Our research challenges decades of assumptions about nuclear politics. Contrary to conventional wisdom that views possessing and abolishing nuclear weapons as irreconcilable, our data reveal something far more complex: Many people around the world embrace both views simultaneously. They support maintaining nuclear arsenals for deterrence, but they also desire their complete elimination. They endorse the taboo against using nuclear weapons, but they also approve of nuclear strikes under certain circumstances.
These apparent inconsistencies are not reflective of some small, confused minority. Instead, the majority of individuals we surveyed have at least some views on nuclear weapons that seem contradictory. Understanding what drives this paradox and how it plays out is essential for formulating policy to navigate an increasingly complex and dangerous nuclear landscape.
Our scholarship shows that public opinion about deterrence and disarmament is more flexible than many policymakers may think. Publics may be open to solutions that pursue multiple objectives at once, including squaring short-term security interests with long-term disarmament aspirations. As a result, public opinion may be less constraining than previously imagined, with the public’s preferences instead creating space for creative diplomacy on arms control and risk reduction.
link to open access paper https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592725103666
Despite the dominant view in the scholarly literature, we believe that it is important to build on the work of the minority of scholars suggesting some level of compatibility between nuclear deterrence and disarmament. We accordingly identify plausible mechanisms that could explain concurrent favorability toward both policies.
In contrast to the dichotomous [lol goofy word] approach, we develop a framework suggesting that preferences for deterrence and disarmament may not be mutually exclusive. We then provide observational evidence—from a new wide-ranging dataset of public attitudes from states across the globe—that this is the case. Our findings and data point toward a need for future scholarship on nuclear preferences to widen analysis beyond the oft-studied US and Western European cases. Put simply, scholars must delve deeper into the causes of complexity in nuclear preferences.
While both deterrence and disarmament aim to reduce nuclear dangers, much academic research and policy decision making appear to reinforce notional mutual exclusivity. However, in a longer view, deterrence and disarmament are hardly incompatible. Instead, heterogeneous preferences at the national and international levels can lead to political outcomes that embrace both.
As Maurer (Reference Maurer2018) has shown, motivations for reducing arsenals through arms control can include nuclear disarmament, deterrence stability, and military advantage. Oftentimes negotiators from opposing parties come to the table with different motivations, and seemingly divergent preferences are typical among officials within national governments.
At the substate level, surveys show that publics and elites may well hold preferences that can inform policy actions in line with both deterrence and disarmament (Onderco and Smetana Reference Onderco and Smetana2021; Smetana and Onderco Reference Smetana and Onderco2022). Negotiations between governments can also produce concurrency between disarmament and deterrence policies.
Most prominently, the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty itself embraces both views, allowing the five designated nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to possess arsenals that enable deterrence (Art. IX, para. 3) in exchange for long-term disarmament progress (Art. VI).
