Nuclear Weapons as Shields

Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal
Additional contact information
Kyle Beardsley: Emory University, USA
Victor Asal: SUNY-Albany, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2009, vol. 26, issue 3, 235-255

Abstract: What security benefits do nuclear weapons provide to their possessors? After accounting for two potential selection effects, the empirical evidence from all international crises from 1945 to 2000 indicates that opponents of nuclear-weapon states demonstrate restraint in turning to violent aggression. Nuclear weapons, however, have little effect on overall crisis occurrence.The authors also explore the behavioral effects of nuclear-weapons programs and find that program states have a higher proclivity for crisis occurrence.

Keywords: deterrence; international crisis behavior; nuclear weapons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894209104550 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:26:y:2009:i:3:p:235-255

DOI: 10.1177/0738894209104550

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().