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Security Studies
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Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear

Weapons Development
Lisa Langdon Koch
To cite this article: Lisa Langdon Koch (2023): Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear
Weapons Development, Security Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2197621
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2197621
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Security Studies
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2197621
Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear Weapons

Development
Lisa Langdon Koch
ABSTRACT
Few military regimes have seriously pursued a nuclear weapons
capability, and only Pakistan has succeeded. I argue that military
regimes governing nonnuclear weapons states are likely to prefer
to invest in conventional rather than nuclear forces, even in the
presence of external security threats. I identify two domestic
sources of nuclear proliferation behavior in military regimes: the
resource distribution preferences of the military organization and
the need to manage the domestic conflicts that threaten the
regime’s political survival. I test this theory using case evidence
from Egypt, Brazil, and Pakistan. This study suggests that while
external conditions are certainly important, domestic factors also
have a significant impact on state security behavior.
Only one state led by a military regime has ever succeeded in acquiring
nuclear weapons. That state, Pakistan, experienced periods of both civilian
and military rule over the course of its nuclear weapons program—a
program started not by an army general, but by a civilian president. The
power and prestige nuclear arms confer are unmatched by any other
weapons system. Why, then, have military regimes shown so little interest
in acquiring these most powerful weapons? And why do military regimes
that do pursue a nuclear weapons option rarely succeed?
External security is a main factor influencing the pursuit of a nuclear
weapons capability. But domestic sources of state proliferation preferences
also intervene, affecting the wide range of paths states take toward
and away from nuclear weapons.1 Military organizations are one such
Lisa Langdon Koch is an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

1
Elizabeth N. Saunders, “The Domestic Politics of Nuclear Choices—A Review Essay,” International Security
44, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 146–84; Vipin Narang, “Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the
Bomb,” International Security 41, no. 3 (Winter 2016/17): 110–50; Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear
Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016);
Christopher Way and Jessica L. P. Weeks, “Making It Personal: Regime Type and Nuclear Proliferation,”
American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 3 (July 2014): 705–19; Jacques E. C. Hymans, Achieving Nuclear
Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Etel
Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

2 L. L. KOCH
source: they hold distinct interests and preferences that affect the way a
militarized state manages and prioritizes its security affairs.2 Whether, and
how, a state decides to allocate resources to a nuclear weapons program
is a core concern for the military organization. I argue that military
regimes, in which the military organization governs the state, thus form
a special subset of cases within the population of nuclear proliferators.
I theorize that military regimes governing nonnuclear weapons states are
likely to prefer to invest in conventional rather than nuclear forces, even in
the presence of external security threats. State militaries are complex organi-
zations that hold multiple, and often competing, preferences. Different indi-
viduals within a military organization are likely to hold different preferences
regarding the value of nuclear weapons. But the history of military regimes’
pursuit of nuclear weapons indicates that no military organization has believed
it can achieve acceptable levels of readiness without continued investment in
and development of conventional means. Though military organizations value
the promised deterrent benefits of nuclear weapons, militaries generally prefer
to invest in weapons they believe can be used in warfighting.
Further, military regimes, having come to power through violence, naturally
harbor serious concerns for their political survival. Conventional weapons
and equipment are both part of the military organization’s professional tool
kit for interstate war, and they lower the cost of maintaining internal order.
This preference for conventional capabilities will trade off with investment
in nuclear weapons programs. A nuclear arsenal might generate some popular
support for a leader, but it cannot be used to repress the domestic popula-
tion. Artillery, small arms, vehicles, helicopters, and soldiers, however, can.
If a military regime begins or inherits a nuclear weapons program, the
leadership’s need to secure the loyalty of regime officers affects the course
the program will take. When the military rules the state, officers form a
key constituency that can either support or threaten the regime. Military
regime leaders will be likely to distribute program resources among dif-
ferent service branches, buying officers’ loyalty at the expense of program
efficiency. This differs from the dynamic present in other authoritarian
regimes, such as personalist ones, in which weak institutionalization often
prevents domestic actors, such as the military, from intervening.
University Press, 2007); Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions,
and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build
Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996/97): 54–86.
2
Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of
Nuclear Weapons,” International Security 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 66–107; Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety:
Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Mark C.
Suchman and Dana P. Eyre, “Military Procurement as Rational Myth: Notes on the Social Construction of
Weapons Proliferation,” in “Needed Sociological Research on Issues of War and Peace,” special issue, Sociological
Forum 7, no. 1 (March 1992): 137–61; Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and
Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Jack Snyder, The Ideology of
the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984);
Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).
MILITARY REGIMES AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS 3
This analysis speaks to broader debates about the sources of state secu-
rity behavior. Past work has often relied on external security models to
explain state decisions regarding military capabilities.3 External conditions
are clearly important. However, alongside a growing literature,4 this study
suggests that domestic sources—in this case, military regimes’ interests
and preferences—also have a significant impact.
I begin by discussing the conditions under which the military organi-
zation could affect the course of a state’s nuclear development effort. I
then argue there are two important domestic sources of nuclear prolifer-
ation behavior in military regimes: the interests commonly held by military
organizations and fears for political survival. I test this theoretical logic
by examining leaders’ and officers’ preferences and actions in three states:
Egypt, Brazil, and Pakistan. Military regimes governed Egypt and Brazil
during most or all of the exploration or pursuit of a nuclear weapons
option; Pakistan, which acquired nuclear weapons, experienced both civilian
and military rule. I conclude with implications of the findings.
Domestic Sources of Nuclear Proliferation Behavior

An external threat to state security is a main factor causing states to consider
starting a nuclear weapons program.5 However, security alone is an insuffi-
cient explanation for the wide range of state proliferation behavior. Insecure
states may forgo nuclear weapons, pursue a nuclear arsenal, or chart an
ambiguous course of nuclear development, building a capability that could
remain peaceful or be weaponized in the future.6 In describing his theory
of state proliferation strategies, Vipin Narang argues that external factors are
of primary importance in shaping a state’s path, but the presence of a
domestic consensus favoring nuclear weapons acquisition will likely lead an
insecure state toward weaponization.7 Different factors, Narang acknowledges,
could contribute to generating or preventing the emergence of a consensus.
Under what conditions, then, could domestic actors affect the course of
a state’s nuclear development? In her recent review of the nuclear security
literature, Elizabeth N. Saunders argues that leaders decide whether to “widen
3
See, for example, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
4
See, for example, Caitlin Talmadge, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Dictators and Their Secret Police:
Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
5
Bradley A. Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Non-proliferation Regime,” Security
Studies 4, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 463–519; Benjamin Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives
and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” Security Studies 2, no. 3/4 (Spring/Summer 1993): 37–78; Kenneth
N. Waltz, “More May Be Better,” in The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, ed. Scott D.
Sagan and Waltz (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 1–40.
6
Itty Abraham, “The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (January 2006): 49–65; Ariel E.
Levite, “Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited,” International Security 27, no. 3 (Winter
2002/03): 59–88.
7
Narang, “Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation.”
4 L. L. KOCH
the circle” by inviting domestic actors into nuclear decision making.8 To

some extent, leaders have this ability, but they also face structural constraints
on whom they can let in—or keep out. Christopher Way and Jessica L. P.
Weeks describe one such constraint commonly found in personalist regimes
such as North Korea’s, arguing that weak institutionalization in those regimes
prevents domestic actors, such as the military, from intervening.9
Structural constraints on the military may also exist within democracies.
Prior to weaponization, the Indian government excluded the military from
nuclear development planning and policymaking. But this was not a singular
decision: a structural feature of the Indian state facilitated the exclusion.
Due to India’s foundational and enduring system of strict civilian control,
India’s military has historically been separated from most national security
decision making.10
If structural features of the state can predetermine which actors have
a seat at the table, India’s system of exclusion sits at one end of the spec-
trum of military involvement in decision making. At the other end is a
military regime, in which military participation is a defining structural
feature of state governance. As Narang and Saunders both note, military
organizations are likely to hold distinct preferences regarding nuclear
weapons.11 A rich literature on military organizational preferences, which
I discuss below, offers insights into the relationship between parochial
military interests and nuclear weapons doctrines and policies in nuclear
weapons states. However, our understanding of military preferences in
nonnuclear weapons states remains incomplete. When militaries come to
power, how do regime leaders think about the potential benefits and costs
of a nuclear weapons development effort?
Military Interests and Nuclear Pursuits

Given the potential benefits of nuclear weapons to a military government,
it is puzzling that few military regimes have pursued such capabilities, and
that all military regime pursuers but one failed to acquire them. Within the
regime type and military governance literatures, slightly different definitions
of what constitutes a military regime produce slightly different accounts of
qualifying regimes. Because my theoretical argument concerns how both
organizational interests and leaders’ fears for political survival influence
regime decision making, I follow Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica
Frantz in classifying regimes according to what organized group’s support
the leader most needs to hold onto power. That group’s interests will
8
Saunders, “Domestic Politics of Nuclear Choices.”
9
Way and Weeks, “Making It Personal,” 707.
10
George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 9–10.
11
Saunders, “Domestic Politics of Nuclear Choices,” 163; Narang, “Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation,” 128–29.
influence autocratic decision making.12 The Geddes, Wright, and Frantz

