Magazine Article - The Washington Monthly

Americans Aren’t as Averse to Using Nuclear Weapons as You Might Think

    Author:
  • Alex Caton
| Aug. 31, 2017

With U.S.-North Korea tensions heightened after weeks of fiery and furious rhetoric from President Trump and Kim Jong-un—pushing the world closer to nuclear conflict than it has been in decades—it’s worth taking a breath to consider what forces have kept the world’s nuclear-armed states from irradiating and annihilating each other in a shower of bombs.

Some explanations of nuclear non-use say that nuclear weapons have become, counterintuitively, a stabilizing force on the international system. Once the U.S. and Soviet Union both developed second-strike capability—the ability to respond to a nuclear strike with one of your own—deploying nuclear weapons in the first place became rather unattractive.

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For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Caton, Alex. “Americans Aren’t as Averse to Using Nuclear Weapons as You Might Think.” The Washington Monthly, August 31, 2017.

The Author

Alex Caton

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Scott Sagan

Scott D. Sagan

  • Current Affiliation: The Caroline S. G. Munro Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
  • Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1981-1982; Editorial Board Member, Quarterly Journal: International Security

Benjamin A. Valentino

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