Bringing Nuclear Strategy Back

ABSTRACT

The study of nuclear strategy continues to be of central importance in the twenty-first century. Yet very few books have taken this subject seriously since the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty-five years ago. Thankfully, this trend is changing. This book fills a large gap in the scholarly literature on nuclear deterrence. Much of what we know about nuclear strategy is based on studies of the Soviet Union and the United States. This book uniquely analyzes the nuclear postures of regional powers such as India and Pakistan. It identifies three postures that these states can conceivably choose, develops a unique theory to explain posture adoption outcomes, and analyzes how each posture influences conventional deterrence. In doing so, the book makes a critical contribution to our understanding of nuclear politics, deterrence, and military strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear weapons
• nuclear strategy
• deterrence
• theory
• regional security
• nuclear proliferation

Notes

1. Some of the many examples include Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).

2. See, for example, S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). See also “Special Section: Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” Nonproliferation Review 21 (September/December 2014), pp. 255–383.

3. Thomas Schelling first drew the distinction between deterrence and compellence in his seminal books The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960) and Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). For research on the compellent effects of nuclear weapons, see Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail,” International Organization 67 (January 2013), pp. 173–95.

4. On nuclear latency, see Matthew Fuhrmann and Benjamin Tkach, “Almost Nuclear: Introducing the Nuclear Latency Dataset,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 32 (September 2015), pp. 443–41. On alliance commitments, see Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd S. Sechser, “Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand-Tying and Sunk Costs in Extended Nuclear Deterrence,” American Journal of Political Science 58 (October 2014), pp. 919–35.