Realism at the Limits: Post-Cold War Realism and Nuclear Rollback

Abstract

Realists have been all but silent on the issue of nuclear disarmament, largely because giving up military capabilities seems counter-intuitive to realism's logic. The nonproliferation literature, on the other hand, has treated the insights of realist theory as failing to come to grips with the complex nature of a state's decision-making processes. The non-proliferation literature has produced rich empirical details of nuclear rollback; however, much of this literature lacks a general theoretical framework to provide generalizable explanations and predictions. This article advances two defensive realist hypotheses on state behaviour to explain nuclear rollback. It argues that states may voluntarily reduce their own capabilities in order to survive in an anarchic order when, in the absence of a secure second-strike capability, they make the rational decision to give up their nuclear arsenals. However, the absence of a secure second-strike capability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for nuclear disarmament. The absence of a dyadic existential threat is also a necessary condition for a state to give up its nuclear weapons. Together these two conditions, from a defensive realist perspective, are jointly necessary and sufficient for nuclear disarmament. The findings suggest that incentives for disarmament, from a realist perspective, can be made by taking into account the strategic interaction that states find themselves in vis-à-vis their environment and capabilities.