Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy

Abstract

What happens to the foreign policies of states when they acquire nuclear weapons? This question has grown in importance as new nuclear powers have emerged and other states have moved closer to joining the nuclear club. Indeed, determining the costs that the United States and others should be prepared to pay to prevent nuclear proliferation hinges on assessing how nuclear weapons affect the behavior of the states that acquire them and how dangerous those effects are. If states expand their interests in world politics or act more aggressively in the aftermath of nuclear acquisition, preventing nuclear proliferation should be a higher priority than if nuclear weapons do not signiªcantly affect the foreign policies of the states that acquire them. Crafting deterrence strategies for new nuclear states also requires understanding the foreign policy effects that nuclear weapons are likely to have in a given case. Despite its importance, the question of how nuclear weapons affect the foreign policies of the states that acquire them has not been satisfactorily answered. The literature on nuclear weapons has generally examined the effects of nuclear weapons on outcomes other than foreign policy; has focused on the effects of nuclear weapons on the calculations of other states rather than the acquiring state; and has often sought to explore how states with nuclear weapons should behave rather than how they do behave. The literature that has examined the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy has tended to conºate effects of nuclear weapons under catch-all terms such as "emboldenment" while ignoring other potential effects of nuclear acquisition.

Authoritarian Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace

“…It is true that if public opinion everywhere is opposed to the use of force but only democratic political institutions are responsive to those views, this would 48. On nuclear emboldenment, see Bell 2015;Kapur 2007. provide an explanation for the democratic peace. However, it would be domestic institutions rather than the content of public opinion that provided the variation explaining the empirical findings of the democratic peace.…”

India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities

“…140 India's present challenges with Pakistan, and its resulting ºirtation with a counterforce strategy, may not be unique. The contemporary and future nuclear landscape will likely include states that may be emboldened by nuclear weapons to engage in more dangerous pursuit of revisionist aims, 141 or states where the prospect of extremist takeover cannot be entirely dismissed, making disarming attacks more attractive 142 -all while the costs of implement-International Security 43:3 50 ing counterforce strategies against small arsenals (i.e., those that look like Pakistan's, not the Soviet Union's) may be falling. For example, Israel would almost certainly be in a position to consider nuclear counterforce strategies if it faced an emerging nuclear adversary that used its nuclear weapons as a shield behind which to unleash proxies with greater devastation against the Israeli homeland.…”

To condone, condemn, or ‘no comment’? Explaining a patron’s reaction to a client’s unilateral provocations

“…Furthermore, studies on nuclear proliferation suggest that after acquiring nuclear weapons, a state could become more aggressive in its foreign policy (e.g. Bell, 2015). These findings imply that a nuclear client may commit more provocations down the road, which, on average, increases the chance of inadvertent conflict.…”