This event will be held on 9 November 2021, please do registration before the date
About this event
According to the Theory of the Nuclear Revolution (TNR), nuclear weapons have stabilized relations between great powers, making deterrence easier than compellence. This view is currently under attack. Recent work has documented Washington’s competitive approach to arms control agreements and the fragility of the nuclear stalemate. However, these critiques have not explained how policymakers could hope to extract coercive benefits from nuclear weapons. This paper revisits this question using a game-theoretic model. It shows that if the compellent state is able to bolster the credibility of its threat through standard techniques, i.e. burning bridges, probabilistic threats, or the rationality of irrationality, then compellence may succeed. However, greater military capabilities bolster coercion by increasing the risk of disaster, with first-strike capabilities being especially destabilizing. TNR was correct to warn about the risks of nuclear competition.
About the speaker
Alexandre Debs is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
His research focuses on the causes of war, nuclear proliferation, and democratization, and it has appeared in top journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and International Security. He wrote with Nuno Monteiro the book Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Proliferation (2017, Cambridge University Press).
Alexandre received a Ph.d. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and a B.Sc. in Economics and Mathematics from Universite de Montreal.
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