How durable is the nuclear weapons taboo?

ABSTRACT

The nuclear weapons taboo is considered one of the strongest norms in international politics. A prohibition against using nuclear weapons has seemingly shaped state behavior for nearly seven decades and, according to some observers, made nuclear use ‘unthinkable’ today or in the future. Although scholars have shown that nuclear aversion has affected decision-making behavior, important questions about the nuclear taboo remain unanswered. This article seeks to answer a basic question: How durable is the taboo? We develop different predictions about norm durability depending on whether the taboo is based primarily on moral logic or strategic logic. We use the comparable case of the norm against strategic bombing in the 20th century to evaluate these hypotheses. The logic and evidence presented in this paper suggest that the norm of nuclear non-use is much more fragile than most analysts understand.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear taboo
• norms
• strategic bombing
• nuclear weapons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), 11.

² Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo; T.V. Paul, The Tradition of Nuclear Non-Use (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press 2009).

³ Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the “Failure” of Internationalism’, International Organization 51/1 (1997), 34.

⁴ On norm life cycles see Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52/4 (1998), 887–917.

⁵ Noting that constructivism has been better explaining conformity with norms, rather than with their violation, is Vaughn P. Shannon, ‘Norms Are What States Make of Them: The Political Psychology of Norm Violation,’ International Studies Quarterly 44/2 (2000), 293.

⁶ On ‘norm regress’ in the case of torture, see Ryder McKeown, ‘Norm Regress: US Revisionism and the Slow Death of the Torture Norm’, International Relations 23/5 (March 2009) 5–25. T.V. Paul considers the nuclear taboo merely an informal norm, since it is not legally enshrined like the norms against chemical weapons or biological weapons. See Paul, The Tradition of Nuclear Non-Use, 3–4.

⁷ Other scholars who refer to the norm of non-use as a taboo include Mark Fitzpatrick, The World After: Proliferation, Deterrence and Disarmament if the Nuclear Taboo is Broken (Paris, France: Institut Francais des Relations Internationales 2009) and George Quester, Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2006).

⁸ Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo, 58.

⁹ Nina Tannenwald, ‘The Nuclear Taboo’, in Harsh V. Pant (ed.), Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation (New York, NY: Routledge 2012), 63.

¹⁰ George H. Quester, Nuclear First Use: Consequences of a Broken Taboo (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2006), 13.

¹¹ For the case against categorizing nuclear non-use as a taboo, see Paul, The Traditions of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons; T. V. Paul, ‘Taboo or tradition? The non-use of nuclear weapons in world politics’, Review of International Studies 36:4 (2010), 853–63, and Sagan, ‘Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, 2004.

¹² See, for example, any number of arguments on nuclear dominos, especially Nick L. Miller, ‘Nuclear Dominos: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?’, Security Studies 23:1 (2014), 33–73. Philipp Bleek finds rivals are more likely to explore, though not acquire weapons. ‘Does proliferation beget proliferation? Why nuclear dominoes rarely fall,’ Georgetown University Diss, 2010.

¹³ Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52:4 (1998) 891.

¹⁴ Gary Goertz and Paul F. Diehl, ‘Toward a Theory of International Norms: Some Conceptual and Measurement Issues’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 36/4 (1992), 639.

¹⁵ Cited in Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52/4 (1998), 892.

¹⁶ George Quester, quoted in Paul, The Tradition of Nuclear Non-Use, 7.

¹⁷ Thomas C. Schelling, ‘An Astonishing Sixty Years: The Legacy of Hiroshima’, Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 Dec. 2005.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2005/schelling-lecture.pdf.

¹⁸ William Potter, In Search of the Nuclear Taboo, (Paris, France: Institut Francais des Relations Internationales 2010), 13.

¹⁹ Fitzpatrick, ‘The World After’, 12.

²⁰ Scott D. Sagan, ‘Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, in Sohail Hashmi and Steven Lee, (eds.), Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) 73–95.

²¹ Sagan, ‘Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, 82.

²² Quoted in Sagan, ‘Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, 82.

²³ Daryl G. Press, Scott D. Sagan, and Benjamin A. Valentino, ‘Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons’, American Political Science Review 107/1 (February 2013) 2.

²⁴ Press, Sagan, and Valentino, ‘Atomic Aversion’, 21.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino, ‘Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think About Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants’, International Security 41/1 (2017), 41–79.

²⁷ Sagan and Valentino, ‘Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran’, 60.

²⁸ These predictions are derived from the moral logic of the nuclear taboo, as well as from Tannenwald’s and Quester’s conjectures about how the taboo might unravel. See Tannewald, The Nuclear Taboo, 383; and Quester, Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo.

²⁹ Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo, 367.

³⁰ Quester predicts that this type of low collateral strike might lead ‘to a willingness to see nuclear weapons as potentially “ordinary” weapons’. Quester, Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo, 31.