study, as well as studies that use slightly contrasting definitions of regime
type, all employ data originating from Geddes’s groundbreaking 1999 article.13
In Figures 1 and 2, I compare military regimes with civilian-led regimes
using three independent sources of data on nuclear weapons development.
All three coded nuclear weapons pursuit, while two sources also coded
nuclear weapons exploration.14 Explorers are defined as states that seriously
considered a nuclear weapons program, including conducting research rel-
evant to nuclear weapons, but did not make the political decision to begin
an effort to acquire nuclear weapons.15 Both countries and dates differ
among the three sources. Philipp C. Bleek’s 2017 report contains the most
up-to-date and thoroughly documented coding, although some judgment
calls remain, such as which programs rise to the level of nuclear weapons
exploration.16 Figure 1 shows that military regimes (light gray) have pursued
nuclear weapons at a statistically significantly lower rate than nonmilitary
regimes (dark gray). The results hold across all three source codings.
Figure 2 displays the rate of a wider range of nuclear weapons devel-
opment activity: both exploration and pursuit. Here, the Bleek coding
provides evidence that military regimes have both explored and pursued
nuclear proliferation at a statistically significantly lower rate than nonmil-
itary regimes. The Sonali Singh and Way coding indicates a statistically
equivalent rate of activity. This mixed result is mainly due to updated
information available to Bleek. Further, because analysts may disagree on
the exact point at which nuclear development activity becomes nuclear
weapons exploration, statistical analysis of “explore” coding involves more
uncertainty than “pursuit” analysis. This graph should thus be interpreted
cautiously and illustrates why a case study approach is needed to reveal
how regime-specific mechanisms affect proliferation behavior. We should
care most about the finding, robust to all three coding sources, that
12
Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A
New Data Set,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 2 (June 2014): 313–31.
13
Within the population of states that have explored or pursued the acquisition of nuclear weapons,
Geddes’s coding rules produce a similar list of military regime dates across datasets. Barbara Geddes,
“What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2
(1999): 115–44. See also Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012); Ferdinand Eibl, Steffen Hertog, and Dan Slater, “War Makes the Regime: Regional
Rebellions and Political Militarization Worldwide,” British Journal of Political Science 51, no. 3 (July 2021):
1002–23.
14
Pursuit only: Dong-Joon Jo and Erik Gartzke, “Determinants of Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict
Resolution 51, no. 1 (February 2007): 167–94. Jo and Gartzke’s data include the years 1939–92. Both
exploration and pursuit: Philipp C. Bleek, “When Did (and Didn’t) States Proliferate? Chronicling the
Spread of Nuclear Weapons” (Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, June
2017), which includes the years 1939–2016; and Sonali Singh and Christopher R. Way, “The Correlates
of Nuclear Proliferation: A Quantitative Test,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 6 (December 2004):
859–85. I use Singh and Way’s updated coding, which includes the years 1945–2011; see explanation
in Way and Weeks, “Making It Personal,” 711n13.
15
Bleek, “When Did (and Didn’t) States Proliferate?”
16
Interested readers can turn to Bleek’s report for a full account of how each source’s coding differs
from the others.
6 L. L. KOCH
Figure 1. Military regimes and nuclear weapons pursuit. Note: Whiskers indicate whether
point estimates are distinguishable at p < .05. The y-axis extends to 100 percent but is capped
for better visualization.
Figure 2. Military regimes and nuclear weapons exploration and pursuit. Note: Whiskers
indicate whether point estimates are distinguishable at p < .05. The y-axis extends to 100
percent but is capped for better visualization.
military regimes are significantly less likely to engage in pursuit; this is

the necessary activity for building nuclear weapons.
A list of military-led states that have either explored or pursued nuclear
weapons development appears in Table 1.17 Four of the seven states
Iraq is excluded from this list because its nuclear weapons exploration did not begin until the mid-1970s.
17
Although the Ba’ath Party had come to power in 1968 in a military-supported bloodless coup, by the time
nuclear weapons exploration began, the Ba’ath Party, not the military, had effective governing power in Iraq.
experienced periods of both military and civilian rule during some portion
of their nuclear weapons activity. Argentina’s nuclear weapons exploration
began in 1967, the year in which military rule returned; Brazil’s program
continued for several years after the 1985 transition to a civilian regime
before concluding; Taiwan’s program was suspended after the end of mil-
itary rule in 1974 and then briefly restarted in the late 1980s; and Pakistan
transitioned in and out of military rule during its nuclear weapons pursuit.
No military regime has acquired nuclear weapons without periods of civilian
governance. Of the ten states that, as of this writing, have reached the mile-
stone of developing a nuclear weapon, only one—Pakistan—was governed by
the military, and only during part of that state’s effort18 Moreover, a civilian
leader made the decision to start the program during a period of civilian rule.
Table 1. Nuclear weapons exploration or pursuit by military-led states.

State Military regime years Nuclear program status
Argentina 1966–73 Exploration: 1976–8319
1976–83
Brazil 1964–85 Exploration, possible pursuit: 1978–9020
Egypt 1952–67 Exploration: 1955–6721
Myanmar 1988–2011 Exploration: 2008–1122
Pakistan 1977–88 Pursuit, successful acquisition: 1972–9823
South Korea 1961–88 Pursuit: 1971–7924
Taiwan 1949–74 Pursuit: 1967–75 and 1987–8825
Saddam Hussein initiated nuclear weapons exploration as a powerful Ba’athist leader and de facto state executive,
and nuclear weapons pursuit as Iraq’s president. Military regimes in the 1950s and 1960s limited the nuclear
program to peaceful purposes (primarily medical and agricultural). See Braut-Hegghammer, Unclear Physics.
18
South Africa is the tenth state: Pretoria acquired, but later dismantled, a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.
19
Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Of Gauchos and Gringos: Why Argentina Never Wanted the Bomb, and Why the
United States Thought It Did,” Security Studies 10, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 153–85; Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition:
Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995).
20
Michael Barletta, The Military Nuclear Program in Brazil (Stanford, CA: Center for International Security
and Arms Control, Stanford University, 1997); Togzhan Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope: An
Evolving Identity” (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014); Carlo Patti and
Matias Spektor, “‘We Are Not a Nonproliferation Agency’: Henry Kissinger’s Failed Attempt to Accommodate
Nuclear Brazil, 1974–1977,” Journal of Cold War Studies 22, no. 2 (Spring 2020): 58–93; Carlo Patti, “Origins
and Evolution of the Brazilian Nuclear Program (1947–2011),” NPIHP [Nuclear Proliferation International
History Project] Research Updates, Wilson Center, 2011, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/
origins-and-evolution-the-brazilian-nuclear-program-1947-2011.
21
James Joseph Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt: Power, Ideas, and Institutions in International Politics” (PhD
diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001); Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States
Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); Solingen, Nuclear Logics.
22
David Albright and Andrea Stricker, “Myanmar Says Halted Nuclear Research Program: Verification
Critical,” Institute for Science and International Security Reports, 3 June 2011.
23
Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2013); Šumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability
in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998
but likely had a nascent nuclear weapons capability by the end of the 1980s.
24
Se Young Jang, “The Evolution of US Extended Deterrence and South Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions,”
Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 4 (June 2016): 502–20; Scott Snyder, “South Korean Nuclear Decision
Making,” in Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century, vol. 2, A Comparative Perspective, ed.
William C. Potter with Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 158–81;
Seung-Young Kim, “Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles: The South
Korean Case, 1970–82,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 12, no. 4 (2001): 53–80.
25
Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn, and Mitchell B. Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States
Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004); David Albright and
8 L. L. KOCH
In total, the data present an empirical puzzle: if militaries require weap-

ons, and nuclear weapons have no equal, why do military-led states appear
less likely to engage in nuclear proliferation? Why do we not observe
more military regimes seeking and acquiring nuclear arsenals for their
power, deterrent benefits, and prestige? The surprising fact that only a
single military-led state has ever succeeded in developing a nuclear arsenal
is reason enough to investigate further.
I use military organizational preferences, and the regime’s fear of
losing power, to explain this puzzle. I argue that two key domestic
sources of nuclear proliferation behavior emerge from the interests
of military regimes. When thinking about the benefits and costs of
nuclear weapons development, military regime leaders are influenced
by both the preferences of the military organization and the fears for
political survival that haunt those who have come to power through
violence. I will test the theory’s causal mechanisms by conducting case
studies. Using qualitative evidence to investigate the sources of pro-
liferation behavior in military regimes complements the quantitative
analysis.
Military Organizational Preferences
Due to competing organizational interests, military regimes may prefer

not to invest heavily in nuclear weapons development, despite the utility
a nuclear arsenal could provide. Under a military regime, the state military
continues to operate as a military organization rather than a personal
security service for the leader. Militaries have parochial interests and
organizational biases that shape their beliefs and preferences.26 A military
organization cares not only about the security of the state, which is an
external goal, but also about its internal goals, including increasing its
own power, resources, and survivability. Decision making within a military
organization is likely to focus on what is best for the military, even at
the expense of broader national interests.27 And different service branches
within a military organization may hold competing organizational interests
Andrea Stricker, Taiwan’s Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand (Washington,
DC: Institute for Science and International Security, 2018).
26
For classic texts on organizational biases, culture, and decision-making processes, see Herbert A.
Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization, 2nd
ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1957); James G. March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations (New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1958); Charles Perrow, Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, 3rd ed. (New York: Random
House, 1986); James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New
York: Basic Books, 1991).
27
For example, C. Christine Fair argues that Pakistan’s military regimes pursue organizational interests
even at a cost to state security, and even while believing India poses a “civilizational” threat to the
Pakistani state. Pakistan’s military views victory not as defeating India, but as retaining the ability to
continue fighting against India. Its actions, therefore, may appear irrational to outside observers. Fair,
Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 4–8.
that stem from their particular missions and programs. The observable
action a military organization takes may thus appear confusing or irrational
to outside observers who are unfamiliar with military biases and
structures.28
Scholars have applied insights from organization theory to the nuclear
context in several ways. This literature’s primary focus concerns how mil-
itaries might behave after acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Militaries possessing
nuclear weapons may be emboldened by the idea of a nuclear deterrent
and become more likely to engage in conventional attacks,29 may be more
willing to use nuclear weapons in a crisis,30 and may not act as good
custodians of the nuclear arsenal.31 In contrast, I use military organizational
preferences to explain military regime behavior before nuclear weapons
acquisition: why a regime might not move from nuclear weapons explo-
ration to pursuit in the first place, and why these regimes have rarely
been successful in acquiring nuclear arsenals.
State militaries require a fighting force of soldiers and the conventional
weapons and equipment that provide immediate practical utility for battle.
Nuclear weapons programs, on the other hand, are costly, long-term
endeavors that may never result in usable weaponry. Military leaders
consider trade-offs between investing state resources in nuclear weapons
development and in other, highly valued military systems and forces.
Whereas some in the military may prefer to develop nuclear weapons,
others will be skeptical, fearing that investment in such a costly program
will lead to the neglect of conventional weapons systems and equipment,
and that neglect would harm the military’s ability to wage war.32
28
See Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, on military doctrine; and Morton H. Halperin and Priscilla A.
Clapp, with Arnold Kanter, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2006), for a broad look at competing organizational interests among a range of foreign
policy issues. Matthew Fuhrmann and Michael C. Horowitz also note that militaries hold particular
preferences that relate to how leaders would view the costs and benefits of nuclear proliferation.
Although their unit of analysis is leader experience, not regime type, they draw a particular distinction
between leaders with rebel experience and leaders who served in a uniformed military. Fuhrmann and
Horowitz argue that because rebel leaders were personally involved in dangerous struggles for national
independence, if they become state leaders they prioritize the “invasion insurance” a nuclear deterrent
would provide. Members of the uniformed military, they argue, would not share this singular “focus
on independence” with rebels. Further, they argue that rebels are most concerned not about their own
personal political survival, but about protecting the hard-won sovereignty of the state. Indeed, rebel
leaders tend to be personally risk acceptant, having already been willing to place their lives in danger
for a cause. Fuhrmann and Horowitz, “When Leaders Matter: Rebel Experience and Nuclear Proliferation,”
Journal of Politics 77, no. 1 (January 2015): 74.
29
For example, the Pakistani army became emboldened to pursue a change to the status quo in dis-
puted Kashmir that resulted in the 1999 Kargil War. See S. Paul Kapur, “Nuclear Proliferation, the Kargil
Conflict, and South Asian Security,” Security Studies 13, no. 1 (Autumn 2003): 96–97.
30
Sagan, “Perils of Proliferation”; Alexey Arbatov, “Understanding the US–Russia Nuclear Schism,” Survival
59, no. 2 (April–May 2017): esp. 47–48.
31
Sagan, Limits of Safety.
32
In some cases, conventional systems may complement nuclear weapons development. See Bryan
Robert Early and Christopher Way, “First Missiles, Then Nukes? Explaining the Connection between
Missile Programs and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Korean Journal of International Studies 15,
no. 3 (December 2017): 359–90, which argues that mature military rocketry programs provide a scien-
tific-industrial foundation that may spur interest in developing nuclear weapons. However, I argue that
10 L. L. KOCH
By virtue of their professional training and experience, military offi-

