Nuclear Strategy and Escalation
I study the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy choices, including their impact on escalation dynamics.
In an article published in International Security, I reconsider recent large-N empirical analyses of nuclear superiority. I demonstrate how these works rely on significant and untenable assumptions of symmetric beliefs and complete information. Then, using an original dataset on state nuclear capabilities covering nearly 60 years, I replicate past work and demonstrate that the results depend strongly on how one operationalizes the concept. Finally, I propose an alternative measure of the nuclear balance which brings in state perceptions and beliefs: states’ expectations about the actual damage outcomes of a nuclear exchange. Drawing on archival and interview data from the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, including an extensive review of national intelligence documents, I show how damage assessments exhibited substantial variation and showed little connection to the material nuclear balance. I find little evidence that states possessed consistent, symmetric, and meaningful understandings of the nuclear balance. In other words, the nuclear balance—and its meaning—is often what states make of it. The work improves methodologically on empirical assessments of the balance and highlights the intersubjective nature of something so often chalked up to the nuts and bolts of weapons capabilities.
In a lead article published at the Journal of Strategic Studies, I investigate potential escalation dynamics in a U.S.-China crisis or conflict. In particular, I examine the escalatory potential of the growing entanglement of conventional and nuclear weapons. I develop a framework of perceptual and military-technical factors for assessing this entanglement and identify the escalation mechanisms it creates. Then, using campaign analysis and technical assessments of military capabilities, I apply the framework to the U.S.-China dyad. I find that Beijing’s missiles are not as entangled as is sometimes feared, but that ongoing trends may increase future entanglement. I evaluate the potential of intelligence capabilities, especially national technical means, to effectively identify these missile systems. I also present evidence that, counter to the prevailing wisdom, Chinese entanglement has not emerged as a strategic policy choice but, rather, as the byproduct of more parochial organizational dynamics. The research, which draws on extensive Chinese-language primary source research and field interviews with Chinese experts, refines our understanding of Chinese military policy and crisis escalation dynamics.
In a co-authored paper (with Kyle Atwell) which is currently under review, I investigate the relationship between nuclear weapons and proxy conflict. Past empirical studies have measured only direct conflict between nuclear states and recent work in this area has largely found little association between nuclear weapons possession and interstate conflict. In our work, by contrast, we develop an original measure of indirect proxy wars, a prominent and distinct form of conflict that is systematically under-analyzed in security studies scholarship. We find that nuclear weapons are associated with a significant increase in proxy war, a finding previously undiscovered due to the scholars’ past omission of forms of indirect conflict. This contrasts with most recent works purporting to find little relationship between nuclear weapons possession and conflict onset.
In an extension of my work published in International Security, I use parallel a series of parallel public and elite survey experiments to test the impact of the nuclear balance on policy preferences in a crisis. In doing so, I also theorize and test for elite-public gaps in attitudes toward nuclear weapons. I use surveys of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, as well as, several hundred civilian and military national security practitioners and researchers at the U.S. Naval War College and U.S. National Defense University. While the public is willing to support nuclear use and this support is sensitive to the nuclear balance, U.S. national security elites are significantly less likely to support nuclear use than the U.S. public and elite views are insensitive to the nuclear balance. Among the public, respondents for whom nuclear weapons are a high knowledge or high salience issue behave like elites: they are less likely to support nuclear use and their views are insensitive to the nuclear balance.
In a separate working paper, I provide a new framework for understanding the use-it-or-lose-it dilemma. The use-it-or-lose-it dilemma has long been a staple of international security theory. It has undergirded explanations for everything from strategic stability and escalation dynamics to nuclear strategy and arms control. The dilemma appears, at first glance, highly intuitive, and scholars have typically employed it without further elaboration, confident that both they and the reader appreciate its underlying logic. However, upon closer inspection, the dilemma and the escalatory pressures it is believed to produce, are more puzzling, if not wholly irrational. In this work, I resolve the puzzle inherent in the use-it-or-lose-it dilemma by identifying the various mechanisms by which it can encourage nuclear use, sketching three non-rational mechanisms and more fully elaborating three rational mechanisms. Disaggregating and specifying these mechanisms enriches our understanding of a concept ubiquitous in the literature and sheds new light on potential escalation dynamics in an interstate crisis or conflict.
