Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Bell, Mark S. “Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy.” International Security 40, no. 1 (July 2015): 87–119. © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00204 Publisher MIT Press Version Final published version Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100497 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. Beyond Emboldenment Beyond Mark S. Bell Emboldenment How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy 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 be- havior 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 for- eign 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.1 Despite its importance, the question of how nuclear weapons affect the for- eign policies of the states that acquire them has not been satisfactorily an- swered. 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 “em- boldenment” while ignoring other potential effects of nuclear acquisition. Mark S. Bell is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. For helpful comments and suggestions, the author thanks Hal Brands, Matthew Bunn, James Cameron, Christopher Clary, Andrew Coe, Taylor Fravel, Francis Gavin, Ryan Grauer, Jacques Hymans, Martin Malin, Nicholas Miller, Vipin Narang, Barry Posen, Brad Roberts, Joshua Rovner, Scott Sagan, the anonymous reviewers, participants in the Tobin Project National Security Forum, and audiences at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford Univer- sity, and annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, International Studies As- sociation, and Midwest Political Science Association. 1. Joshua Rovner, “After Proliferation: Deterrence Theory and Emerging Nuclear Powers,” in Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, eds., Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2012), pp. 17–36. International Security, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Summer 2015), pp. 87–119, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00204 © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 87 International Security 40:1 88 Policymakers have also tended to worry in generic terms about embolden- ment without specifying how or why nuclear weapons may incentivize spe- ciªc behaviors. This article offers a typology of the effects that nuclear weapons have on the foreign policies of the states that acquire them, and demonstrates its utility by using it to shed light on the effects of nuclear acquisition on British foreign pol- icy. The article proceeds in four parts. First, I show that existing literature has failed to provide a typology or theory of the effects that nuclear weapons have on state foreign policy. Second, I offer such a typology. I identify six foreign policy behaviors that nuclear weapons may facilitate—aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise; show theoretically how nuclear acquisition may facilitate each of these behaviors; and identify circumstances under which states may ªnd each of these behaviors attractive. Third, I use the typology to examine the British case. I show that Britain used nuclear weapons to facilitate several, but not all, of the behaviors identiªed by the typology, thus demonstrating its utility. Fourth, I offer conclusions and avenues for future research. Existing Literature Foreign policy is the portion of grand strategy that deals with a state’s relation- ships with other states. If grand strategy is the collection of means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve its goals,2 then foreign policy is the col- lection of means and ends with which a state pursues its goals with respect to another state. Foreign policy therefore includes a state’s goals with respect to other states, the strategies it uses to pursue them, and the resources it dedi- cates to pursuing them. Foreign policy is dyadic because state A may have a different foreign policy toward state B to that which it has toward state C. Understanding the ways in which nuclear weapons may affect foreign policy, then, requires a typology that allows scholars and policymakers to distinguish among different foreign policy behaviors that nuclear weapons may facilitate. To account for variation in the historical record, the typology must be suf- ªciently ºexible to allow the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy to vary across states. Similarly, because foreign policy is dyadic, and because nu- clear weapons may affect state A’s foreign policy toward state B differently to the way in which nuclear weapons affect its relationship with state C, the 2. Barry R. Posen, The Origins of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 7. Beyond Emboldenment 89 typology must also be ºexible enough to allow nuclear weapons to affect a state’s relationships with different states in different ways. Existing work has not yet offered such a typology of effects of nuclear weap- ons on foreign policy for three reasons. First, most literature on nuclear weapons has examined the effects of nuclear weapons on outcomes other than the foreign policy of the state that acquires them. In particular, a large litera- ture has examined the connections between nuclear weapons and interstate conºict occurrence,3 trajectories,4 and outcomes.5 Many of these works do make theoretical arguments linking nuclear weapons and particular foreign policy behaviors. For example, Kenneth Waltz argues that “nuclear weapons make states more cautious,” while Erik Gartzke and Dong-Joon Jo argue that “nuclear-capable nations are bound to increase their inºuence in international affairs.”6 These arguments, however, tend to specify the effects of nuclear ac- quisition to be the same for all states. Such claims are of limited use in shed- ding light on the variation in foreign policy responses to nuclear acquisition in the historical record. A second reason why existing scholarship has insufªciently examined the effects of nuclear weapons on the foreign policies of the states that acquire 3. For examples of theoretical work on nuclear weapons and conºict occurrence, see Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Paper No. 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], 1981); John J. Mearsheimer, “Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in Europe,” International Security, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter 1984/85), pp. 19–46; Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 66–107; and John Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World,” Interna- tional Security, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 55–79. For examples of empirical work, see Erik Gartzke and Dong-Joon Jo, “Bargaining, Nuclear Proliferation, and Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 53, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 209–233; Vipin Narang, “What Does It Take to Deter? Regional Power Nuclear Postures and International Conºict,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 57, No. 3 (June 2013), pp. 478–508; and Mark S. Bell and Nicholas L. Miller, “Questioning the Effect of Nuclear Weapons on Conºict,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 59, No. 1 (February 2015), pp. 74–92. 4. See, for example, Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); Barry R. Posen, “U.S. Security Policy in a Nuclear- Armed World, Or: What If Iraq Had Had Nuclear Weapons?” Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1997), pp. 1–31; and Victor Asal and Kyle Beardsley, “Proliferation and International Crisis Behav- ior,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44, No. 2 (March 2007), pp. 139–155. 5. See, for example, Richard K. Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1987); Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal, “Winning with the Bomb,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Vol. 53, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 278–301; Matthew Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organi- zation, Vol. 67, No. 1 (January 2013), pp. 141–171; and Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail,” International Organization, Vol.