Beyond Emboldenment: The Effects of Nuclear Weapons on State Foreign Policy

What happens to the foreign policies of states when they acquire nuclear weapons? Despite its critical importance, this question has been understudied. This paper offers a new typology of the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy, and hypothesizes the circumstances in which these effects might be observed. I distinguish between five conceptually distinct foreign policy behaviors—-aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering and steadfastness—-and show theoretically how nuclear acquisition may facilitate each of these behaviors. The typology therefore allows scholars to move beyond simple claims of “nuclear emboldenment,” and allows for more nuanced predictions and empirical examinations of the ways in which nuclear weapons affect the foreign policies of current and future nuclear states. I demonstrate the utility of this typology using a “hard” case: the United Kingdom. I show that the acquisition of a deliverable nuclear capability in 1955 significantly affected British foreign policy. Britain did not use its nuclear weapons for aggression or expansion, instead seeking to use its nuclear weapons to maintain its forward conventional posture at lower cost and thus postpone retrenchment. However, Britain did use its nuclear weapons to bolster its junior allies in the Middle East, Far East and Europe, and to exhibit greater independence from the United States and greater steadfastness in responding to challenges to its position-—most dramatically during the 1956 Suez crisis. How do nuclear weapons affect the foreign policies of the states that acquire them? 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 by states such as Iran hinges on correctly assessing how nuclear weapons affect the behavior of the states that acquire them, and how dangerous those effects are. For example, if states typically expand their interests in world politics ∗PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Email: [email protected]. I thank Dan Altman, Robert Art, Hal Brands, Chris Clary, Andrew Coe, Francis Gavin, Ryan Grauer, Brian Haggerty, M. Taylor Fravel, Nick Miller, Vipin Narang, Barry Posen, Joshua Rovner, and Kai Thaler for helpful discussions and suggestions. This is a draft version; please do not cite or circulate without permission.