Nuclear balance and the initiation of nuclear crises: Does superiority matter?
| Author | Kyungwon Suh |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211067899 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Nuclear balance and the initiation
of nuclear crises: Does superiority matter?
Kyungwon Suh
Syracuse University
Abstract
The nuclear competition school, an emerging theoretical perspective on the political effect of nuclear weapons, argues
that a favorable nuclear balance can significantly reduce one’s expected costs of nuclear war and therefore affect the
interaction between nuclear-armed states, such as deterrence and crisis outcomes. This new perspective also presents
a wide array of empirical evidence demonstrating the significant effect of the nuclear balance of power on political
outcomes, thereby challenging the theory of the nuclear revolution, which argues that the nuclear balance of power
produces no meaningful effects on political outcomes because no state can escape costly nuclear destruction. Little
attention, however, has been paid to systematically exploring the effect of the nuclear balance on the initiation of
nuclear crises. This is surprising, given that observable factors, such as the nuclear balance, should have a powerful
effect at the crisis initiation stage because countries can observe military balance and assess the costs and benefits of
entering a crisis. This article tests a core argument of the nuclear competition school regarding the effect of the
nuclear balance on the initiation of nuclear crises. With original data on strategic nuclear balance, my statistical
analysis shows that having a superior nuclear arsenal than another nuclear-armed opponent does not lead to a reduced
likelihood of nuclear crisis initiated by the opponent. These core findings hold after conducting a series of robustness
tests with various measures of the balance of nuclear forces. They encourage us to reconsider the persuasiveness of the
nuclear competition school and offer implications for US nuclear policy and force size.
Keywords
deterrence, nuclear crisis, nuclear revolution, nuclear superiority, nuclear weapons
Introduction
Does the balance of nuclear forces produce significant
effects on international politics? For decades, a dominant
scholarlyanswer to this questionhas been no. According to
the theory of the nuclearrevolution, a theory that has shaped
our thinking about the effect of nuclear weapons on world
politics, the nuclear balance of power has no meaningful
impact on the outcomes of interaction between nuclear-
armed states. Thisis because achieving nuclear superiority
does not allow a state to escape a devastating nuclear
exchange (Jervis, 1984, 1989; Waltz, 1990). As a result,
the nuclearbalance of power does not matterfor important
political outcomes such as deterrence, and rational states
would have no incentive to pay attention to whether the
balance of nuclear forces favors their opponents.
Recent studies on nuclear weapons, however, have
argued that this core prediction of the theory of nuclear
revolution is inaccurate. According to them, states have
constantly attempted to cancel out a military nuclear
advantage their rivals possess and have sought to under-
mine the survivability of adversaries’ nuclear forces
(Long & Green, 2015; Green & Long, 2017; Green,
2020; Lieber & Press, 2006, 2017, 2020). Some research
also found that strategic nuclear superiority leads to bet-
ter bargaining outcomes (Kroenig, 2013, 2018). The
common argument of these studies is that winning a
nuclear competition produces significant benefits
because a favorable nuclear balance could substantially
reduce the expected costs of nuclear war. Thus, the bal-
ance of strategic nuclear forces is an important factor
determining several political outcomes, such as the
Corresponding author:
ksuh01@syr.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(2) 337–351
ªThe Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211067899
journals.sagepub.com/home/jpr
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