors. The crux of the theory is that different states find different combinations of these behaviors attractive depending on the strategic circumstances in which the state finds itself. In particular, the nature of the threats the state faces, its position within its alliances, and whether it is increasing or decreasing in relative power all affect which combinations of these behaviors the acquiring state finds attractive, and therefore which foreign policy behaviors the state will use nuclear weapons to facilitate. States incorporate nuclear weapons into the calculations they make about what they can achieve (and what they can get away with) in international politics, and direct nuclear weapons to purposes that the state considers useful. Nuclear weapons, in this view, are useful to the states that possess them, but they are not silver bullets that grant states free rein in international politics. I label my theory, and the view of nuclear weapons it implies, as “nuclear opportunism.” The theory emphasizes that states seek to use their nuclear weapons to improve their position in international politics and that the circumstances in which a state finds itself determine the way in which it will use its nuclear weapons to do so.

This view of nuclear weapons is in contrast to the theory of the nuclear revolution. The theory of the nuclear revolution predicts that by resolving a state’s fundamental security needs, nuclear weapons mean states have less need to compete and thus transform the nature of international politics. However, the political goals and concerns that states have do not end even if their security has been guaranteed. States have a wide range of political goals and those goals vary from state to state. Nuclear weapons may improve a state’s security, but in doing so, they grant states greater freedom to pursue their goals in international politics rather than tamping down their ambitions. Nuclear weapons do not transform the preferences that states have, but grant them greater freedom to pursue their preexisting political goals.

Why Do Nuclear Weapons Affect Foreign Policy?

Why is it that nuclear weapons may affect the calculations of the states that acquire them? Nuclear weapons can affect states’ calculations about foreign policy through a range of mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms reflect strategic responses to the military capabilities that nuclear weapons provide the state, while others are less rooted in rational-strategic calculations at the level of the state and reflect individual- or group-level responses to nuclear acquisition.

First, there are direct military mechanisms by which nuclear weapons affect calculations about foreign policy. For example, using nuclear weapons militarily to achieve a certain level of destruction may be cheaper or easier than using conventional military means to achieve the same level of military destruction: the destructive capabilities that nuclear weapons offer are unique among military technologies. Thomas Schelling was correct to say that “against defenseless people there is not much that nuclear weapons can do that cannot be done with an ice pick,” but the significance of nuclear weapons in international politics is not what they can achieve but the speed and efficiency with which they can achieve it.² For example, the United States was able to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki far more easily with nuclear weapons than it would have been able to with conventional ordnance. Single nuclear weapons destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki; achieving the same results with conventional weapons would have required hundreds of bombs and planes. Of course, there are many military missions that nuclear weapons are poorly suited for, but nuclear weapons make large-scale and indiscriminate destruction easier to achieve.

Most states do not plan to use their nuclear weapons in a direct military sense, however. The second way in which nuclear weapons affect calculations about foreign policy is through political mechanisms. Nuclear weapons affect the calculations of states with which the nuclear state is interacting in its foreign policy. Nuclear weapons grant states an ability to escalate (or threaten to escalate) a conflict or crisis to the nuclear level. This raises the expected costs of escalation for adversaries, because nuclear use may impose costs on their territory, population, or military capabilities beyond those that can be imposed using conventional forces. The expected cost for the nuclear-armed state of engaging in foreign policy behaviors that may trigger escalatory responses is therefore reduced, because it is harder for adversaries to escalate in response. The same logic applies even in situations in which the threat of nuclear use is not credible, because nuclear weapons may nonetheless make a state better able to outbid adversaries in a competition in risk taking. As Schelling argues, states can exert coercive pressure on each other by making “threats that leave something to chance” even if deliberate nuclear use is not credible.³ Every act of escalation is therefore costlier (in expectation) against a nuclear-armed state than it would be if the state did not have nuclear weapons. For the nuclear-armed state, therefore, foreign policy behaviors that raise the risk of escalatory responses may have their expected costs reduced by nuclear possession because nuclear weapons make it harder for adversaries to escalate.

Similarly, nuclear weapons may reduce the cost of certain foreign policy behaviors by affecting the calculations of actors not directly involved in the particular dyadic foreign policy interaction. For example, nuclear weapons may deter diplomatic or military interventions by hostile third parties, or encourage similar interventions by friendly third parties.⁴ In this case, nuclear weapons may not affect the calculations of the state with which the nuclear state is interacting in a given foreign policy, but nonetheless affect the costs associated with that foreign policy by influencing the calculations of other states. For example, as I discuss in chapter 3, South Africa’s nuclear weapons allowed it to reduce the risk of Soviet intervention in Angola, thus facilitating greater South African aggression in the ongoing war in Angola.

