Beyond Assurance and Coercion US Alliances and The Psychology of Nuclear Reversal

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Beyond Assurance and Coercion: US Alliances and

the Psychology of Nuclear Reversal
Jonas Schneider
To cite this article: Jonas Schneider (2020) Beyond Assurance and Coercion: US
Alliances and the Psychology of Nuclear Reversal, Security Studies, 29:5, 927-963, DOI:
10.1080/09636412.2020.1859125
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SECURITY STUDIES
2020, VOL. 29, NO. 5, 927–963
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859125
Beyond Assurance and Coercion: US Alliances and the

Psychology of Nuclear Reversal
Jonas Schneider
ABSTRACT
This article examines the proliferation-inhibiting effect of US
alliances. Existing explanations for nuclear reversals of US allies
have focused either on the assurance that alliances provide or
on US threats of abandonment. However, neither model can
account for the fact that allied leaders disagreed over the
reversal decision. Also, whether an ally agreed to or rejected
nuclear restraint depended on which policymakers carried the
day as much as on external factors. To explain why some poli-
cymakers accept and others refuse nuclear reversal, I draw on
a psychological aspect of US alliances: the social pressure
inherent in demands by the United States as an ally holding a
superior international status. New evidence from Germany and
South Korea shows only policymakers who acknowledge this
higher rank of the United States, and hence view their own
nation as inferior, respond to this social pressure by obeying
the US demand for a nuclear reversal.
Why do leaders of US allies opt for nuclear restraint? Many scholars and
most officials and pundits claim it is the assurance an alliance with the
United States provides that leads the decision makers of US allies to give
up their existing nuclear weapons activities1—also known as nuclear rever-
sal.2 Entertaining an alliance relationship with the United States, the logic
goes, implies a “nuclear umbrella” for American allies, as superior US mili-
tary capabilities, and its nuclear arsenal, in particular, deter attacks not
only against the American homeland but also against the territory of
Washington’s alliance partners. For American allies, this mechanism of
extended deterrence works—implicitly or explicitly—as a security guaran-
tee, which in turn obviates the need for an indigenous nuclear deterrent.
Jonas Schneider ( jonas.schneider@swp-berlin.org) is a researcher with the German Institute for International and
Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin.
1
Some scholars question whether US alliances cause nuclear restraint at all. For example, Etel Solingen argues
that it is not that membership in such an alliance keeps states from going nuclear; rather, state leaderships
that for domestic political reasons are not interested in acquiring nuclear weapons are more likely to enter
into an alliance with the United States. Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle
East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
2
This article’s understanding of nuclear reversal reflects a wide definition of proliferation that includes activities
to explore nuclear weapons options. The seminal text is Ariel E. Levite, “Never Say Never Again: Nuclear
Reversal Revisited,” International Security 27, no. 3 (Winter 2002/03): 59–88.
ß 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
928 J. SCHNEIDER
According to this narrative, the assurance-related effectiveness of US alli-

ances has been proven spectacularly throughout the nuclear age: under the
shelter of the US nuclear umbrella, the political leaders of numerous mili-
tarily threatened allies—for example, West Germany, Italy, Norway, South
Korea, Japan, Australia, and Canada—agreed to cease their nation’s existing
nuclear weapons activities.3
Critics of this assurance-based explanation contend that it overestimates
the ability of US alliances to assuage militarily threatened allies’ sense of
insecurity. In an anarchic and uncertain world, the critics argue, allied deci-
sion makers can never be certain that their US patron will use military
force to defend their country, especially if such action would put the
American homeland at risk. Consequently, the leaders of threatened clients,
the argument goes, seek indigenous nuclear arsenals as a complement to
their not fully reliable alliances with the United States. Under these circum-
stances, trying to relieve the allies’ insecurity through US commitment sig-
nals cannot suffice to make the leaders reconsider and stop their nuclear
weapons activities. Rather, Washington also needs to manipulate the client’s
military dependence on the United States by explicitly threatening to aban-
don the client militarily if the latter continues on its nuclear weapons
path.4 This coercive strategy appears to have been successfully applied
against Taiwan, whose immense dependence on the United States made its
leadership buckle under US threats and comply with American nonprolifer-
ation demands.5
Both the assurance-based explanation and the alliance coercion theory
have enhanced our understanding of how US alliance ties influence allied
leaders’ attitudes toward a nuclear reversal.6 Our grasp of this causal rela-
tionship remains unsatisfactory, though. Neither theory can account for a
crucial finding of recent historical research: across US allies—whether
finally reversing or acquiring nuclear weapons—we observe stark
3
Francis J. Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition: U.S. Grand Strategy, the Nuclear Revolution, and Nonproliferation,”
International Security 40, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 29–34; Philipp C. Bleek and Eric Lorber, “Security Guarantees
and Allied Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (April 2014): 429–54; Bruno Tertrais,
“Security Guarantees and Nuclear Nonproliferation,” FRS Notes 14 (Paris: Fondation pour la Recherche
Strategique, 2011); Department of State International Security Advisory Board, Report on Discouraging a
Cascade of Nuclear Weapons States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office [hereafter GPO], 2007),
22–23; T. V. Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2000), 153–54; Mitchell Reiss, “Conclusion: Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War,” in Nuclear
Proliferation after the Cold War, ed. Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson
Center Press, 1994), 341–43; Benjamin Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear
Weapons Proliferation,” Security Studies 2, no. 3–4 (Spring/Summer 1993): 37; Joseph S. Nye Jr., “NPT: The
Logic of Inequality,” Foreign Policy 59 (Summer 1985): 126.
4
Gene Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coercion and Nuclear Restraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany’s
Nuclear Ambitions,” International Security 39, no. 4 (Spring 2015): 91–129.
5
David Albright and Andrea Stricker, Taiwan’s Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand
(Washington, DC: Institute for Science and International Security, 2018), 39, 70, 82, 107, 184.
6
While both theories were developed to explain state behavior, namely nuclear reversal, their grounding in the
epistemology of scientific realism entails they also predict policymakers’ attitudes toward a nuclear reversal.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NUCLEAR REVERSAL 929
disagreement among the nuclear policymaking elite over the necessity of a

