The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation
The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation

Author: Jacques E. C. Hymans

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 8

ISBN-13: 1139450743

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Dozens of states have long been capable of acquiring nuclear weapons, yet only a few have actually done so. Jacques E. C. Hymans finds that the key to this surprising historical pattern lies not in externally imposed constraints, but rather in state leaders' conceptions of the national identity. Synthesizing a wide range of scholarship from the humanities and social sciences to experimental psychology and neuroscience, Hymans builds a rigorous model of decisionmaking that links identity to emotions and ultimately to nuclear policy choices. Exhaustively researched case studies of France, India, Argentina, and Australia - two that got the bomb and two that abstained - demonstrate the value of this model while debunking common myths. This book will be invaluable to policymakers and concerned citizens who are frustrated with the frequent misjudgments of states' nuclear ambitions, and to scholars who seek a better understanding of how leaders make big foreign policy decisions.

Nuclear Proliferation and the Psychology of Political Leadership
Nuclear Proliferation and the Psychology of Political Leadership

Author: Kelly P O'Reilly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-15

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1136011927

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This book offers a novel approach to understanding the puzzle of nuclear proliferation by examining how leaders’ beliefs and perceptions about the international system influence states' decisions to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, there is a persisting dilemma over the spread of nuclear weapons for both practitioners and scholars of international affairs. Uncertainty remains whether determined proliferators can be stopped, as shown by the cases of North Korea and Iran. These instances of proliferation raise questions about regional stability, the use of pre-emptive military action, and the potential for reactive-proliferation by neighbouring countries. Despite the serious implications surrounding the spread of these weapons, proliferation scholarship has thus far failed to solve what has been described as the "proliferation puzzle"- why do some countries choose nuclear weapons while others do not? The author argues that understanding basic psychological motivations, such as the role of power and perceptions of self and others, forms a strategic context which provides answers about a leader’s willingness to proliferate. Proliferation willingness is a critical, yet frequently overlooked, part of the proliferation equation. Ultimately, it is the combination of willingness and proliferation opportunity (i.e. technical and scientific capabilities) that determines whether a country 'goes nuclear'. By examining several historical instances of proliferation decision-making—in South Africa, India, Libya and Australia—the book's findings highlight the fundamental role of leaders’ beliefs in shaping proliferation outcomes. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, political psychology, security studies and IR in general.

When Proliferation Causes Peace
When Proliferation Causes Peace

Author: Michael D. Cohen (PhD)

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1626164959

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Psychology, nuclear crises, and foreign policy -- The Soviet Union, 1956-1962 -- Pakistan, 1998-2002 -- Further tests : Kennedy, Vajpayee, Nixon, and Mao -- Conclusion : when proliferation causes peace

Nuclear Politics
Nuclear Politics

Author: Alexandre Debs

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 655

ISBN-13: 1107108098

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A comprehensive theory of the causes of nuclear proliferation, alongside an in-depth analysis of sixteen historical cases of nuclear development.

Achieving Nuclear Ambitions
Achieving Nuclear Ambitions

Author: Jacques E. C. Hymans

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-02-16

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0521767008

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From Iraq to Iran and from Libya to North Korea, recent attempts to join the club of nuclear powers have tended to lose their momentum or even to fail outright. This book shows how developing country rulers unintentionally thwart their own nuclear ambitions by undermining their scientific and technical workers.

Seeking the Bomb
Seeking the Bomb

Author: Vipin Narang

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0691172625

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The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.

Nonproliferation Norms
Nonproliferation Norms

Author: Maria Rost Rublee

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2010-01-25

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0820335894

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Too often, our focus on the relative handful of countries with nuclear weapons keeps us from asking an important question: Why do so many more states not have such weapons? More important, what can we learn from these examples of nuclear restraint? Maria Rost Rublee argues that in addition to understanding a state's security environment, we must appreciate the social forces that influence how states conceptualize the value of nuclear weapons. Much of what Rublee says also applies to other weapons of mass destruction, as well as national security decision making in general. The nuclear nonproliferation movement has created an international social environment that exerts a variety of normative pressures on how state elites and policymakers think about nuclear weapons. Within a social psychology framework, Rublee examines decision making about nuclear weapons in five case studies: Japan, Egypt, Libya, Sweden, and Germany. In each case, Rublee considers the extent to which nuclear forbearance resulted from persuasion (genuine transformation of preferences), social conformity (the desire to maximize social benefits and/or minimize social costs, without a change in underlying preferences), or identification (the desire or habit of following the actions of an important other). The book offers bold policy prescriptions based on a sharpened knowledge of the many ways we transmit and process nonproliferation norms. The social mechanisms that encourage nonproliferation-and the regime that created them-must be preserved and strengthened, Rublee argues, for without them states that have exercised nuclear restraint may rethink their choices.

The Coming Crisis
The Coming Crisis

Author: Victor A. Utgoff

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780262710053

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How will continued proliferation of nuclear weapons change the global political order? This collection of essays comes to conclusions at odds with the conventional wisdom. Stephen Rosen and Barry Posen explore how nuclear proliferation may affect US incentives to confront regional aggression. Stephen Walt argues that regional allies will likely prove willing to stand with a strong and ready United States against nuclear-backed aggression. George Quester and Brad Roberts examine long-term strategic objectives in responding to nuclear attack by a regional aggressor. Richard Betts highlights the potential for disastrous mistakes in moving toward and living in a world heavily populated with nuclear-armed states. Scott Sagan explains how the nuclear nonproliferation policies best suited to some states can spur proliferation by others. Caroline Ziemke shows how the analysis of a state's strategic personality can provide insights into why it might want nuclear weapons and how its policies may develop once it gets them. And, Victor Utgoff concludes that the United States seems more likely to intervene against regional aggression when the aggressor has nuclear weapons than when it does not.

Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons
Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons

Author: Anne I. Harrington

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0820355631

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Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an aversion to loss, and other strong motivations and values. These findings about the limits of rationality have formed the basis of behavioral economics, an approach that has attracted enormous attention in recent years. This collection of essays applies the insights of behavioral economics to the study of nuclear weapons policy. Behavioral economics gives us a more accurate picture of how people think and, as a consequence, of how they make decisions about whether to acquire or use nuclear arms. Such decisions are made in real-world circumstances in which rational calculations about cost and benefit are intertwined with complicated emotions and subject to human limitations. Strategies for pursuing nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation should therefore, argue the contributors, account for these dynamics in a systematic way. The contributors to this collection examine how a behavioral approach might inform our understanding of topics such as deterrence, economic sanctions, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and U.S. domestic debates about ballistic missile defense. The essays also take note of the limitations of a behavioral approach for dealing with situations in which even a single deviation from the predictions of any model can have dire consequences.