Third, there are efficiency mechanisms by which nuclear weapons may affect foreign policy costs by freeing up resources or rendering the nuclear-armed state less reliant on others. By reducing the costs of certain foreign policy behaviors, nuclear weapons may free up resources to engage in other foreign policy behaviors that the state would not otherwise be able to afford. Thus, even if the expected costs of these behaviors are not directly affected by nuclear weapons themselves, they may nonetheless be facilitated by nuclear acquisition. Similarly, the capabilities offered by nuclear weapons may mean that the need to secure external political or military support from a third party is less pressing, increasing the state’s self-reliance and reducing the costs of foreign policy behaviors that risk jeopardizing support from allies. For example, as I discuss in chapter 2, nuclear weapons allowed Britain to act more independently of the United States.

Fourth, there are bureaucratic and domestic political mechanisms by which nuclear weapons affect foreign policy. Programs to acquire nuclear weapons are large, resource-intensive efforts that require buy-in from coalitions of scientists, bureaucrats, political leaders, and legislators.⁵ For individuals and institutions that made the argument that nuclear acquisition would benefit the state and that invested political resources into the acquisition of nuclear weapons, there may be strong incentives to demonstrate that those benefits have in fact been achieved. Nuclear weapons may tempt nuclear advocates within the government to pursue certain foreign policies (or reduce the obstacles preventing such policies being pursued) precisely to demonstrate the utility of nuclear weapons. For example, it was the Pakistani military that both controlled Pakistan’s nuclear program and then planned and advocated for the nuclear-enabled adventurism of the 1999 Kargil War on the basis that Pakistani nuclear weapons would inhibit any Indian response.⁶

Fifth, there are a range of psychological and identity-based mechanisms by which nuclear weapons affect international politics.⁷ Relative to other weapons, nuclear weapons are imbued with unusual symbolism, mythology, and significance for those who acquire them. Similarly, nuclear weapons have often been viewed as powerful symbols of technological progress and prestige by those who have sought them. For example, as British prime minister Winston Churchill’s scientific adviser told him, “It is surely vital, unless we are to become a second-class nation armed with inferior weapons, that we should be in a position to make our own bombs.”⁸ Indeed, the very fact that nuclear weapons are commonly classified as distinct from “conventional” weapons is indicative of their unusual status. Given that states care deeply about prestige, status, and self-identity, nuclear weapons may also affect foreign policy by changing how states and leaders conceive of themselves, what they are capable of, and their state’s role in international politics.

Sixth, these mechanisms are all magnified by the selection effects involved in which states acquire nuclear weapons.⁹ Many of the mechanisms described above could work in multiple directions; for example, there are plenty of normative or identity-based mechanisms that would constrain nuclear weapons from having a substantial effect on a state’s foreign policy.¹⁰ However, the states that ultimately acquire nuclear weapons are not a random selection of states. The states that are willing to bear the financial, diplomatic, and other costs associated with pursuing and acquiring nuclear weapons are likely to be those whose foreign policy calculations will be most affected by having them: nuclear acquisition is likely to be most attractive to those that will benefit most from nuclear acquisition. Similarly, those that acquire nuclear weapons are likely to be those that are most susceptible to the bureaucratic or identity-based mechanisms. For example, as Jacques Hymans argues, leaders who seek nuclear weapons tend to be those whose calculations about foreign policy will be most influenced by nuclear weapons: those who “develop a desire for nuclear weapons that goes beyond calculation, to self-expression.”¹¹

How Can Nuclear Weapons Affect Foreign Policy?

Nuclear weapons can therefore affect a state’s calculations about foreign policy through a range of different mechanisms. But what foreign policy behaviors do nuclear weapons facilitate? This section distinguishes among six distinct foreign policy behaviors that nuclear weapons can facilitate: aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise. Some of these effects have previously been conflated under the catch-all term “emboldenment,” while others are not typically thought of as emboldening effects. I show why nuclear weapons may facilitate each of these behaviors. This does not imply that nuclear weapons make any particular behavior easy: nuclear weapons do not grant states free rein in international politics, and many foreign policy behaviors will be costly both before and after nuclear acquisition. Similarly, I do not assume that the expected costs of engaging in each of these behaviors will always be reduced by nuclear acquisition. Nonetheless, nuclear weapons can facilitate each of these behaviors.¹²

AGGRESSION

Nuclear weapons may facilitate aggression. Aggression is defined as more belligerent pursuit of goals in preexisting disputes or in pursuit of previously defined interests.

Nuclear weapons can facilitate aggression through any of the mechanisms discussed above. Nuclear weapons may reduce the expected cost of aggression because a state may use nuclear weapons directly to engage in military operations that would be more costly to undertake with conventional forces (the military mechanism). Nuclear weapons may also facilitate aggression because nuclear weapons raise the risk of escalation for the state’s opponents, which must reckon with both the conventional forces the state previously possessed and its nuclear capabilities (the political mechanism). This should make it harder for states to respond to the escalation of the nuclear-armed state, which should therefore find it easier to escalate its efforts to revise the status quo. Similarly, nuclear weapons may deter third parties from intervening to ...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Nuclear Opportunism
• 2. Independence and Status
• 3. Apartheid and Aggression
• 4. The Foundations of a New World Order
• 5. Past and Future Proliferators
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index