Leveraging Latency

In Leveraging Latency, Tristan A. Volpe explores how weak nations compel concessions from superpowers by threatening to acquire atomic weapons. 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. Including four comparative case studies and identifying a generalizable mechanism--the threat-assurance tradeoff--Volpe provides a systematic assessment of the coercive utility of nuclear technology.