nuclear reversal.7 In fact, the role of individual policymakers has often been
critical for whether allied governments committed to or rejected a nuclear
reversal. One apt example of such a close call can be found in Britain’s
postwar nuclear history:8 When the Cabinet Committee on Atomic Energy
met in October 1946 to decide on the construction of a key facility in
Britain’s nuclear weapons program, two of its six members argued against
the plant, doubting whether the struggling nation could afford to build a
nuclear arsenal. Crucially, the two ministers seemed to be winning the
argument, as Prime Minister Clement Attlee came to adopt their reasoning.
Only when Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin joined the discussion, arriving
late after having fallen asleep in his office, and argued forcefully for British
nuclear weapons, did the committee approve the plant.9 As both partici-
pants in that meeting and historians have concluded, “If Bevin hadn’t come
in then, [Britain] wouldn’t have had [its] bomb.”10
Yet why do different policymakers of the same US-allied government
hold different attitudes toward a nuclear reversal? Research by Jacques E.
C. Hymans and others has sought to explain such different attitudes of a
nation’s policymakers in the proliferation realm.11 However, this work has
focused primarily on the decision to build a nuclear arsenal, leaving the
separate question of why members of the policymaking elite hold different
attitudes toward abandoning their nation’s nuclear weapons activities
largely unanswered.
Building on Hymans’s work, I propose an original theory—the intra-alli-
ance status theory—that ties allied policymakers’ attitudes toward a nuclear
reversal (short of relinquishing existing weapons) to their beliefs about the
7
I define the nuclear policymaking elite as those members of government and parliament who, because of
their expertise or rank within the political hierarchy, exert significant influence over their country’s nuclear
decisions. Members of the elite, policymakers, and the nuclear policymaking elite are used interchangeably. In
parliamentary democracies, this group can include cabinet ministers, their deputies, and ministerial
department heads, but also parliamentary committee chairs and senior lawmakers with foreign policy
expertise. At the other end of the spectrum—in personalized dictatorships but also in democracies in which
nuclear policymaking is strongly centralized—the nuclear policymaking elite could comprise only the state’s
highest political leader.
8
For additional examples, see Leopoldo Nuti, La sfida nucleare: La politica estera italiana e le armi atomiche
1945–91 [The Nuclear Challenge: Italian Foreign Policy and Atomic Weapons 1945–91] (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007),
287–345; Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2012), 59–65; Fintan Hoey, “Non-Nuclear Japan? Sato, the NPT, and the US Nuclear Umbrella,” in
Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order, ed. Roland Popp, Liviu Horovitz,
and Andreas Wenger (New York: Routledge, 2016), 167–72.
9
Peter Hennessy, “How Bevin Saved Britain’s Bomb,” Times, September 30, 1982, 10; Hugh Beach and Nadine
Gurr, Flattering the Passions: Or, the Bomb and Britain’s Bid for a World Role (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 20.
10
Quoted in Hennessy, “How Bevin Saved Britain’s Bomb.” This view is shared by Peter Hennessy, ed., Cabinets
and the Bomb (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 43.
11
Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Matthew Fuhrmann and Michael C. Horowitz, “When Leaders Matter: Rebel
Experience and Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Politics 77, no. 1 (January 2015): 72–87. For a review, see
Jonas Schneider, “The Study of Leaders in Nuclear Proliferation and How to Reinvigorate It,” International
Studies Review 22, no. 1 (March 2020): 1–25.
930 J. SCHNEIDER
status hierarchy within their nation’s alliance with the United States. To
explain the approving attitude toward a nuclear reversal of members of the
ally’s nuclear elite, this theory draws on a crucial psychological force at
work in US alliances: the social pressure inherent in all demands the
United States makes on its partners. In the proliferation realm, such US
demands exerting social pressure may come in the form of communica-
tions to allied leaders that suggest US preferences for restraint.12 Or US
officials could make their nonproliferation objectives more explicit.13
Historically, Washington typically refrained from calling for nuclear rever-
sal vis-a-vis individual nuclear aspirants until 1965, instead relying on other
instruments.14 Since the United States adopted a more active nonprolifera-
tion policy in 1965, direct demands have been a staple of its efforts to stem
proliferation.15 When allied policymakers are subjected to such US
demands, they sense the strong tension between their nation’s behavior and
how the US government wants their nation to behave. By social pressure, I
mean the stress on the relationship with their US ally that these policy-
makers feel as long as this tension remains unresolved.
Demands by the US government exert this social pressure because the
United States, as a global superpower, occupies a noticeably higher rank in
the international status hierarchy than its clients, which in turn bestows US
demands with legitimacy. The success of social pressure as an influence
mechanism is predicated on the psychological need of US allies to obey
and avoid antagonizing the United States as a superior actor—even when
they are certain that defiance would not have any negative material conse-
quences. However, not all members of the policymaking elite of US part-
ners are susceptible to this social pressure. How particular allied
policymakers respond to the social pressure inherent in American demands
hinges on their individual conception of how high their nation ranks vis-
a-vis the United States. Members of the elite who conceive of their own
12
For instance, US president Gerald Ford wrote to Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1976 that given
the risks of proliferation, “I hope that you will give serious consideration to forgoing present plans to acquire
reprocessing and heavy water facilities … I would not raise this matter with you … if I did not consider it
to be of the utmost importance.” Letter from President Ford to Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto, March 19,
1976, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS] 1969–1976, vol. E-8, Documents on South Asia,
1973–1976 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2007), doc. 225, 2–3.
13
This is what the US ambassador to West Germany did when he let Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger know that
it would be in Bonn’s interest to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and that, therefore, the US
government “hoped that the Chancellor, after careful scrutiny, will render a positive judgment.” Kiesinger-
McGhee conversation, December 20, 1966, Akten zur Ausw€artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1966,
vol. 2 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1966, vol. 2] (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1997), 1682–83.
14
The one exception is Israel, which had faced US social pressure to end its nuclear weapons efforts since 1961.
15
On the shift in US policy, see Francis J. Gavin, “Blasts from the Past: Proliferation Lessons from the 1960s,”
International Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004/05): 100–35. Notably, US policy toward Israel is again the main
exception. Due to a secret deal, the United States stopped in 1969 to demand Israel’s nuclear reversal. See Or
Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and Its Cold War Deals (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014), 88.
nation’s status as inferior to the United States are highly receptive to US

