Reducing or Exploiting Risk? Varieties of US Nuclear Thought and Their Implications for Northeast Asia

Abstract

This article argues that there is no monolithic “United States perspective” when it comes to theories of nuclear stability, either structurally or during a crisis. Instead, the propensity of American policymakers to use or invest in nuclear weapons is heavily conditioned by their political and ideological orientation. There has always been a rough ideological divide between nuclear hawks (those tending to favor military coercion) and doves (those generally opposing signaling threats of force) in the United States, but the past several decades have seen more diversity in the types of views and preferences expressed in policy circles about strategic stability and the (dis)utility of nuclear weapons. This article categorizes the various US perspectives on nuclear weapons as “arms-controllers”, who seek to reduce risks to strategic stability and view advanced conventional weapons as heightening the risks of nuclear use, “nuclear traditionalists”, who accept the logic of mutually assured destruction, “nuclear primacists”, who believe stability derives from nuclear superiority, escalation dominance, and the willingness to launch damage-limiting nuclear first-strikes, and “future-of-war” strategists, who de-center the role of nuclear weapons in US strategy in favor of a focus on precision-guided conventional munitions and delivery systems. These categorical distinctions, and which group holds the attention of policymakers, matters. The scope for US nuclear weapons use–and the propensity to engage in actions that trigger adversary nuclear considerations–narrows and widens depending on whose logic and preferences prevail both over time and in moments of crisis or shock.