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National Security
Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy
Why has American nuclear proliferation policy varied over time, and what explains its success or failure? Nicholas L. Miller argues that the United States’s behavior is linked to policymakers’ belief in a “nuclear domino effect”—the idea that proliferation in one state will encourage proliferation in others. Employing mixed methods, Miller illustrates how major twentieth century proliferation events encouraged this belief, opened up space in the bureaucracy for those who held it, and refocused policymaker attention on proliferation more broadly, with the result that the United States more vigorously pursued policies aimed at suppressing nuclear weapons development by other countries. Miller also explores when and why military and economic sanctions succeeded in preventing proliferation. He proposes that what efficacy these tools had lay in their deterrent effect. When actually levied, sanctions were generally ineffective, since the states that chose to develop nuclear weapons often lacked the economic and military ties that would make them vulnerable to such measures. Miller concludes that sanctions tend to be effective only against states that underestimate their impact.
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Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation
How can the United States best design its security commitments to discourage nuclear proliferation by its allies? Too much assurance, and an ally might be tempted into adventurism; too little, and an ally that fears abandonment might try to develop its own nuclear capability. Alexander Lanoszka explores this dilemma through a series of case studies, including a comparative study of Japanese and West German nuclear behavior, as well as analyses of South Korea and a number of other states that have received U.S. security guarantees. He shows that “in-theater conventional military deployments” are the most effective way to reassure allies, but that these alliances are ultimately limited in their ability to prevent proliferation. Partly because allies often begin a nuclear weapons program after their received security guarantees have frayed significantly, and thus commit to proliferation while "recognizing and accepting the risks and costs involved," Lanoszka concludes that alliances are "useful for preventing nuclear proliferation-related behaviors among their members but less useful for stopping a program once it has started."
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Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts
Why do rising states choose to cooperate with, or prey on, a declining power? Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson's “predation theory” proposes that rising states care not only about the degree of power held by a declining state, but also about the usefulness of that state to the advancement of their own security goals. If, for instance, a rising state needs support against other great powers and a declining state is able and willing to provide that support, the rising state will try to cooperate with the declining state—especially if the declining state is too weak on its own to pose a threat. However, if the declining state is so weak (or intransigent) as to be useless to the rising state, the rising state will try to take advantage of it. To support this theory, Shifrinson uses a set of archival, often revisionist, case studies, including cases from the beginning and end of the Cold War. He finds that the United States and the USSR, both desperately in need of allies after World War II, each worked to win the support of the weakened United Kingdom. In contrast, during the fall of the USSR a few decades later, a newly peerless United States took full advantage of the collapsing Soviet Union to expand its power through Eastern Europe and beyond—a conclusion that contradicts existing literature asserting that the United States cooperated with its weakened rival.
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