The Short Shadow of U.S. Primacy?

Abstract

Keir Lieber and Daryl Press’s recent article presents a compelling case for the rise of U.S. nuclear primacy in the twenty-arst century. The authors, however, fail to address what they maintain is a central question in international relations scholarship: “Does nuclear primacy grant the superior side real coercive leverage in political disputes?”1 Their passing discussion of the theme does little justice to the merit of the question, and as a result the article seems incomplete. In fact, the United States already enjoys primacy in the vast majority of its relations with other countries, but recent events suggest that this preponderance of power has not led to coercive leverage. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, nuclear primacy may cast a very short shadow on global politics. Evidence for this argument can be found in great power relations (characterized by Lieber and Press as near primacy) and in U.S. dealings with other states (true primacy). For example, the United States has gained little leverage against China and Russia even though it sits on the “cusp of nuclear primacy” today (p. 8). A 2006 Pentagon report warns of changes in China’s conventional strategy designed to shape its military into a “more modern force capable of aghting shortduration, high-intensity conoicts against high-tech adversaries.”2 Meanwhile, Russia is pursuing a war on insurgents in its periphery and has even used its energy supplies as a weapon against its neighbors. The U.S. inability both to slow China’s military modernization and its aggressive rhetoric toward Taiwan and to constrain Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian turn in Russia, as well as the United States’ failure to bring Correspondence: The Short Shadow of U.S. Primacy?