Rachel Whitlark’s All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation brings together two critical areas of international relations research: nuclear politics and the role of individual leaders. After the Cold War ended, many historians and political scientists turned their attention away from nuclear weapons—and even, for a few years, from international security more…
Tag: nuclear proliferation
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-40 on Sarkar, Plougshares and Swords
India’s nuclear program has been a source of fascination for historians and political scientists for decades. Perhaps more than any other case, there are deep disagreements over what motivated India’s nuclear pursuits. For some, India’s nuclear program was driven in large part by domestic political concerns.[1] Others emphasize Indian leaders’ beliefs about national identity or…
Roundtable 11-17 on Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation
Alexander Lanoszka’s Atomic Assurance is about the alliance politics of nuclear proliferation.[1] It centers on an elementary security relationship—between the quality of protection a country gets from others and its impulse to secure itself by arming. In this instance, the ‘protection’ is a guarantor’s policy of extended nuclear deterrence; the self-arming alternative is a nuclear…