Sueldo, Alejandro

English

Reliance on nuclear forces by nuclear weapons states evolved following the Cold War, and as the club of nuclear weapons states grew, the external military threats that nuclear weapons states faced demanded a reevaluation of how they rely on military capabilities to deter and use force against nuclear and nonnuclear threats. The ability of nuclear weapons states to supply adequate military capabilities across threats varied, conditioning balancing with varied self-help through deterrence and conflict.The research analyses this variance by comparatively examining Russian, American, and Chinese balancing and, using a historical process tracing approach, examines their articulation and implementation of policies determinative of supply and demand of and reliance on military capabilities with varying self-help.The findings indicate that, with or in the absence of external balancing, supply and demand policies convergent on adequate nonnuclear forces for nonnuclear threats are a necessary but insufficient condition of more efficient balancing with greater self-help.Whereas conventional deterrence by denial absent the threat to use nuclear forces is a necessary but insufficient condition of deterring a nonnuclear threat, conventional deterrence by punishment is a sufficient but unnecessary condition to deter a nonnuclear threat if the threat of nuclear use is retained, assuming the resolve to use nuclear forces.Incongruities between the articulation and implementation of policies diminish the credibility and effectiveness of balancing including due to reliance on the threat or use of nuclear forces with diminished utility to power through security and may increase adversarial gain through nonnuclear use of force due to inadequate nonnuclear forces.Military modernization to address nonnuclear force inadequacies increases the frequency with which force is threatened or used and may spurn an arms race among adversaries and with their neighbours, driving the security dilemma. Political strategies to defuse threats that induce reliance on nuclear forces are thus crucial.The analysis supports the link between military capabilities across threats and the anarchic system to help explain why during the years following the Cold War Russia and China underbalanced relative to the United States with diminished self-help.Arguments advanced limit the utility of nuclear forces and challenge the view that nonnuclear forces are inferior to nuclear forces for deterrence and conflict or incidental to limiting escalation and supporting deterrence, strategic stability, and arms control.<br/

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Nuclear Weapons States and Post-Cold War Military Balancing

https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/168048934/2021_Sueldo_Alejandro_Mart_n_1201025_ethesis.pdf

Nuclear Weapons States and Post-Cold War Military Balancing

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