Do nuclear crises vaccinate against nuclear war?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Recent examples include Giacomo Chiozza and Hein Goemans, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam, and Cali M. Ellis, Why Leaders Fight (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

2 For a somewhat skeptical review of the new focus on top leaders in the international-relations literature, see Robert Jervis, “Do Leaders Matter and How Would We Know?” Security Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2013), pp. 153–79.

3 See Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Matthew Fuhrmann and Michael C. Horowitz, “When Leaders Matter: Rebel Experience and Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 77, No. 1 (2015), pp. 72–87; Jonas Schneider, “The Study of Leaders in Nuclear Proliferation and How to Invigorate It,” International Studies Review, January 24, 2019, <https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/isr/viz001/5299948>.

4 Quoted in Eryn MacDonald, “Whose Finger Is on the Button? Nuclear Launch Authority in the United States and Other Nations,” Union of Concerned Scientists, December 2017, <www.ucsusa.org/soleauthority>, p. 2.

5 Robert A. Dahl, Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy versus Guardianship (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985).

6 Ole Holsti, “Crisis Decision Making,” in Philip E. Tetlock, Jo L. Husbands, Robert Jervis, Paul C. Stern, and Charles Tilly, eds., Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, Vol. 1 (New York : Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 8–84; Rose McDermott, Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

7 See especially James Blight and janet M. Lang, The Armageddon Letters: Kennedy/Khrushchev/Castro in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).

8 The canonical text of the proliferation optimism–pessimism debate is Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012).

9 Beth A. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1997). Cohen also acknowledges this about Reagan on page 214.

10 Raj Chengappa, “Balakot: How India Planned IAF Airstrike in Pakistan. An Inside Story,” India Today, March 15, 2019, <www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20190325-balakot-airstrikes-pulwama-terror-attack-abhinandan-varthaman-narendra-modi-masood-azhar-1478511-2019-03-15>.

11 Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).