cers—who lead military regimes—are experts in planning for war. Militaries
tend to view war as inevitable.33 But officers tend to believe a nuclear
war—one which would jeopardize the homeland—is unlikely.34 In preparing
for a conventional conflict, a military organization can draw upon past
experience and battlefield-tested weapons systems. The possible use of
nuclear weapons, however, introduces a high level of uncertainty into war
planning, as no one knows what the nuclear battlefield will be like.35
Although militaries have considered the possible offensive use of nuclear
weapons,36 such arms are not viewed as primarily warfighting in purpose.37
Pakistani general Mirza Aslam Beg put it this way: nuclear weapons
are not used “to win a war, but only to deter it.” 38 Indian general
Sundararajan Padmanabhan, during his tenure as chief of Army Staff, said:
“I do not see the weapon as a war-fighting one … the nuclear weapon is
also to keep in the basement.”39 Militaries know the value of a nuclear
deterrent, including greater freedom to pursue conventional expansionist
goals.40 But while some in a military will seek innovation, personnel can
become so specialized that they have difficulty envisioning and accepting
new systems and strategies.41 Militaries often privilege established programs
over new systems, not only because officers look to protect entrenched
interests, but also because they are reluctant to change what worked well
in the past. Even in the wake of India’s nuclear test, with a nuclear arsenal
military regimes are less likely to successfully pursue those interests. For example, I will discuss how
high-ranking officers in Argentina’s air force envisioned using nuclear warheads to tip the Condor II
missiles being developed in the late 1970s. But due in part to the distributional politics common to
juntas, the air force failed to convert nuclear weapons exploration to pursuit.
33
Sagan, “Perils of Proliferation,” 76; Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, 28; Samuel P. Huntington, The
Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1957), 65.
34
For example, one argument made by some within the US Navy of the 1950s was that investing in
nuclear forces would be “preparing for the war that seemed least likely to occur.” Harvey M. Sapolsky,
The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1972), 17.
35
Waltz, “More May Be Better,” in Sagan and Waltz, Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 15; Thomas C. Schelling,
The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 194–95.
36
Nina Tannenwald, “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-use,”
International Organization 53, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 433–68.
37
For example, in 2001, the General Staff of the Russian armed forces briefly convinced President
Vladimir Putin to cut funding for the strategic nuclear forces by half and reallocate the funds to con-
ventional forces. The military command believed nuclear war was unlikely, as opposed to regional or
local war. Alexei Arbatov, “Russia,” in Governing the Bomb: Civilian Control and Democratic Accountability
of Nuclear Weapons, ed. Hans Born, Bates Gill, and Heiner Hänggi (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), 62–64. See also Jack S. Levy, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical
and Historical Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly 28, no. 2 (June 1984): 219–38; John Lewis Gaddis,
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 110–15.
38
Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the
A. Q. Khan Network (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 74.
39
Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 79.
40
Fair argues that the Pakistani army views this greater freedom to act as the primary benefit of the
nuclear arsenal. Fair, Fighting to the End, 203.
41
Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, 28.
within reach, India’s military advisors argued that conventional missiles

would dominate the future battlefield.42 The Indian military was more
concerned with the scenario of conventional conflict with Pakistan than
the unlikely possibility of nuclear conflict with, or a surprise invasion
from, China. Officers advocated prioritizing investment in conventional
capabilities.43 Neither the Indian nor Pakistani military believed nuclear
weapons were a substitute for conventional weapons.44
This dynamic has been observed across the spectrum of military involve-
ment in governance. The Indian army and air force believed funding a
nuclear weapons effort would require resources to be reallocated from
conventional programs that officers viewed as indispensable.45 Most French
army and air force officers feared the pursuit of nuclear weapons would
lead to dangerous neglect of conventional weapons systems and equip-
ment.46 As Soviet nuclear capabilities grew, more French officers became
willing to support their nuclear program, but even after France became a
nuclear weapons power in 1960, the French military organization remained
concerned that further investment in nuclear weapons development would
divert funds from “needed conventional weapons.”47 And in the early 1960s,
the Israeli military, which was committed to an offensive military doctrine
that included planning for preventive war, joined nuclear skeptics in the
government, arguing that increasing nuclear program spending would harm
the conventional army and thus Israel’s military readiness.48
In those cases, the military organization had either some (France),
limited (Israel), or no (India) influence over nuclear weapons program
decision making. When the military organization governs the state, how-
ever, I expect military preferences to have a significant and direct effect.49
42
Ministry of Defense, Defense Plan 1974–75, 8 June 1974, P. N. Haksar Papers, 3rd Installment, Subject
File no. 296, 1975–76 (Ministry of Defense and Related Files 1971–76, 79), 9–56, Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library, cited as doc. 3 in Yogesh Joshi, “The Imagined Arsenal: India’s Nuclear Decision-
Making, 1973–76,” NPIHP Working Paper 6 (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, June 2015).
43
Joshi, “Imagined Arsenal,” 6.
44
I note that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities did embolden its army to pursue territorial gains,
but through conventional means. The army believed Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would deter India from
retaliating with devastating conventional force. See, for example, Kapur, “Nuclear Proliferation, the Kargil
Conflict, and South Asian Security.”
45
George H. Quester, “India Contemplates the Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26, no. 1 (January
1970): 16.
46
Samy Cohen, La monarchie nucléaire: Les coulisses de la politique étrangère sous le Ve République [The
nuclear monarchy: The backdrop of foreign policy under the Fifth Republic] (Paris: Hachette, 1986),
163n30; Bruno Tertrais, “France,” in Born, Gill, and Hänggi, Governing the Bomb, 107.
47
Pierre Billaud and Venance Journé, “The Real Story behind the Making of the French Hydrogen Bomb:
Chaotic, Unsupported, but Successful,” Nonproliferation Review 15, no. 2 (July 2008): 356.
48
Avner Cohen, “Nuclear Arms in Crisis under Secrecy: Israel and the Lessons of the 1967 and 1973
Wars,” in Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons,
ed. Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 108–16.
49
This structural difference sits at the core of the theoretical logic. Democracies, for example, may face
constraints generated by public opinion on nuclear weapons acquisition. However, whereas military
regime leaders must take military preferences into account, democratic leaders of nuclear-exploring or
-pursuing states have not tended to fold to public opinion, as nuclear weapons have rarely been a
salient issue in democratic elections. Even in the Swedish case, sometimes described as an example
12 L. L. KOCH
South Korea offers one example. Park Chung-hee’s military regime initiated
a nuclear weapons program, yet it appears to have prioritized conventional
over nuclear weapons, despite facing serious external security threats during
the 1970s. Complicating the security environment further, the United States
twice planned to withdraw American troops from South Korea, which
could have justified a serious South Korean nuclear weapons effort.50
But Park’s military regime never undertook that kind of effort, preferring
instead to use the nascent program as a bargaining chip to obtain more
advanced conventional arms and military technology from the United
States. Alliance politics51 and a desire to participate in the global econ-
omy52 are two possible explanations for the regime’s decision to back away
from its nuclear pursuits. An organizational approach offers another. Park’s
push for more advanced conventional weapons, and greater US investment
in the South Korean military, was in line with military organizational
preferences. Military officers within the regime held a range of views on
the nuclear project, but most believed the regime’s priority should be
strengthening South Korea’s conventional military capability to catch up
to, and eventually surpass, North Korea’s.53 Etel Solingen, who advances
the economic explanation, also argues that Park wanted to satisfy “his
home-grown military advocates of conventional deterrence.”54 Park’s focus
on conventional solutions was good politics in a military regime.
Political Survival of Military Regimes
Leaders in a military regime have serious concerns for their political

