4. Alliances Without Nuclear Weapons? (I)

Nuclear weapons have played a crucial role in America’s sense of power and influence in international politics since World War II. And this applies to how the USA has thought about entering into and maintaining the credibility of its alliances as well. Without the bomb, the USA might not have had the appetite for creating alliances in the late 1940s and early 1950s with so many countries, some half a world away.¹ Any thought of backing such commitments only with conventional forces may well have been quickly abandoned as politically infeasible and unsustainable. In addition, new archival material from allied countries about American nuclear strategy shows that US nuclear weapons have been central to how at least America’s most important allies think about their security, even if their relationship with extended nuclear deterrence is sometimes complex, ambiguous, distant, and multi-layered.² As such, we should be careful about the implications of deep reductions and any future marginalization of nuclear weapons in America’s posture for these alliances. This chapter focuses on how nuclear weapons have shaped some of the thinking about alliances. It examines the types of capabilities that were required in the pre-nuclear age to demonstrate alliance commitments. It discusses issues of alliance credibility, including vulnerability and cohesion, and how nuclear weapons have influenced these, conceptually and in operational terms as well.