I study the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy choices, including their impact on escalation dynamics.
In an article published in International Security, I reconsider recent large-N empirical analyses of nuclear superiority. I demonstrate how these works rely on significant and untenable assumptions of symmetric beliefs and complete information. Then, using an original dataset on state nuclear capabilities covering nearly 60 years, I replicate past work and demonstrate that the results depend strongly on how one operationalizes the concept. Finally, I propose an alternative measure of the nuclear balance which brings in state perceptions and beliefs: states’ expectations about the actual damage outcomes of a nuclear exchange. Drawing on archival and interview data from the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, including an extensive review of national intelligence documents, I show how damage assessments exhibited substantial variation and showed little connection to the material nuclear balance. I find little evidence that states possessed consistent, symmetric, and meaningful understandings of the nuclear balance. In other words, the nuclear balance—and its meaning—is often what states make of it. The work improves methodologically on empirical assessments of the balance and highlights the intersubjective nature of something so often chalked up to the nuts and bolts of weapons capabilities.
In a lead article published at the Journal of Strategic Studies, I investigate potential escalation dynamics in a U.S.-China crisis or conflict. In particular, I examine the escalatory potential of the growing entanglement of conventional and nuclear weapons. I develop a framework of perceptual and military-technical factors for assessing this entanglement and identify the escalation mechanisms it creates. Then, using campaign analysis and technical assessments of military capabilities, I apply the framework to the U.S.-China dyad. I find that Beijing’s missiles are not as entangled as is sometimes feared, but that ongoing trends may increase future entanglement. I evaluate the potential of intelligence capabilities, especially national technical means, to effectively identify these missile systems. I also present evidence that, counter to the prevailing wisdom, Chinese entanglement has not emerged as a strategic policy choice but, rather, as the byproduct of more parochial organizational dynamics. The research, which draws on extensive Chinese-language primary source research and field interviews with Chinese experts, refines our understanding of Chinese military policy and crisis escalation dynamics.
In a co-authored paper (with Kyle Atwell) which is currently under review, I investigate the relationship between nuclear weapons and proxy conflict. Past empirical studies have measured only direct conflict between nuclear states and recent work in this area has largely found little association between nuclear weapons possession and interstate conflict. In our work, by contrast, we develop an original measure of indirect proxy wars, a prominent and distinct form of conflict that is systematically under-analyzed in security studies scholarship. We find that nuclear weapons are associated with a significant increase in proxy war, a finding previously undiscovered due to the scholars’ past omission of forms of indirect conflict. This contrasts with most recent works purporting to find little relationship between nuclear weapons possession and conflict onset.
In an extension of my work published in International Security, I use parallel a series of parallel public and elite survey experiments to test the impact of the nuclear balance on policy preferences in a crisis. In doing so, I also theorize and test for elite-public gaps in attitudes toward nuclear weapons. I use surveys of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, as well as, several hundred civilian and military national security practitioners and researchers at the U.S. Naval War College and U.S. National Defense University. While the public is willing to support nuclear use and this support is sensitive to the nuclear balance, U.S. national security elites are significantly less likely to support nuclear use than the U.S. public and elite views are insensitive to the nuclear balance. Among the public, respondents for whom nuclear weapons are a high knowledge or high salience issue behave like elites: they are less likely to support nuclear use and their views are insensitive to the nuclear balance.
In a separate working paper, I provide a new framework for understanding the use-it-or-lose-it dilemma. The use-it-or-lose-it dilemma has long been a staple of international security theory. It has undergirded explanations for everything from strategic stability and escalation dynamics to nuclear strategy and arms control. The dilemma appears, at first glance, highly intuitive, and scholars have typically employed it without further elaboration, confident that both they and the reader appreciate its underlying logic. However, upon closer inspection, the dilemma and the escalatory pressures it is believed to produce, are more puzzling, if not wholly irrational. In this work, I resolve the puzzle inherent in the use-it-or-lose-it dilemma by identifying the various mechanisms by which it can encourage nuclear use, sketching three non-rational mechanisms and more fully elaborating three rational mechanisms. Disaggregating and specifying these mechanisms enriches our understanding of a concept ubiquitous in the literature and sheds new light on potential escalation dynamics in an interstate crisis or conflict.