survival. These leaders, having seized power through violence, naturally
fear losing power in a similar fashion. Authoritarian leaders both repress
the domestic population and buy the loyalty of key individuals to try to
stay in power.55 I argue that these behaviors will affect nuclear weapons
efforts in military regimes in two ways. First, military leaders are likely
to prefer conventional systems that can be used both for repression and
war. Second, when they do spend on nuclear weapons research and
of public pressure causing the end of nuclear weapons exploration, multiple factors influenced the
decision to change course, including a lack of consensus within parliament, changing international
norms, the security environment, and domestic politics. See Thomas Jonter, The Key to Nuclear Restraint:
The Swedish Plans to Acquire Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
50
Alexander Lanoszka, Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2018), 110–31.
51
Lanoszka, Atomic Assurance.
52
Solingen, Nuclear Logics.
53
Kim, “Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit,” 60–61. Most officers also prioritized maintaining the
alliance with the United States.
54
Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 91.
55
Ronald Wintrobe, “The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship,” American
Political Science Review 84, no. 3 (September 1990): 849–72; Ronald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of
Dictatorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Eric A. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military
Coups and Governments (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977).
development, they are likely to spread the wealth among different service
branches, buying loyalty at the expense of program speed and success.
First, military regimes face both external threats to the state and internal
threats to the regime itself. Challenges to the regime’s ability to govern
could include not only the threat of coup but also insurgency, civil war,
or mass protests. The coup-proofing literature, which considers security
behavior across the range of authoritarian regimes, provides a foundation
from which to theorize about security behavior within military regimes
as a subset of authoritarian regimes. Recent work by scholars such as
Caitlin Talmadge and Hicham Bou Nassif demonstrates that leaders of
authoritarian regimes employ a variety of military practices to mitigate
internal threats. A leader who fears being overthrown may use strategies
intended to limit the ability of rivals within the military to stage a suc-
cessful coup, weakening conventional military capabilities in the process.56
However, a one-sided response is rare. Most authoritarian leaders will not
simply incapacitate the military to eliminate the threat of coup. Instead,
they will adopt measures according to what they perceive to be the most
salient concerns regarding both the internal and external security envi-
ronments. That response may either improve or damage military
capabilities.57
Evidence indicates that military regimes engage in more instances of
violent repression than other types of authoritarian regimes, such as per-
sonalist or single-party dictatorships. Military regimes are led by officers
who are familiar with and have been trained in the instrumental use of
violence. They come to power with an established organizational capacity
for conducting repression.58 Often, the military organization will then take
on policing functions, doing the work of maintaining internal order alone
or alongside police officers, or subsuming the police within the military
forces. Using the entire military for repressive activities is a common
strategy of military regimes, as then no sector of the military can occupy
a moral high ground from which to condemn corrupt regime leadership
in a bid for power.59
56
Talmadge, Dictator’s Army; Hicham Bou Nassif, Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
57
Talmadge, Dictator’s Army, 18–32; Greitens, Dictators and Their Secret Police; Todd S. Sechser and
Elizabeth N. Saunders, “The Army You Have: The Determinants of Military Mechanization, 1979–2001,”
International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 2 (June 2010): 481–511; see also Wintrobe, Political Economy of
Dictatorship; Wintrobe, “Tinpot and the Totalitarian”; Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics; John B. Londregan
and Keith T. Poole, “Poverty, the Coup Trap, and the Seizure of Executive Power,” World Politics 42, no.
2 (January 1990): 151–83.
58
Christian Davenport, “State Repression and the Tyrannical Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 4
(July 2007): 485–504; Abel Escribà-Folch and Joseph Wright, “Dealing with Tyranny: International
Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers,” International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 2 (June
2010): 335–59.
59
For example, see Patricia Weiss Fagen, “Repression and State Security,” in Fear at the Edge: State Terror
and Resistance in Latin America, ed. Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garretón
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 39–71, on Latin American military regimes; Greitens,
14 L. L. KOCH
I argue that when military regime leaders encounter resource trade-offs

between nuclear and conventional spending, they are especially likely to
prioritize investing in familiar, conventional resources that also support
repressive activities.60 A large, standing army equipped with artillery, small
arms, vehicles, and helicopters serves state interests and military goals if
the state becomes involved in a territorial dispute.61 A well-equipped army
also increases the regime’s capacity to counter domestic threats such as
protest or insurgent movements that may arise. Nuclear weapons, on the
other hand, are impractical tools for conducting domestic repression.
Concerns for political survival should balance against or outweigh a mil-
itary regime’s interest in nuclear weapons as a source of prestige.
Second, when a military regime decides to initiate nuclear weapons
exploration or pursuit, the politics of staying in power affects the course
of the effort. Military regime leaders are likely to conduct the effort by
prioritizing distributional politics over efficiency, spreading program
resources among different branches of the military. Compared to a cen-
tralized program, such a practice appears haphazard and even incompetent.
However, it serves an important purpose in a military regime: to buy the
loyalty of key officers throughout the military organization.
Some authoritarian regimes face few constraints from within. In per-
sonalist regimes, the military organization exists as a weak, co-opted
institution. The dictator may desire nuclear weapons as a substitute for
building a strong conventional military that could threaten the regime.
But in military regimes, the military organization contains elites who can
constrain the regime leader.62 Regime leaders need this elite support—key
officers within the different service branches—to retain political power.
This is true whether the regime is led chiefly by a single officer who
appoints loyalists to positions of power, or by a junta. In a junta, a col-
legial body of officers commanding the different service branches governs
the regime. Juntas governed Myanmar, Pakistan, Argentina, and Brazil
during periods of nuclear weapons exploration or pursuit.
Dictators and Their Secret Police, on military police organizations; and Courtenay R. Conrad, Jillienne
Haglund, and Will H. Moore, “Disaggregating Torture Allegations: Introducing the Ill-Treatment and
Torture (ITT) Country-Year Data,” International Studies Perspectives 14, no. 2 (May 2013): 199–220, for
data disaggregating the identity of state agents of repression. See Erica Chenoweth and Maria J.
Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011), for examples of soldiers who refuse to conduct domestic repression; and Bou
Nassif, Endgames, for responses to Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt (soldiers unwilling to repress) and
Syria (soldiers willing to repress).
60
Geddes goes further, arguing that military officers value the unity and capacity of the military orga-
nization more than they value staying in power; see Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building
and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 26.
61
Paul K. Huth, Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1996).
62
Way and Weeks, “Making It Personal,” 709–10; Talmadge also discusses the importance of institutional
strength in Dictator’s Army.
This has important implications for a nuclear weapons effort in a mil-

itary regime. Because each service branch has its own identity and interests,
interbranch competition for resources and prestige generates bureaucratic
clashes that can impede nuclear weapons program development.63 Nuclear
weapons are only one component of a military establishment. A military
made up of nuclear missiles, or nuclear gravity bombs to be dropped from
aircraft, would essentially be a rocketry force or an air force, something
armies and navies would vigorously oppose. Based on their roles, missions,
and existing programs, different service branches may perceive nuclear
weapons as either helpful or harmful to their interests.
When a compromise must be reached, regime leaders may settle for an
option that allows each service to pursue specific organizational interests
but sacrifices sound planning.64 The rivalries among services may divide
a military regime’s attention and dilute its focus on state security, as regime
leaders allocate program resources according to good politics rather than
good policy. Instead of cooperating on a centralized nuclear project, each
service branch may receive its own piece of the nuclear pie, as occurred
in Brazil and in the militarized Japanese effort of the 1940s. Fragmented,
service-branch-specific programs are generally insulated from oversight
and run the risk of being mismanaged, or even being used by officers as
a slush fund. For example, a portion of the nuclear program funding
allotted to the Brazilian air force was instead used to redecorate com-
manders’ base offices.65
In Argentina, the military regime focused not on external threats to
the state, but on internal security threats to the regime they believed were
posed by left-wing insurgency and “subversion.” The junta, which described
their fight against Argentina’s internal enemies as World War III, priori-
tized conventional capabilities such as helicopters and heavy artillery for
repression and counterinsurgency. Further, each military battalion devel-
oped a parallel structure for conducting illegal state violence. As Patricia
Weiss Fagen writes, “The apparatus of disappearance was a top priority
in military strategy.”66 Such a state of siege required spending on conven-
tional arms and equipment.
Another priority of the Argentine military regime was selling arms to,
and conducting foreign interventions in, other Latin American states that
the junta believed were also under siege.67 The regime had observed that
63
Sagan, “Perils of Proliferation,” 73.
64
As Jacques E. C. Hymans argues in Achieving Nuclear Ambitions, implementation is an understudied
but vitally important aspect of nuclear weapons efforts.
65
Rodrigo Mallea, Matias Spektor, and Nicholas J. Wheeler, eds., The Origins of Nuclear Cooperation: A
Critical Oral History of Argentina and Brazil (Washington, DC, and Rio de Janeiro: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and FGV, 2015), 116–17.
66
Fagen, “Repression and State Security,” in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge.
67
David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History, and Its Impact (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993); Donald C. Hodges, Argentina’s “Dirty War”: An Intellectual Biography
16 L. L. KOCH
nuclear weapons had not helped the United States stem the tide of revo-
lution in Latin America. The lesson Argentina’s military leaders learned
was that they needed a conventional approach.68
A nuclear effort was thus pursued only on the sidelines, and most
successfully by the navy, which held the vice presidency within the junta
and was able to limit the army’s meddling in the former’s budget and
programs.69 The navy autonomously operated a nuclear propulsion program
for possible use in submarines. When the Argentine air force began explor-
ing a nuclear weapons option on its own, air force scientists ran up against
the practical difficulty of procuring fissile material for the weapons. The
lack of any cooperation or coordination among the rival service branches
was a key factor preventing the air force from overcoming this obstacle.
It turned neither to the navy, nor the National Atomic Energy Commission,
which was strongly associated with the navy, for assistance, but chose
instead to abandon the isolated effort.70
I do not claim that all militaries uniformly hold this full set of orga-
nizational preferences. But when the military governs the state, I expect
many or all of these preferences and biases to influence strategic decision
making at the highest political levels. If the theory is correct, I expect to
find the following. First, military regimes will be hesitant to start a nuclear
weapons effort. Second, military regimes that do explore or pursue nuclear
weapons will not prioritize the nuclear weapons effort over investment in
conventional forces. They will prefer to develop conventional forces for
warfighting and domestic repression, even in the presence of significant
external security threats. Strategic interests will compete with internal
regime interests. Third, military regimes will be unlikely to transition from
exploration to actual pursuit. Military organizations will struggle to reach
a consensus regarding the value of a full nuclear weapons program.
Regimes will administer nuclear weapons research and development efforts
inefficiently, distributing program resources to buy regime officers’ loyalty.
I test the theory by studying nuclear weapons preferences and activity
in Egypt, Brazil, and Pakistan. I adopt a case study approach because
testing the theoretical mechanisms requires investigating internal regime
preferences. However, this approach has limitations. Cases of nuclear explo-
ration and pursuit are rare, and are conducted under conditions of extreme
secrecy. I consider evidence with healthy skepticism and draw conclusions
carefully. In each case, I note other possible explanations, such as the
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991).

