Putin’s continuing threats to employ nuclear weapons against Ukraine have once again brought the visceral risks of atomic conflict to the fore. This public fixation on nuclear danger is quite apparent to me: as soon as people learn what I research, they immediately ask about the probability that Russia might use nuclear weapons. This is an understandable reflex - the prospects of nuclear use are, after all, quite grim. But just how stigmatized is nuclear use in reality? Nina Tannenwald has famously argued that a taboo has emerged against nuclear use, which she documents in several historical cases. But I’ve never found her argument that persuasive, in part because I think the cases of nonuse she highlights are entirely explainable by mechanisms outside of internalized normative prohibitions against nuclear weapons employment. Interestingly, she now appears to be hedging a bit, recently writing that the taboo may no longer hold to the same degree it did in the past. My aim in this post, however, is not to litigate the evidence presented in her book but rather to highlight some broader reasons for skepticism around the nuclear taboo. After all, if it is the case that the taboo is but a mirage, we should be far more concerned about future nuclear use. This does not mean nuclear weapons will be used in Ukraine - a highly improbable outcome for a variety of reasons. It does, however, mean that we should not be complacent about the threat of nuclear use in the future.
Perhaps the most obvious reason for skepticism is history. Before nukes were invented, strategic bombers were perceived as doomsday weapons. Theorists such as Douhet contended that the bomber would always get through and could obliterate entire cities with ease, causing horrible carnage and forcing nations to surrender within days. These views were shared by many, including American airpower theorist Billy Mitchell and British leadership in the Chamberlain government. The fear of the bomber was immense. And when the Spanish Civil War broke out, leading to the deployment of German Condor Legion bombers to Iberia, American leaders decried their use as barbarism. But then in 1941 America found itself at war, and what did it do? It mercilessly employed strategic bombers to level Japanese and German cities such as Tokyo, Hamburg, and Dresden. Moral talk is cheap during times of peace, but it is no guarantee that horrible weapons will be left in the armory when war breaks out.
Of course, some might quibble with this analogy. Perhaps nuclear weapons are different by virtue of their hold over the public imagination. Carpet bombing is distasteful, certainly, but it doesn’t grip the psyche in the same way that nuclear weapons, with their radiation and ecological destruction, do. But as plausible as this rejoinder might seem, surveys do not bear it out. For example, Americans, when polled, are quite willing to support nuclear strikes if these strikes represent the best way to protect American forces and achieve battlefield results, though all things equal they still prefer conventional weapons. But maybe it’s just Americans that are war-mongering hawks of Strangelovian extraction. Europeans might tell themselves this, but actually Americans are not even the most willing to support nuclear use, the French and Israelis are. Even in Britain, whose population is most circumspect about nuclear weapons use, a sizeable minority is perfectly willing to launch some nukes if this action would save British lives or substantially improve the UK’s odds of victory in war.
This seems, in part, to derive from the public’s lack of detailed information regarding what a nuclear strike would entail. In other words, voters simply cannot conjure up a mental image sufficiently horrifying to dissuade them from supporting the employment of nuclear weapons were it to advantage their country. On the one hand, this can conceivably be changed if leaders were to accurately depict the full effects of a nuclear blast. On the other hand, it suggests that the nuclear taboo is self-defeating because non-use has so divorced people from the realities of nuclear weapons as to render them quite blasé about it all. But even if people are properly informed, there are real concerns about external validity with these surveys. After all, priming people in peacetime with horrible mental images is one thing. But if an enemy state with which one is already at war has itself committed mass violence, it becomes less clear that peacetime sensibilities will prevail. After Russia’s systematic destruction of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and apartment blocks, coupled with its genocidal practices in Bucha and kidnapping of Ukrainian children, I personally wouldn’t shed too many tears if a large Russian maneuver formation was vaporized by a nuclear device (though perhaps that says more about me than the broader electorate).
Of course, none of this means that nuclear use is likely. For one, the best survey evidence finds that levels of public support for nuclear use attenuate as the full set of costs are highlighted. Moreover, it is ultimately not up to the public to decide whether to employ nuclear weapons. Policy elites will be the ones to make these decisions, and they tend to be better informed about nuclear weapons’ (lack of) utility and downsides - at least most policy elites are. At the same time, advances in nuclear targeting mean that nuclear weapons can now be employed in quite tailored ways, substantially reducing fallout and civilian deaths. As delivery systems become more precise and surgical, the major moral impediments to their use may also fall away, at least if we are to believe public survey data. Ultimately, there are many considerations that a leader would have to factor into a decision to use nuclear weapons. But the nuclear bomb is like Chekov’s gun. It’s been sitting on the table for awhile now, and it is bound to go off at some point. There is no norm or tradition that can stop it.