The terrible swift sword : US nuclear posture and foreign policy

This dissertation explains how and why US nuclear posture has changed from the late 1940s to the present. It argues that presidents reliably pursue aggressive nuclear postures to advance their ambitious foreign and security policy goals. In the course of advancing this main argument, it makes five additional contributions. First, it overturns the conventional or folk wisdom that Mutual Assured Destruction (or MAD) characterized US Cold War nuclear posture. In fact, the desire to escape MAD-not maintain it-was a major driver of aggressive US posture. Second, it upends the standard political science argument that US nuclear posture became aggressive as a result of military service rivalries or bureaucratic pathologies within the Pentagon. When it comes to nuclear posture, presidents carry far more weight than bureaucrats. Third, it fills an important gap in the existing literature. Barrels of ink have been spilled on US nuclear weapons policy and related topics.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• McDonnell, Timothy P.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vipin Narang.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124274

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124274