68
Hodges, Argentina’s “Dirty War,” 124.
69
Etel Solingen, “Growth and Decline of the Military-Industrial Complex: The Cases of Argentina and
Brazil,” International Politics 35, no. 1 (1998): 31.
70
Eduardo Barcelona and Julio Villalonga, Relaciones carnales: La verdadera historia de la construcción y
destrucción del misil Cóndor II [Carnal relations: The true story of the construction and destruction of
the Condor II missile] (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1992), 220–23.
threat environment, for a regime’s nuclear weapons preferences. I use both

primary sources, such as government documents and first-person accounts,
and secondary sources, including scholarly works and agency and research
reports.
Egypt and Brazil were governed by military regimes during most or all
of their exploration or pursuit of a nuclear weapons option, and both
faced serious economic troubles throughout. Though both possessed the
scientific and technological capacity to support nuclear weapons develop-
ment, neither acquired nuclear weapons. I selected Egypt and Brazil to
incorporate variation on other factors that could influence nuclear weapons
development. Brazil’s military regime was structured as a junta; Egypt’s
was not. Egypt faced more serious security concerns than Brazil, including
the emergence of a nuclear-armed regional rival. And Egypt’s program
was conducted before the legal establishment of the nonproliferation
regime, whereas Brazil’s program began afterward. The Brazil case shows
how military regimes focus on internal threats to the regime to the det-
riment of the nuclear effort. Lacking organization-wide support for such
a path, and needing to maintain power at home, the junta distributed
nuclear resources across the service branches, generating a set of parochial
programs that would help secure officers’ loyalty. The Egypt case shows
how an insecure military regime leader must cater to the military orga-
nizational preference for investing in military personnel and conventional
weaponry, even when the leader is interested in a nuclear weapons option.
Neither regime was able to advance program development or generate a
sufficient military consensus to successfully transition to pursuit.
Pakistan was governed by both civilian and military regimes during its
nuclear weapons pursuit. The country also faced significant economic
constraints, and ultimately did acquire nuclear weapons. I selected Pakistan
to examine within-case variation on the key explanatory variable of mil-
itary governance. Pakistan also offers a hard case for an argument based
on internal regime politics and preferences, as the Indo-Pakistani rivalry
strongly affects Pakistan’s security behavior. The Pakistan case shows that
military regimes were hesitant to explore a nuclear weapons option and
preferred investing in conventional forces compared to civilian leaders. A
civilian leader initiated the nuclear weapons program and insulated it from
military interference. A general who supported nuclear weapons develop-
ment led the subsequent military regime that inherited the program; he
left the centralized program in the civilian sphere, buying time to overcome
the military’s organizational resistance to investing in nuclear weapons.
18 L. L. KOCH
Egypt: Exploration, 1955–67

Egypt’s nuclear exploration presents a something of a hard test of the
argument that military organizational preferences will bias military regimes
against nuclear weapons acquisition. During the years spent exploring the
nuclear option, Egypt experienced both a threatening external security
environment and the public revelation of rival Israel’s likely nuclear weap-
ons pursuit; either factor could have justified an Egyptian nuclear weapons
program. Moreover, Egypt’s leader at the time, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was
personally interested in the potential for an Egyptian nuclear arsenal, and
the negotiations that would ultimately produce the Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) would not begin until mid-
1965. Why, then, did Egypt’s military regime not move from exploration
to pursuit?
In 1952, Nasser and a small group of his fellow army officers, who led
a movement called the Free Officers, seized power in a military coup.
Nasser faced multiple challenges to his hold on power during the first
two years of this new military regime; rivals within the Egyptian military
attempted several coups. Because of this ongoing threat from within, Nasser
engaged in coup-proofing measures throughout his time in office. After
appointing military officers to desirable positions throughout the govern-
ment, among other measures, Nasser had established a strong base of
power within the military by the mid-1950s.71 Though Nasser took several
steps intended to present to the public the appearance of a less militarized
regime, in practice, the military remained the regime’s singular source of
support.72 Primary decision making and the executive functions of the
Egyptian state rested with Nasser and the military.
During the mid-1950s, both Nasser and his head of the military, Field
Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer, were interested in nuclear weapons, as were
several Egyptian scientists who held positions of influence. What the
regime most needed to achieve its goals, however, was a conventional
warfighting capability: artillery, equipment, transports, aircraft, and armed
soldiers. From the beginning, Nasser planned to return foreign-held ter-
ritory to Egyptian control, and thus required a strong, conventionally
armed military. Indeed, a desire within the pre-1952 Egyptian military to
reestablish a professional military organization and then liberate Egypt
71
Bou Nassif, Endgames, 60–76.
72
For example, Nasser and several officers holding prominent government roles formally retired from
active military duty, but the retirements were merely symbolic. In another symbolic gesture, Nasser,
who had denounced party competition as divisive and corrupt, created a civic organization that he
termed a political party. This new organization, led by military officers, worked mainly to marginalize
domestic opponents while building popular support for the regime. See Bou Nassif, Endgames, chap.
2; Raymond William Baker, Egypt’s Uncertain Revolution under Nasser and Sadat (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1978), 48–51; Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle
East, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004).
from foreign occupation had been an important driver of military support

for the Free Officers’ coup.73 Foreign policy triumphs such as the nation-
alization of the Suez Canal—which, once the international crisis that
followed played out, ended in success for Egypt despite its military infe-
riority—bolstered Nasser’s political legitimacy at home and dampened
opposition from within the military.74
Nasser did not leverage his newly consolidated power to pursue nuclear
weapons, despite his personal interest. An early nuclear program began
in 1955. But when Ibrahim Hilmi Abdel Rahman, the scientist who served
as secretary general of the governing council of Egypt’s Atomic Energy
Establishment (AEE), asked the army and intelligence officers on the
council how he should structure the program, he was told to focus on
peaceful nuclear energy while allowing for the option to move toward
weapons applications.75 That same year, Israel attacked Egyptian army
headquarters in Gaza, turning Egypt’s attention toward Israel as a key
rival. Still, the nuclear program was not made a priority.76
Interestingly, even when Egypt learned in the late 1950s that Israel was
seeking nuclear weapons, Nasser did not decide to move from exploration
to pursuit. In December 1960, when Israel’s clandestine nuclear facility at
Dimona was revealed to the world, Nasser publicly announced that Egypt
would acquire the bomb at any cost. Some AEE scientists agreed with
this response, believing that Egypt’s nuclear exploration should shift to
weapons pursuit.77 Nasser’s actions, however, told a different story: while
the Egyptian government began paying closer attention to nuclear activities,
the AEE’s nuclear program continued without either accelerating the pace
of development or shifting toward weapons-related work. The program
still had no nuclear reactor, and the regime did not even fully fund work
on fuel fabrication or metallurgy, necessary capabilities before Egypt would
be able to process and enrich uranium.78
Progress continued on pace, following existing plans. In the mid-1950s,
Egypt had contracted with the Soviet Union to build a nuclear research
center outside Cairo; work had begun in 1956. The two-megawatt light
water research reactor at the Inchas Nuclear Research Center, fueled with
10 percent enriched uranium, went critical in February 1961.79 The regime
appeared to be in no hurry to progress further toward either an industrial
73
Hazem Kandil, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso Books, 2012), 24–25.
74
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 142–43; Bou Nassif, Endgames, 65–66.
75
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 146; Philipp C. Bleek, “Does Proliferation Beget Proliferation? Why Nuclear
Dominoes Rarely Fall” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2010), 120–21.
76
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 142–43, 150.
77
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 154–55; Bleek, “Does Proliferation Beget Proliferation?,” 111.
78
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 154–56. This was not the only empty promise Nasser made; he also stated
he would send four million soldiers to tear down Dimona. Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms, 109.
79
Research Reactors in Africa (Vienna, Austria: IAEA, November 2011), https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/
files/18/09/research-reactors-in-africa.pdf; Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms, 110; Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt.”
20 L. L. KOCH
nuclear energy capacity or a weapons capacity. Egypt had an option for

