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What happens to the foreign policies of states when they acquire nuclear weapons? Despite its importance, this question has not been answered satisfactorily. Nuclear weapons can facilitate six conceptually distinct foreign policy behaviors: aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise. This typology of foreign policy behaviors enables scholars to move beyond simple claims of \"nuclear emboldenment,\" and allows for more nuanced examination of the ways in which nuclear weapons affect the foreign policies of current and future nuclear states. The typology also sheds light on Great Britain's response to nuclear acquisition. Britain used nuclear weapons to engage in greater levels of steadfastness in responding to challenges, bolstering junior allies, and demonstrating independence from the United States, but it did not engage in greater levels of aggression, expansion, or compromise. The typology and the British case demonstrate the value of distinguishing among different effects of nuclear weapons acquisition, have implications for scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the role of nuclear weapons in international politics, and suggest avenues for future research.

In \"Beyond Emboldenment,\" Mark Bell develops a typology of six foreign policies- aggression, expansion, independence, bolstering, steadfastness, and compromise-that nuclear weapons might induce and specifies observable implications for each. Bell's article is an important contribution but suffers from two problems. First, these policies are not conceptually distinct and are very hard to empirically disentangle from aggression, the traditional focus of the nuclear emboldenment debate. Second, while the documentation of British bolstering is important, the evidence Bell presents in his case study suggests that aggression-at least of limited aims and over the short term-is precisely what nuclear weapons caused Britain to authorize. Bell's theory and evidence make a weak case for looking beyond emboldenment defined as aggression in assessing the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy.

The “democratic peace”—the regularity that democracies rarely (if ever) fight with other democracies but do fight with nondemocracies—is one of the most famous findings in international relations scholarship. There is little agreement, however, about the mechanism that underpins the democratic peace. Recently, scholars have shown that mass publics in liberal democracies are less supportive of using military force against other democracies. This finding has been taken to support the idea that the content of public opinion may provide one mechanism that underpins the democratic peace. Using a large-scale survey experiment, we show that mass publics in an authoritarian regime—China—show the same reluctance to use force against democracies as is found in western democracies. Our findings expand the empirical scope of the claim that mass publics are reluctant to use force against democracies, but force us to rethink how public opinion operates as a causal mechanism underpinning the democratic peace.

This article examines whether the quantitative literature on the causes of nuclear proliferation successfully identifies variables that explain existing patterns of proliferation or improve our ability to predict proliferation. Using extreme bounds analysis, cross-validation, and random forests, I examine 31 variables that the extant literature considers significant determinants of proliferation. While some variables perform better than others, most fail to offer strong explanations for existing patterns of proliferation. Even fewer improve our ability to predict proliferation. It follows that the existing quantitative literature on proliferation produces more tentative findings than scholars typically understand.

In an important article, McIntosh and Storey (2018) challenge the “acquisition-use presumption” that a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon would inevitably seek to detonate it in an attack. They argue that a terrorist organization with nuclear weapons has more attractive options than conducting a direct nuclear attack, that organizational politics mean that a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon would be unlikely to seek to detonate it, and that a nuclear attack would escalate the threats the terrorist organization faced. I argue that these arguments are ultimately unpersuasive and that the acquisition-use presumption remains a valid basis for theorizing about the likelihood of nuclear terrorism.

We examine the effect of nuclear weapons on interstate conflict. Using more appropriate methodologies than have previously been used, we find that dyads in which both states possess nuclear weapons are not significantly less likely to fight wars, nor are they significantly more or less belligerent at low levels of conflict. This stands in contrast to previous work, which suggests nuclear dyads are some 2.7 million times less likely to fight wars. We additionally find that dyads in which one state possesses nuclear weapons are more prone to low-level conflict (but not more prone to war). This appears to be because nuclear-armed states expand their interests after nuclear acquisition rather than because nuclear weapons provide a shield behind which states can aggress against more powerful conventional-armed states. This calls into question conventional wisdom on the impact of nuclear weapons and has policy implications for the impact of nuclear proliferation.

In an important article, McIntosh and Storey (2018) challenge the “acquisition-use presumption” that a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon would inevitably seek to detonate it in an attack. They argue that a terrorist organization with nuclear weapons has more attractive options than conducting a direct nuclear attack, that organizational politics mean that a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon would be unlikely to seek to detonate it, and that a nuclear attack would escalate the threats the terrorist organization faced. I argue that these arguments are ultimately unpersuasive and that the acquisition-use presumption remains a valid basis for theorizing about the likelihood of nuclear terrorism.