Leveraging Latency: How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology (Disruptive Technology and International Security Series) - Hardcover

Volpe, Tristan A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0197669530 ISBN 13: 9780197669532

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Over the last seven decades, some states successfully leveraged the threat of acquiring atomic weapons to compel concessions from superpowers. For many others, however, this coercive gambit failed to work. When does nuclear latency--the technical capacity to build the bomb--enable states to pursue effective coercion?

In Leveraging Latency, Tristan A. Volpe argues that having greater capacity to build weaponry doesn't translate to greater coercive advantage. Volpe finds that there is a trade-off between threatening proliferation and promising nuclear restraint. States need just enough bomb-making capacity to threaten proliferation, but not so much that it becomes too difficult for them to offer nonproliferation assurances. The boundaries of this sweet spot align with the capacity to produce the fissile material at the heart of an atomic weapon.

To test this argument, Volpe includes comparative case studies of four countries that leveraged latency against superpowers: Japan, West Germany, North Korea, and Iran. In doing so, Volpe identifies a generalizable mechanism--the threat-assurance trade-off--that explains why more power often makes compellence less likely to work. This framework illuminates how technology shapes broader bargaining dynamics and helps to refine policy options for inhibiting the spread of nuclear weapons. As nuclear technology continues to cast a shadow over the global landscape, Leveraging Latency provides a systematic assessment of its coercive utility.

About this title

About the Author

Tristan A. Volpe is Assistant Professor in the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate School. He is also a Nonresident Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0197669530
• ISBN 13: 9780197669532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264