another nuclear reactor contract, this time from West Germany, but did
not immediately respond; six months passed, and the German government
still received no answer.80 By 1963, nuclear interest within the Egyptian
regime was fading. A small, special projects group within the military had
spent some time in the early 1960s looking into the future development
of missile systems and “exotic” weaponry—mainly biological and radio-
logical, but perhaps nuclear as well. However, even this small effort had
now concluded, and military interest in nuclear weapons remained limited.81
Over the next four years, the nuclear program continued to plod along,
punctuated occasionally by periods of activity. The head of the AEE, a
scientist and high-ranking government official, was a vocal supporter of
the nuclear program but, due to internal political conflict within the AEE
between 1963 and 1966, the agency failed to present a unified position
to regime leadership. Nasser still maintained interest in the program, trying
unsuccessfully to generate interest in a pan-Arab nuclear weapons program.
In the mid-1960s, Nasser is believed to have personally sought nuclear
assistance from the Soviet Union and China, but only minor assistance
with radiochemistry followed. Later, as Egypt’s economy was in decline in
1966, Cairo asked Washington for a $100 million loan to buy a Westinghouse
nuclear plant. Washington declined, and the deal fell through.82
Why did Nasser not do more to move Egypt toward a nuclear arsenal?
I argue that two key reasons drove him to invest instead in conventional
forces and weapons. First, Nasser needed to cater to military interests, as
his source of power and political legitimacy during this period flowed
through the military organization. Between 1960 and 1965, while the AEE’s
nuclear program languished, Nasser increased defense expenditures by a
factor of seven.83 He sought to secure officers’ loyalty in multiple ways,
such as by procuring advanced conventional weaponry from the Soviet
Union. Bou Nassif writes, “Nasser said explicitly that he was channeling
better equipment to the military so officers wouldn’t ‘lose faith in the
government.’”84 Interservice rivalry increased with the 1964 restructuring
of the armed forces, and each service began to pursue its own strategic
interests. During these years, Nasser allocated vast funds not to the nuclear
effort, but to the expansion and staffing of the army, a missile development
program, and a domestic aircraft production program. By 1965, the armed
forces numbered 150,000–180,000.85
80
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 157.
81
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 164–65.
82
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,”159–69.
83
Bou Nassif, Endgames, 68.
84
Bou Nassif, Endgames, 68.
85
George W. Gawrych, “The Egyptian High Command in the 1973 War,” Armed Forces & Society 13, no.
4 (Summer 1987): 535–38; Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt.”
Indeed, throughout the 1960s, while some within the military organi-
zation approved of a nuclear program, many officers viewed it as a “stra-
tegic chimera” that would consume resources better spent strengthening
Egypt’s security through established means.86 It appears that many within
the regime, including Nasser’s advisor and confidant Mohamad Heikal,
did not believe Israel would actually use its nuclear weapons. Later, when
Israeli conventional military capabilities grew larger than Egypt’s, the
Egyptian regime still did not seek a nuclear arsenal. Some officers argued
that arming missiles with conventional warheads would allow Egypt to
close the gap.87 Most of the regime’s officers wanted conventional weapons,
and Nasser prioritized those systems and programs.88
Second, Nasser needed a large, conventionally armed military to pursue
the foreign policy goals he believed would serve Egypt’s interests—and
his own. Between 1961 and 1967, Nasser committed Egyptian troops to
several conventional conflicts, but his intervention in the Yemeni civil
war, known as “Nasser’s Vietnam,” incurred the largest costs. More than
50,000 Egyptian soldiers, comprising approximately one-third of the army,
were deployed to Yemen.89 Even three years after the 1964 army expansion,
when rising Syrian-Israeli tensions prompted Nasser to send Egyptian
troops to the Sinai, he had to supplement active-duty forces by calling
up 80,000 soldiers on reserve duty and transferring active units from
Yemen.90
After the 1967 Six-Day War ended in defeat for Egypt and its allies,
Nasser purged the military, and the Egyptian government suspended
nuclear exploration, freezing funding for the AEE and reducing the
program to planning and theoretical work. Egypt was in dire economic
straits, having lost not only control of oil wells in Sinai and the Red
Sea, but also foreign aid. The Suez Canal was closed, and the Egyptian
military had lost 80 percent of its equipment, much of it abandoned in
the retreat from the Sinai. The lessons learned from defeat led Nasser
to restructure the armed forces, and to rebuild conventionally, with a
focus on training and mechanization, alongside an influx of MiGs, tanks,
and over 1,000 military advisors, all from the Soviet Union.91 Nasser is
86
Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 233.
87
Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 233–35, 244n69. This does not mean Israel’s nuclear weapons status had no
effect on Egyptian conflict behavior. See Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 173; George W. Gawrych, The Albatross
of Decisive Victory: War and Policy between Egypt and Israel in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 181–82.
88
The military became increasingly politicized throughout the 1960s. Nasser had given his trusted
comrade, Field Marshal Amer, control of the armed forces, but Amer used his position to build his own
cadre of loyalists within the army, posing an internal threat to Nasser’s hold on power. Gawrych,
“Egyptian High Command.”
89
George W. Gawrych, “The Egyptian Military Defeat of 1967,” Journal of Contemporary History 26, no. 2
(April 1991): 278.
90
Gawrych, “Egyptian Military Defeat of 1967,” 279–84.
91
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 173; Gawrych, Albatross of Decisive Victory, chap. 3.
22 L. L. KOCH
believed to have held onto his interest in nuclear weapons, but Egypt
signed the NPT in 1968, gaining future access to financing and tech-
nology for nuclear energy projects. Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat,
continued Egypt’s nuclear endeavors in the 1970s, but pursued energy
rather than weapons.92
Nasser’s interest had never been strong enough to compete with the
regime’s other priorities. Rather than ordering the start of a nuclear weap-
ons program, Nasser focused his attention on conventional conflicts and
domestic political concerns.
Brazil: Exploration and Possible Pursuit, 1978–90

In contrast to the Egypt case, the main portion of Brazil’s nuclear weapons
exploration, and its possible nuclear weapons pursuit, occurred after the
legal establishment of a nonproliferation regime. Brazil began its nuclear
program in 1953, when President Getúlio Vargas approved a plan to
achieve full fuel cycle capacity. The program might have proceeded toward
nuclear weapons, but Vargas died in 1954, and the nuclear effort remained
peaceful for at least the next decade, with a US-assisted research reactor
going critical in 1965.93 A twenty-one-year period of military rule began
in 1964, when several generals led a successful coup. The Brazilian military
believed emerging nonproliferation norms would limit scientific achieve-
ment and national prestige, posing a threat to Brazil’s independence.94 By
1967, the military junta had committed to pursuing a nuclear program
that would allow Brazil to rapidly develop “devices that can explode” in
the future, were that decision ever to be made.95 After the NPT opened
for signature, Brazil refused to sign.96
World events soon introduced new obstacles for Brazil. The National
Commission of Nuclear Energy (CNEN), Brazil’s chief nuclear agency,
signed a contract with the US firm Westinghouse to build a nuclear power
plant. The US Atomic Energy Commission would provide fuel for the
92
Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt,” 175–79; Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 240–42. Solingen argues that Nasser and
Sadat made different nuclear choices in part because Nasser was inward-looking and Sadat was out-
ward-looking. Domestic power politics did indeed a large role in both leaders’ decision making. However,
Egyptian political institutions were also important. Sadat inherited a military that Nasser had subordi-
nated to the presidency post-1967, and thus could quickly consolidate power. See Gawrych, Albatross
of Decisive Victory, chap. 5. Nasser had been interested in nuclear weapons but was constrained by
military organizational preferences, whereas Sadat was uninterested in nuclear weapons and could also
pursue his own path.
93
Patti, “Origins and Evolution,” 361–63; Etel Solingen, “Brazil,” in International Nuclear Trade and
Nonproliferation, ed. William C. Potter (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990).
94
Patti and Spektor, “‘We Are Not a Nonproliferation Agency.’”
95
Matias Spektor, “The Evolution of Brazil’s Nuclear Intentions,” Nonproliferation Review 23, no. 5–6
(November–December 2016): 635–52.
96
Patti and Spektor, “‘We Are Not a Nonproliferation Agency,’” 64–65; “Minutes of the Fortieth Session
of the Brazilian National Security Council,” 4 October 1967, Archive of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry,
Wilson Center Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116914.
plant.97 But in 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test. An unsafe-
guarded research reactor, built with Canadian assistance and supplied with
heavy water from the United States, had produced the plutonium for the
explosion. This shock to the nonproliferation regime generated an inter-
national response. The nuclear supplier states met to establish controls on
nuclear trade and began consistently requiring full end-user safeguards on
nuclear exports.98 By 1976, the US Congress created a nuclear proliferation
sanctions regime that had a significant deterrent impact on proliferation
behavior within countries that valued friendly relations with Washington.99
Brazil secured a nuclear assistance agreement with West Germany in
1975, but Bonn ultimately refused to provide unsafeguarded technology.100
Brazil’s military organization had not been included in these negotiations
and viewed the agreement as a blunder. Instead of depending on foreign
powers, several officers argued, Brazil should develop a clandestine, parallel
nuclear program outside international safeguards. That program could
conduct weapons-related activities in secret.101 By 1978, the Brazilian
government was preparing to take the next step.102 In March 1979, President
João Batista de Oliveira Figueiredo gave documented, formal authorization
of an autonomous nuclear project, free from safeguards and coordinated
by CNEN.103
The parallel program’s resources were divided, providing opportunities
for each service branch to pursue its own projects. The air force project
(Solimões) included developing uranium enrichment technology, reprocess-
ing, research reactors, and a capability for the possible future development
of nuclear explosives. The army project (Atlantic) focused on graphite
reactors for uranium enrichment and plutonium production, and the navy
projects included a centrifuge program for uranium enrichment (Ciclone)
and the development of naval propulsion for submarines (Remo).104 Of all
these, the air force program was most directly linked to a possible nuclear
weapons ambition, with some within the service advocating weaponization,
97
Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope,” 18.
98
William Burr, “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group,
1974–1976,” International History Review 36, no. 2 (April 2014): 252–76; Lisa Langdon Koch, “Frustration
and Delay: The Secondary Effects of Supply-Side Proliferation Controls,” Security Studies 28, no. 4
(August–September 2019): 773–806.
99
Nicholas L. Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions,” International Organization 68,
no. 4 (Fall 2014): 913–44.
100
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 23.
101
102
Patti and Spektor, “‘We Are Not a Nonproliferation Agency,’” 92.
103
“Notice no. 135/79 from the General Secretariat of the Brazilian National Security Council,” 18 June
1979, Archive of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://
digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116916.
104
General Secretariat of the Brazilian National Security Council, “Memorandum, Information for the President
of Brazil, no. 011/85 from the National Security Council, Structure of the Parallel Nuclear Program,” 21 February
1985, 116917, CPDOC, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.
org/document/116917?_ga=2.127954060.1241689068.1626290551-95051932.1626290551.
24 L. L. KOCH
or at least an explosives program. Whether the regime decided to pursue

