Introduction

This is a book about the way nuclear and conventional deterrence interact with non-military factors in dyads involving a state with a small nuclear arsenal and its more powerful enemy. Contrary to a large body of deterrence literature, this book is primarily interested in small nuclear arsenals rather than big ones, or, more accurately, in relations between the two. Trying to move current deterrence theory further, it is asking a critical question: how does deterrence work between a country with a small nuclear arsenal and a more powerful challenger and what makes it work? Why another book about deterrence when previously published volumes already occupy a considerable space on the bookshelves? Most importantly, because there is a practical need for a broader theory of deterrence. While the existing body of literature includes many excellent books, it largely leans toward the analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence. It is often implicitly assumed that nuclear weapons are so important that, when they are present, other factors need not be studied. This is empirically unwarranted, in particular with small nuclear arsenals. The subject of this study has great importance for both theory and policy. As a matter of fact, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is not only recognized as one of the most worrying threats to international security, but also as one that is likely to continue in the years to come. It is hard to imagine that newcomers into the nuclear club will be able to skip the period of smallness. So far, every nuclear-armed country has had to live through such a period. Yet newcomers are also likely to be in somewhat hostile relations with one or another existing power. Apparently, at this point, it is necessary to ask, should the world be concerned? Will such asymmetric relations be stable? At least since the early Cold War, when the NATO stepped in that direction – mostly to save budgets from expensive conventional armament – nuclear weapons earned the reputation of great equalizers that could offset conventional weakness. Yet is it really so, particularly with small nuclear forces? The most recent crisis in Ukraine is likely to spark this debate again. More than a decade ago, John Mearsheimer recommended the young

Ukrainian state to keep its nuclear weapons to be able to live next to the much stronger Russia.1 Now Ukraine is hinting it may reconsider its decision to give up nuclear weapons. But is going nuclear likely to protect the country from Russian aggression or is it rather likely to invite it? The theoretical value of the subject matter is no less important. Voluminous theoretical literature has been written about deterrence since the heydays of strategic studies in the 1950s. Yet this literature is in many respects remarkably incomplete. First, the empirical and theoretical legs of deterrence literature are off-balance. Historically, the major body of literature was theoretical, rational choice driven, and prescriptive. It is widely recognized that more empirical studies would be useful to enrich this scholarship. Second, deterrence literature had for decades paid attention predominantly to the world’s most important nuclear deterrence dyad, namely the one between the United States and its NATO allies, on one side, and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, on the other. While such a bias is understandable and not unwarranted, it left the issues of small arsenals rather under-researched. The third, and perhaps the greatest, omission in the state of the art of deterrence literature is the aforementioned analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence. In an attempt to bridge this gap and move current deterrence theory further, this book develops a rich research framework that incorporates the military aspects of deterrence, both nuclear and conventional, together with various perceptual factors, international circumstances, domestic politics, and norms. This procedure is inspired by the method of comparative case studies that was pioneered in deterrence literature by Alexander George.2 It is primarily inductive and empirical, rather than deductive and theoretical, yet this does not mean it is atheoretical. In this sense it is not purely inductive as it starts with a range of theoretical concepts to structure its focus and allows systematic cross-case comparison. This framework is then used to reexamine five historical crises that brought two nuclear countries to the brink of war. Four of them represent deterrence successes, while one is a deterrence failure. Four cover crises between an emerging or recent proliferator and an established nuclear power. Furthermore, one crisis between the Cold War superpowers, where the relations of power were much less asymmetrical, is included for control. The structure of this book is as follows. Chapter 1 explains the rationale behind the need for a broader theory of deterrence, the book’s research strategy and the conceptual framework in which this study is situated. First, it introduces the vibrant scholarly debates about nuclear deterrence, about the role rationality plays therein, and the stabilizing/destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation on international relations. It also outlines the brief and, regrettably, incomplete debate about conventional deterrence. Building on this, the chapter identifies several omissions and biases in the available

literature that are relevant for this book, and outlines how these challenges are to be addressed. It argues that the weaknesses of various deterrence theories prevent this book from explicitly building on a single predecessor. Theoretical plurality is suggested as a solution, and a focused set of concepts is identified to guide this study. The concepts subsequently serve as a basis for the procedure of structured focused comparison. Chapter 1 then proceeds with a more thorough explanation of book’s case selection and the basic rules for cross-case comparison. The five subsequent chapters are devoted to empirical cases covering the history of hostile relations between the United States and China in the early 1960s; the Soviet Union and China in the late 1960s; Israel and Iraq in 1977-1981; the United States and North Korea in 1992-1994; and the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962. All these cases are severe crises, general deterrence failures, where deterrence mechanisms should be best observable. All the case studies are similarly structured. The first part sketches a historical narrative of the particular crisis. The context is outlined together with available details of the challenger’s planning and his sensitivities to the deterrer’s threats. The second part of each empirical chapter is devoted to a brief description of the case’s details related to the military aspects of deterrence, perceptional factors, international circumstances, domestic politics, and the role of norms, i.e., the concepts which structure focused comparison in this study. Chapter 2 outlines the debates about the option of destroying China’s emerging nuclear program that took place in the subsequent administrations of President Kennedy and President Johnson. Chapter 3 introduces the escalation of the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 that reportedly lead the Kremlin to contemplate solving the Chinese problem “once and for all.” Chapter 4, the single case of deterrence failure, reviews the details of Israeli destruction of Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor. Chapter 5 explores the Clinton administration’s responses to North Korea’s 1994 nuclear challenge, particularly with respect to U.S. debates of the “Osiraq option.” Finally, Chapter 6 presents a control case, reviewing the details of the Cuban Missile crisis with regard to the structure of this study. As a case where the deterrer operated a fairly large nuclear arsenal, it incorporates a vital control allowing cross-case comparison of the previous small-arsenal cases. Chapter 7 subsequently provides the synthesis of this research. Drawing on the empirical evidence, it first challenges the analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence. It shows a revealing pattern of nuclear deterrence failure which accompanies deterrence with small arsenals unless the deterrer is able to pass the threshold of the second strike. Following this, the chapter highlights the importance of conventional military threats for stabilizing smallto-big dyads in the small arsenal’s period of vulnerability. In this respect, it ascribes a decisive role to the largely omitted threat of conventional

retaliation. Apart from these two major findings, the synthetic chapter also formulates several tentative findings which deserve the further attention of future researchers.