³¹ See Mark Fitzpatrick, The World After: Proliferation, Deterrence and Disarmament if the Nuclear Taboo is Broken (Paris, France: Institut Francais des Relations Internationales 2009).

³² Saving a state from existential threat is the only legitimate use of nuclear weapons according to a 1996 International Court of Justice ruling. Cited in Fitzpatrick, The World After, 23.

³³ Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo, 15.

³⁴ William Potter, In Search of the Nuclear Taboo (Paris, France: Institut Francais des Relations Internationales 2010). Fitzpatrick also makes this point in The World After, 21.

³⁵ Richard M. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 137.

³⁶ Fitzpatrick, ‘The World After’, 19.

³⁷ Price (1997) argues that new moral norms gain traction in part by grafting on to older norms. In this case, the nuclear taboo has gained strength by grafting on to the norm of discrimination in warfare.

³⁸ Fitzpatrick, The World After, 23.

³⁹ Jeffrey Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 1995), 95.

⁴⁰ Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2001), 92.

⁴¹ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction,126.

⁴² John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon 1987), 38–41.

⁴³ Quoted in Legro, 95. Legro notes that only Great Britain did not agree to the five-year ban on dropping weapons from the air.

⁴⁴ Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907. http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Treaty.xsp?documentId=4D47F92DF3966A7EC12563CD002D6788&action=openDocument.

⁴⁵ Legro, Cooperation Under Fire, 96.

⁴⁶ Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing, 16–17.

⁴⁷ Ibid, 19.

⁴⁸ Ibid, 23.

⁴⁹ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 104.

⁵⁰ Henry D. Sokolski, Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2004), 20.

⁵¹ Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing, 27.

⁵² Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 104.

⁵³ Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing, 33.

⁵⁴ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 112.

⁵⁵ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 116. ‘Civilians’ in this case did not include all people, as one of the sticking points according to Thomas was the British desire not to ban aerial bombardment for the purpose of ‘policing’ their colonies.

⁵⁶ ‘Protests to Japan’, New York Times (1923-Current File), 3 Oct. 1937. http://search.proquest.com/docview/848160577?accountid=11091.

⁵⁷ Bulletin of International News 14/7 (2 October 1937), 37.

⁵⁸ Ferdinand Kuhn Jr., ‘Neither Side to Use Gas’, The Montreal Gazette, 29 Apr., 1937. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19370429&id=JS8rAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qZgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=63083824907.

⁵⁹ ‘Start of Strife Brings Quick Action by President in Behalf of Noncombatants’, New York Times (1923-Current File), 2 Sept. 1939. http://search.proquest.com/docview/102898531?accountid=11091 .

⁶⁰ Ronald Schaffer, ‘The Bombing Campaigns in World War II: The European Theater’, in Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B Young (eds.), Bombing Civilians, (New York, NY: The New Press, 2009), 31.

⁶¹ Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 181.

⁶² Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 129. In addition, the high causality rate of British bombers in the first year of the war also encouraged this change.

⁶³ Legro, Cooperation Under Fire, 102.

⁶⁴ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 131. See also, Carrie Ann Lee, The Politics Of Military Operations Stanford University Diss., 2015, 222.

⁶⁵ Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 188.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 189.

⁶⁷ Alexander B. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 142–55.

⁶⁸ Robert P. Post, ‘He Declares Britain has a Single Purpose, to Destroy “Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe” and His Entire Nazi Regime,’. New York Times (1923-Current File), 23 Jun. 1941. http://search.proquest.com/docview/105543724?accountid=11091.

⁶⁹ Schaffer, ‘The Bombing Campaigns in World War II: The European Theater’, 34.

⁷⁰ ‘Soviet Bombing Raids’ in ‘Aviation During World War II’, http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/Soviet%20bombing%20raids.htm.

⁷¹ Schaffer, ‘The Bombing Campaigns in World War II’, 36.

⁷² Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985), 60–61.

⁷³ Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 228.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 229.

⁷⁵ Schaffer, ‘The Bombing Campaigns in World War II’, 40.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 40.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 40.

⁷⁸ Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 225.

⁷⁹ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 91.

⁸⁰ Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 1.

⁸¹ See, for example, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence’, International Security 41/4 (2017), 9–49.

⁸² Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 181.

⁸³ Ibid., 182.

⁸⁴ Susan B. Martin, ‘Norms, Military Utility, and the Use/Non-use of Weapons: The Case of Anti-plant and Irritant Agents in the Vietnam War’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 39/3 (2016), 323.

⁸⁵ Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction, 125.

⁸⁶ See, for example, Rebecca Davis Gibbons, ‘The humanitarian Turn in Nuclear Disarmament and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’, The Nonproliferation Review 25/1–2 (2018), 11–36.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Davis Gibbons

Rebecca Davis Gibbons is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is currently working on a book on the politics of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

Keir Lieber

Keir Lieber is Director of the Security Studies Program and Associate Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Government.