nuclear weapons is still under debate.105
On the whole, the Brazilian military regime appears to have lacked
interest in progressing toward nuclear weapons development. Internal junta
politics led leadership to distribute the resources for the parallel program
not to a centralized authority, but to each service branch, with each cre-
ating a distinct program with its own funding stream. Conflict among the
service branches, and the lack of political consensus at the leadership
level, facilitated a hands-off approach.106 Because decision-making authority
was diffuse and unclear, military leaders could keep their distance from
the muddled effort and ignore what lower-level officers were doing within
the program.107 As I mentioned above, this led to a lack of oversight and
even to corruption, with some officers diverting nuclear funds to other
uses—such as interior decorating. Poor program management was good
politics, allowing the military regime to please nuclear supporters within
the various services, each of which held different preferences regarding
the utility of the nuclear project for the military, and to buy loyalty.
The regime also needed to spend resources on maintaining power at
home. There is wide agreement that Brazil did not have strong external
security motivations to acquire nuclear weapons during the 1970s and
1980s. A “Doctrine of National Security and Development” (1964–80)
detailed the military regime’s worldview: because of the existence of nuclear
weapons, Brazil’s military expected the Soviet Union and United States to
avoid direct conflict. Instead, the regime believed the Soviet Union would
lend support to like-minded insurgent groups in an effort to destabilize
states such as Brazil.108 Nuclear weapons would not help Brazil face those
dangers. Instead, the regime gave the armed forces a new responsibility:
maintaining internal security.109
The army in particular was active in suppressing movements that threat-
ened the regime’s political survival at home. Between 1974 and 1978, the
regime reduced some of its domestic policing and repression but also
secretly developed administrative organs throughout the military that
coordinated domestic intelligence gathering, and facilitated the military
interrogation and torture of political prisoners, who would then typically
105
Mallea, Spektor, and Wheeler, eds., Origins of Nuclear Cooperation, 132; Carlo Patti, Brazil in the Global
Nuclear Order, 1945–2018 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).
106
For a discussion of the “only sporadic application of policy to the development of domestic tech-
nology and industry” that characterized the regime’s approach, see Emanuel Adler, The Power of Ideology:
The Quest for Technological Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 317–18.
107
This view is attributed to Brazilian nuclear insider Jose Goldemberg in David Albright and Marco A.
Marzo, “Commentary on the Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Rapprochement: Morning Session, Part 2,” Soreq
Nuclear Research Center, 16 May 1996.
108
Maria Helena Moreira Alves, “Cultures of Fear, Cultures of Resistance: The New Labor Movement in
Brazil,” in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge, 187–88.
109
Alves, “Cultures of Fear,” in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge, 189.
be turned over to the police.110 When General Figueiredo began his term
as president in 1979, the regime restored some civil liberties but also
renewed military and police involvement in domestic repression, particu-
larly in response to a series of workers’ strikes.111 At the end of the 1970s,
more than 275,000 military personnel from the three service branches,
185,000 military police, and tens of thousands of members of the intelli-
gence community, many of whom served in military intelligence, were
engaged in repression. The regime’s annual official budget for these activ-
ities, which included the internment of portions of the population in
military-controlled camps, grew to $2 billion.112 The use of troops, equip-
ment, and resources to conduct repression was extensive, with some “paci-
fication” efforts involving tens of thousands of soldiers. These measures
continued into the early 1980s.113
In evaluating the threat rival Argentina posed, the military regime again
concluded that acquiring nuclear weapons was unnecessary. If anything,
Brazil’s security was improving in 1979. Although Brazilian intelligence
was aware of Argentina’s nuclear program, neither country saw the other
as a serious threat.114 Both governments fervently opposed international
nuclear technology and fuel restrictions, and over time, this shared stance
promoted cooperation and openness on nuclear affairs.115
Michael Barletta describes the view of senior officers in the Brazilian
military this way: nuclear weapons were political rather than military tools,
useful for generating prestige and inspiring awe, but not for warfighting.116
The military looked to the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War between Argentina
and the United Kingdom, drawing the conclusion that the real danger was
a conventional threat from the sea. During the conflict, a British nuclear
submarine sank Argentina’s second-largest ship off Argentina’s southeastern
coast, killing hundreds of sailors. Many in the Brazilian military believed
110
Fagen, “Repression and State Security,” in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge, 57–58;
William Colby, “Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Colby to Secretary of State Kissinger,”
11 April 1974, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. E-11, pt. 2, Documents on South
America, 1973–1976 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2015), doc. 99, https://history.
state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve11p2/d99?platform=hootsuite.
111
John Humphrey, Capitalist Control and Workers’ Struggle in the Brazilian Auto Industry (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press), 150–52; Eduardo Viola and Scott Mainwaring, “Transitions to Democracy:
Brazil and Argentina in the 1980s,” Journal of International Affairs 38, no. 2 (Winter 1985): 203–4.
112
Alves, “Cultures of Fear,” in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge, 189.
113
Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1988), chap. 6; Miguel Carter, “The Origins of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST): The
Natalino Episode in Rio Grande Do Sul (1981–84): A Case of Ideal Interest Mobilization” (Working Paper
CBS-43-2003, University of Oxford Centre for Brazilian Studies, 2003); Colby, “Memorandum from Director
of Central Intelligence.”
114
Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope,” 22; Hymans, “Of Gauchos and Gringos.”
115
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil”; Rodrigo Mallea, “The Brazilian Proposal to Renounce
Peaceful Nuclear Explosions and the Argentine Response (1983–1985),” NPIHP Research Updates, Wilson
Center, 31 July 2013; Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope”; Spektor, “Evolution of Brazil’s Nuclear
Intentions”; Reiss, Bridled Ambition, 47–54.
116
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 16–17.
26 L. L. KOCH
this event had determined Argentina’s defeat, and Brazil should thus
develop its own nuclear-powered submarine.117 The military organizational
tendencies to plan for the future by thinking about the last war, and to
prioritize traditional methods of warfighting, would also have contributed
to the regime’s preference for the navy’s nuclear submarine program—which
was progressing well—over some air force officers’ hopes of a future
nuclear bomb. And the navy leveraged the Falklands/Malvinas War to
justify its use of parallel program resources, reminding the regime that
Brazil needed its own national capabilities: after all, the United States had
chosen to support the United Kingdom in the conflict, not Argentina.118
By 1984, the Brazilian navy had achieved the construction and operation
of a minicascade of nine centrifuges and was rewarded with an increase
in state resources.119 Still, the other service branches were allowed to
continue their own efforts.120 This began to change after Brazil transitioned
to a democratic regime in 1985. After Tancredo Neves, the president-elect,
died before taking office, his running mate, José Sarney, was sworn in as
president. The military was still politically powerful in the new democratic
regime, but Sarney’s administration was interested neither in continuing
to fund the official nuclear energy program nor the clandestine army and
air force programs. Further, Brazil faced economic crisis. The military and
nuclear agency sought to protect the navy’s nuclear enrichment and pro-
pulsion program, resorting to withdrawing funds from secret bank accounts
kept hidden from congressional oversight.121
In 1987, President Sarney privately informed Argentina that the Brazilian
navy had enriched uranium, and then announced it to the world.122 It
was the last significant accomplishment of the military’s nuclear program.
In March 1990, President Fernando Collor de Melo, newly elected, shut-
tered the parallel program.123 Brazil’s financial struggles, the failures and
delays that had plagued the official nuclear program, and a public debate
over nuclear energy made it politically possible for Collor to establish
strict civilian control over all nuclear activities. Collor disclosed the exis-
tence of the parallel program to the public, renounced Brazil’s right to
conduct peaceful nuclear explosions, and agreed to International Atomic
Energy Agency safeguards at nuclear facilities.124 Military nuclear projects
117
Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope,” 32.
118
Antônio Ruy de Almeida Silva and José Augusto Abreu de Moura, “The Brazilian Navy’s Nuclear-
Powered Submarine Program,” Nonproliferation Review 23, no. 5–6 (November–December 2016): 623.
119
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 9, 11.
120
121
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 9–12, 22–23; Kassenova, “Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope,”
27; Reiss, Bridled Ambition, 56.
122
Patti, “Origins and Evolution”; Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil”; Reiss, Bridled Ambition.
123
Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 27. Collor placed CNEN under the new civilian-staffed
Strategic Affairs Secretariat, which replaced the military-dominated state security service.
124
Reiss, Bridled Ambition.
would be subject to international inspections and would have to abide by

Collor’s decision to abandon a nuclear weapons option.125 The navy’s
nuclear submarine program survived, but with a significantly reduced
budget, and moved to a new executive agency that answered to the
president.126
The Brazilian military pursued its own interests during the course of
the parallel program, with each branch charting its respective nuclear
development pathway. Instead of focusing national resources on a single
national goal, the military embarked on a diffuse series of parochial pro-
grams, some redundant, for various military applications. It made political
sense for leaders during this period to satisfy the service branches with
funding for individual programs. The military’s failure to rally around one
plan for the good of the country was also due to the organization-wide
lack of enthusiasm for a move from exploration to pursuit. The military
organization did not pressure Brazil’s military leaders to change the course
of the program. Focused largely on internal threats to the regime, the
junta remained content with the progress made within the parallel nuclear
program.
Pakistan: Pursuit, Acquisition, and Testing, 1972–98

Pakistan is the only state to have acquired nuclear weapons despite having
been governed by a military regime during key stages of program devel-
opment. It is a fascinating case to examine for the role of military orga-
nizational politics and preferences, as the nuclear weapons effort was first
resisted by two military regimes, then started by a civilian regime that
excluded the military from nuclear decision making. After a military coup,
the program continued under a military regime but retained characteristics
typical of programs conducted by civilian regimes. Over time, the military
organization shifted from opposing to favoring the nuclear weapons effort.
The rivalry between Pakistan and India has spilled over into armed
conflict during several periods since the 1947 partition. Pakistan’s military
has been unified in identifying India as a threat, but not in deciding how
to counter that threat. During the 1960s, a military regime led by an army
general, Mohammad Ayub Khan, ruled Pakistan. Ayub had seized power
in a 1958 coup. In 1965, after failing to defeat India during a military
conflict in disputed Kashmir, Pakistani interest in a nuclear weapons pro-
gram began to grow. However, no consensus emerged. Feroz Hassan Khan
describes how the military interpreted the nuclear question in terms of
their own organizational interests. Many believed a nuclear weapons effort

125
Silva and Moura, “Brazilian Navy’s Nuclear-Powered Submarine Program,” 623–24; Kassenova, “Brazil’s
126
Nuclear Kaleidoscope.”
28 L. L. KOCH
could harm Pakistan’s conventional capabilities, as foreign partners might

withhold aid. In that event, Pakistan’s military would fall further behind
India’s. And some in the regime were skeptical of India’s ability to develop
nuclear weapons. Postconflict, Ayub realized his hold on power was becom-
ing more tenuous, and he was afraid to make controversial security deci-
sions. Instead, he decided to leverage the threat environment to justify
new military spending along traditional lines: expanding the army.127
Defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product nearly doubled
during the second half of the decade.128
Ayub used the army to counter protests and demonstrations spread
across Pakistan. Both police and troops were sent to quell the unrest, and
protesters were tried in military courts.129 Despite these efforts, Ayub was
unable to maintain his hold on power. In 1969, he transferred control of
the military regime to Chief of Staff of the Army Agha Mohammad Yahya
Kahn, who implemented martial law. Yahya, surrounded by domestic crises,
focused his attention on staying in power but ultimately stepped down in
1971 amid public outrage over humiliating military losses to India and
Bangladesh (which won independence from Pakistan).
His successor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was a politician and former high-rank-
ing government official. Bhutto had long wanted the bomb for Pakistan
but had never been able to persuade military leadership; in 1965, Bhutto
had even declared that his people should “feed on grass and leaves” if
that was what it would take to acquire nuclear weapons.130 Now, as
Pakistan’s leader, Bhutto started Pakistan on the path to nuclear weapons
in 1972.
To consolidate power within his civilian regime, Bhutto installed his
own security force, replaced top military generals, and worked to discredit
the army, initiating an inquiry into the military’s role in the 1971 defeats.
The military organization no longer participated in state policymaking.131
Bhutto established strong civilian control of the new nuclear weapons
program as well, protecting it from military interference. To execute aspects
of the program’s operations—program security, and some logistics, such
as building—Bhutto used military personnel and resources. But he barred
the military organization from nuclear program decision making. 132
127
Ashok Kapur, Pakistan’s Nuclear Development (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 19, 43–48; Khan, Eating
Grass, 63–66. Ayub also wrote in his diary of the possibility of nuclear apocalypse.
128
Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within, 2nd ed. (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2018), xxxvii–xxxviii; Christophe Jaffrelot, The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience, trans.
Cynthia Schoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 310.
129
Jaffrelot, Pakistan Paradox, 315–22.
130
Khan, Eating Grass, 7; Zafar Iqbal Cheema, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine and Command and Control,”
in Lavoy, Sagan, and Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable, 161.
131
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 323–42.
132
Zafar Iqbal Cheema, “Pakistan,” in Born, Gill, and Hänggi, Governing the Bomb, 211; Khan, Eating
Grass, 79–80.
Drawing on his experiences with past military regimes, Bhutto appears to

