Book: Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs
(Oxford University Press, 2023)
The political decisions state leaders make to accelerate or reverse progress toward nuclear weapons define each state’s course. Whether or not a state ultimately acquires nuclear weapons depends to a large extent on those nuclear decisions. This book offers a novel theory of nuclear decision-making that identifies two mechanisms that shape leaders’ understandings of the costs and benefits of their nuclear pursuits.
My book is part of a larger research agenda investigating these important questions:
Why do states take such different paths to and away from nuclear weapons?
What slows the spread of nuclear weapons?
- Article: "Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear Weapons Development" (Security Studies 2023): Why have military governments shown surprisingly little interest in acquiring nuclear weapons? And what explains the very low success rate among those military regimes that have pursued nuclear weapons?
- Article: In "Frustration and Delay: The Secondary Effects of Supply-Side Proliferation Controls" (Security Studies 2019), I argue that policies aimed at controlling the global nuclear marketplace (export controls on nuclear technology and equipment) delay nuclear weapons programs. The delay and frustration change leaders’ strategic calculations regarding the value of their nuclear weapons programs. Author's accepted manuscript here.
- Article: In "Holding All the Cards: Nuclear Suppliers and Nuclear Reversal" (Journal of Global Security Studies 2022), I introduce new data and conduct quantitative tests that support the argument that, over time, the Nuclear Suppliers Group's efforts to control the global nuclear marketplace have increasingly contributed to nuclear weapons program reversals. Author's accepted manuscript here.
- Short essay on the Nuclear Suppliers Group: Discussion of the role of the NSG, in the context of the early years of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (International History and Politics Roundtable on the 50th anniversary of the NPT)
I also study nuclear attitudes held by citizens in different nuclear weapons-possessing countries:
What does the public think about nuclear weapons use, and why?
- New project: “Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons: Crossing the Threshold?” With Matthew Wells, I have been awarded a grant by the Stanton Foundation to conduct survey experiments in four countries in 2022-23.
- Article: In "Still Taboo? Citizens' Attitudes toward the Use of Nuclear Weapons" (Journal of Global Security Studies 2021), Matthew Wells and I conduct two survey experiments to investigate two mechanisms supporting the nuclear nonuse norm: the moral foundation of the norm, and self-interest. We find that the strength of each mechanism, measured in terms of public support for nuclear weapons use, is affected by exposure to different types of vivid information about the consequences of a nuclear strike.
- Quick read (Political Violence at a Glance, August 2019).
- Article: "Punishment and blame: How core beliefs affect support for the use of force in a nuclear crisis" (Conflict Management and Peace Science 2023). In a national study of more than 5000 voters, I investigate how Americans' core beliefs about punishment and intuitions about which actors deserve blame shape attitudes toward the use of force against an adversary in an escalating crisis.
- Short essay on memory and imagination: How do Americans remember and imagine the use of nuclear weapons in war, and why does it matter? (International History and Politics roundtable on the 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
- Working paper: "No fear of the consequences: Americans' perceptions of missile defense and nuclear conflict." In progress.
updated 10/31/23