have believed that Pakistan’s military leaders, such as his chief of Army
Staff, Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, would not prioritize the nuclear weapons
program but would instead put organizational interests first. Indeed, Bhutto
feared Zia might use nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip with foreign
partners and would offer to trade a nuclear arsenal for conventional
weapons to increase the size of the army.133
Several months after Zia came to power in a 1977 coup, Bhutto was
arrested and later executed. The nuclear weapons program, however,
remained intact during Zia’s military regime, and Bhutto’s fears never came
to pass. Zia invested in modernizing the conventional military, and used
the military to conduct political repression, but did not interfere with the
nuclear program. The program, firmly situated in the civilian sphere, had
had six years to develop strong institutions and infrastructure. Zia himself
had been one of a handful of military officers trusted with peripheral
program involvement during the civilian regime. Bhutto had asked Zia,
then the chief of Army Staff, to assist Pakistan’s civilian atomic energy
agency in building a uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta. Zia delegated
this task to a brigadier general who worked within the civilian infrastruc-
ture and facilitated the rise of notorious physicist and engineer A. Q.
Khan to direct the Kahuta site.134 Aside from the few officers Bhutto
invited, the military organization remained unaware of the nuclear weapons
project.135
Zia thus began his presidency with knowledge of and interest in the
nuclear weapons program. He increased military involvement in the pro-
gram, yet did not capture it for the military: he kept the program on
course within the well-established civilian nuclear infrastructure.136 Worried
that his regime lacked legitimacy after overthrowing a popular leader, and
without a political agenda of his own, Zia’s primary goals were to protect
military interests and to ensure his own political survival.137 During the
first years of his presidency, he proceeded cautiously with the nuclear
program, keeping to the status quo.
As work continued, consensus regarding the importance of the nuclear
weapons effort grew between Pakistan’s nuclear scientific and military
organizations. The military perceived a growing threat from India, which
during Zia’s time in power was rapidly outpacing Pakistan in conventional
133
Feroz Hassan Khan, “Political Transitions and Nuclear Management in Pakistan,” in Nuclear Weapons
Security Crises: What Does History Teach, ed. Henry D. Sokolski and Bruno Tertrais (Carlisle, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute and US Army War College Press, 2013), 157.
134
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 342.
135
Khan, Eating Grass, 323.
136
Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy equates Pakistan’s nuclear weapons effort with India’s
in terms of control by civilians, rather than the military: Hoodbhoy, “Introduction,” in Confronting the
Bomb: Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out, ed. Hoodbhoy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013).
137
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 361; Jaffrelot, Pakistan Paradox, 324–26.
30 L. L. KOCH
military capabilities. India had tested a nuclear explosive device in 1974,

and Zia worried about a potential Indian nuclear arsenal. Further, rumors
flew of a preventive strike from abroad to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear infra-
structure. This underscored the program’s importance, spread paranoia
throughout the regime, and led to vastly increased nuclear program and
facility security measures.138
In the 1980s, Pakistan and the United States became strategic partners,
countering the threat posed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As the
recipient of billions of US dollars of military aid, Zia was able to pursue
both organizational interests and nuclear weapons: better equipping the
military, increasing domestic political repression, and maintaining the
nuclear weapons program without fear of American reprisal.139 Zia’s regime
ended with his death in 1988. In both the civilian and military regimes
that followed, the army influenced the direction Pakistan’s nuclear program
would take but did not capture the program. Post-Zia, the army strongly
supported the nuclear effort and its institutional structure. The military
organization benefitted from the advanced program both directly and
indirectly, believing it to be useful in bargaining for other security benefits
from foreign countries, such as weapons systems. The army had no incen-
tive to seize management of the program and was content to let it
continue.140
In fact, it appears many military officers developed significant interest
in the program only after successful weapons tests in 1998. One Pakistani
nuclear physicist writes that, after the tests, a “super-confident” military
emerged that now viewed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as a “magic talis-
man.”141 That summer, the military’s “Strategic Policy Review” identified
a nuclear weapons capability as Pakistan’s core national security objective.
The following year, the military once more seized power. Led by General
Pervez Musharraf, the regime dramatically increased the military’s insti-
tutional control over the nuclear arsenal and weapons program.142 Once
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons became a proven reality, military interests
aligned with investing in and controlling the arsenal. Pakistan’s military
sought to use the new nuclear deterrent as protection, allowing conven-
tional forces to pursue territorial goals without risking catastrophic defeat.143
138
Khan, Eating Grass, 210–17, 323.
139
Fair, Fighting to the End; Samina Ahmed, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Turning Points and
Nuclear Choices,” International Security 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 186. However, other challenges arose.
The Pakistani program sought to clandestinely acquire technology from abroad, but international export
controls on nuclear technology transfers caused delays that interfered with program development. See
Koch, “Frustration and Delay,” 799–805.
140
Nawaz, Crossed Swords, 475.
141
Hoodbhoy, “Introduction,” xxxiv–xxxv.
142
Khan, Eating Grass, 306–8; Najum Mushtaq, “Pakistan: Khan Forced Out,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
57, no. 4 (July 2001): 13.
143
Fair, Fighting to the End, 203.
Pakistan’s path to nuclear weapons, begun by a civilian government but

inherited by a military junta during a crucial period, illuminates military
governments’ distinct preferences. Several military regimes balanced inter-
nal and external threats differently than Bhutto’s civilian regime did. Bhutto
could do what a military regime cannot: he mitigated the coup threat by
cutting the military out of decision making. Further, he pursued state
security through nuclear weapons and protected that effort from military
interference. Several military regimes, on the other hand, made decisions
about a Pakistani nuclear weapons capability that were informed by orga-
nizational interests and military-based methods of seeking political survival.
Strategic goals were entangled with regime interests. Zia had already been
marginally involved in the program during Bhutto’s regime, and wanted
Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons. The program was further protected
by having been long-established in civilian institutions and insulated from
both military interference and awareness. This bought time to proceed
with the program, and eventually the military would come to perceive
nuclear weapons development as supporting organizational interests
and goals.
Trade-Offs and Tensions

Like any organization, military organizations seek to increase their
resources. But no military regime hoping to remain in power can funnel
all of the resources of the state into the military organization. Since such
resources are finite, there is a trade-off not only between investing in the
military and in other state programs, but also between investing in nuclear
weapons development and in other military systems and forces. I argue
that military regimes are more likely to prioritize conventional programs
over nuclear weapons development because of their organizational prefer-
ences and the tactics they use to increase their chances of political survival.
This analysis has important nonproliferation policy implications.
Determining which states pose greater proliferation risks guides a wide
range of significant foreign policy activities, such as engaging in foreign
investment or aid, and negotiating or maintaining military alliances.
Military regimes are unlikely to be the only authoritarian states with
common, regime-based preferences. Future research can expand on this
study by assessing the nuclear weapons incentives or disincentives that
different types of authoritarian states are likely to experience.
Lastly, the tension between external and internal threats divides a mil-
itary regime’s attention, leading to conflicting policy choices that could
appear irrational to foreign observers. In the context of a military orga-
nization’s competing preferences, however, military leaders’ resistance to
32 L. L. KOCH
nuclear weapons development can be better understood, and better lev-

eraged, by states working toward nonproliferation. The most likely potential
nuclear weapons pursuers today range from democracies to autocracies,
with only one, Myanmar, currently governed by a military organization.
But others that could choose to move toward the threshold of a nuclear
weapons capability, such as Turkey, have experienced military coups in
the past. More broadly, states seeking to slow the spread of nuclear weap-
ons should consider how the institutional strength and position of the
military organization within a potential proliferator may change the context
in which state leaders make decisions about nuclear development.
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments and discussions at various stages of this project, I thank Hicham
Bou Nassif, Bryan Early, John Langdon, Vipin Narang, Scott Sagan, Branislav Slantchev,
and Caitlin Talmadge.
Data Availability Statement

The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available in the Security
Studies Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WJHHAU.
ORCID
Lisa Langdon Koch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4372-4194

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Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear

Lisa Langdon Koch

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2197621

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Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear Weapons

Lisa Langdon Koch is an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Domestic Sources of Nuclear Proliferation Behavior

the circle” by inviting domestic actors into nuclear decision making.8 To

Military Interests and Nuclear Pursuits

influence autocratic decision making.12 The Geddes, Wright, and Frantz

military regimes are significantly less likely to engage in pursuit; this is

Table 1. Nuclear weapons exploration or pursuit by military-led states.

In total, the data present an empirical puzzle: if militaries require weap-

Military Organizational Preferences

Due to competing organizational interests, military regimes may prefer

By virtue of their professional training and experience, military offi-

within reach, India’s military advisors argued that conventional missiles

Political Survival of Military Regimes

Leaders in a military regime have serious concerns for their political

I argue that when military regime leaders encounter resource trade-offs

This has important implications for a nuclear weapons effort in a mil-

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991).

threat environment, for a regime’s nuclear weapons preferences. I use both

Egypt: Exploration, 1955–67

from foreign occupation had been an important driver of military support

nuclear energy capacity or a weapons capacity. Egypt had an option for

Brazil: Exploration and Possible Pursuit, 1978–90

or at least an explosives program. Whether the regime decided to pursue

would be subject to international inspections and would have to abide by

Pakistan: Pursuit, Acquisition, and Testing, 1972–98

Barletta, “Military Nuclear Program in Brazil,” 28.

could harm Pakistan’s conventional capabilities, as foreign partners might

Drawing on his experiences with past military regimes, Bhutto appears to

military capabilities. India had tested a nuclear explosive device in 1974,

Pakistan’s path to nuclear weapons, begun by a civilian government but

Trade-Offs and Tensions

nuclear weapons development can be better understood, and better lev-

Data Availability Statement

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