social pressure and consequently obey the American demand for their
nation’s nuclear reversal. The costly escalation to coercive US threats is
unnecessary and thus absent in these cases. In contrast, allied policymakers
ranking their nation on par with the United States are insusceptible to
social pressure from Washington. Therefore, they disobey the US request
for their nation to undertake a nuclear reversal. Hence, stronger measures
than social pressure are needed to compel elites who do not share an infer-
ior-status view to acquiesce in a nuclear reversal. Given these dynamics of
nuclear attitude formation on the individual level, my theory predicts US-
allied states will not give up their nuclear weapons activities if leaders who
rank their nation on par with the United States enjoy veto power over the
decision for a nuclear reversal.
Notably, I do not claim that—given US social pressure—an inferior-sta-
tus view alone will always be sufficient to make allied policymakers consent
to their nation’s nuclear reversal. Additional factors, such as protection by
a mutual defense treaty, may well be necessary in some cases. My point is
that even in such a case, only allied policymakers sharing an inferior-status
conception vis-a-vis the United States will comply with US demands for a
nuclear reversal. My theory is therefore compatible with the assurance
model. In fact, it suggests that whenever US security assurances cause a
nuclear reversal, this success also rests upon the inferior-status view of the
allied policymakers; for my theory holds that had these members of the
elite ranked their nation on par with the United States, the assurance effect
alone would not have achieved a nuclear reversal.
To support my theory, the article offers new evidence from the West
German and South Korean cases of nuclear reversal. Drawing on archival
research and recent historical scholarship, I show that in both cases the
respective nuclear policymaking elite disagreed about whether their country
should abandon its nuclear weapons activities. To be sure, South Korea’s
nuclear weapons activities had reached a more advanced level than West
Germany’s, since Seoul had actually started pursuing a nuclear arsenal,
whereas Bonn had merely sought to keep the weapons option open.
Despite this substantial difference in behavior, the intra-alliance status the-
ory correctly predicts policymakers’ nuclear attitudes in both countries:
German and Korean policymakers who held an inferior-status conception
opted for nuclear reversal, whereas members of the elite who ranked their
respective nation on par with the United States steadfastly rejected such a
change of course.
By developing and testing a psychological theory of nuclear reversal, this
article makes five contributions. First, the theory adds to the burgeoning
932 J. SCHNEIDER
literature that emphasizes the crucial role of US nonproliferation efforts in

preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.16 In particular, by describing the
role of social pressure, I present a novel pathway—in addition to assurance
and coercion—through which US nonproliferation efforts operate to bring
about nuclear reversals of US allies. By demonstrating the success of this
social US pressure, I also help explain why Washington has only rarely
resorted to coercive threats to make its allies abandon their nuclear weap-
ons activities.
Second, by conditioning the efficacy of US social pressure on allied poli-
cymakers’ status conceptions vis-a-vis the United States, my argument con-
tributes to the literature that explains proliferation decisions as the
outcome of a process in which international stimuli are filtered through
domestic prisms.17 Third, by emphasizing that policymakers from the same
country may hold different status beliefs that lead them to embrace diver-
gent attitudes toward a nuclear reversal, the theory adds to recent scholar-
ship that explains important foreign policy decisions using the personal
characteristics of leaders.18
Fourth, the theory’s focus on social pressure broadens our understanding
of alliance politics since it introduces a new mechanism—besides ideational
persuasion and the manipulation of material incentives—for how patron
states can manage and constrain their proteges.19 Finally, the argument
makes an important amendment to the literature on status in international
politics. While existing research in this realm has been preoccupied with
destabilizing phenomena such as rivalries, conflict escalation, and war, the
theory explicates how a self-image of status inferiority furthers nuclear
restraint, thereby contributing to stability and conflict resolution.20
These theoretical insights provide important lessons for US nonprolifera-
tion policy. To prevent US allies from acquiring nuclear weapons, the
assurance model suggests Washington must take costly politico-military
steps to boost its allies’ faith in the US commitment to their security. In
contrast, according to the coercion model, only US threats of military
16
Nicholas L. Miller, “Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?” Security Studies 23, no. 1 (Winter 2014):
33–73; Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition”; Nicholas L. Miller, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of
US Nonproliferation Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018); Alexander Lanoszka, Atomic Assurance:
The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
17
Hymans, Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation; Solingen, Nuclear Logics; Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation
Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009).
18
Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark, “Nuclear Beliefs: A Leader-Focused Theory of Counter-Proliferation,” Security Studies
26, no. 4 (October–December 2017): 545–74; Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape
Military Interventions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam, and Cali
M. Ellis, Why Leaders Fight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). For a review, see Robert Jervis, “Do
Leaders Matter and How Would We Know?” Security Studies 22, no. 2 (April–June 2013): 153–79.
19
For these two conventional mechanisms, consult Jeremy Pressman, Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in
International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan,
“Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” International Organization 44, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 283–315.
20
For an excellent review, see Allan Dafoe, Jonathan Renshon, and Paul Huth, “Reputation and Status as Motives
for War,” Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 371–93.
abandonment will inhibit the nuclear ambitions of these militarily threat-

ened allies. My argument suggests that relying solely on assurance might
not suffice to ensure the nuclear restraint of US allies, while coercive US
threats could often be unnecessary to thwart the nuclear ambitions of
threatened clients. Rather, the theory suggests Washington ought to tailor
its nonproliferation efforts to the specific status conception of the allied
policymakers at hand, since policymakers with different status conceptions
vis-a-vis the United States will respond differently to the same US policy.21
The article proceeds as follows. First, I identify the shortcomings of the
assurance model and alliance coercion theory. Second, the article introdu-
ces the intra-alliance status theory’s logic. Third, I provide empirical sup-
port for the theory’s predictions, drawing on the cases of West Germany
and South Korea. In the conclusion, I derive a set of implications for US
nonproliferation policy from these theoretical considerations.
Shortcomings of the assurance and coercion models

Although the assurance and coercion models have enhanced our under-
standing of how US alliances influence the nuclear reversal attitudes of
allied leaders, both models rely on overly narrow assumptions that limit
their explanatory power. Below, I argue that the assurance model neglects
nonsecurity motivations for seeking nuclear arms and fails to capture the
political impact of US alliances. Meanwhile, the coercion model exaggerates
Washington’s willingness to manipulate its proteges’ military dependence
to further nonproliferation goals.
The assurance-based explanation draws on the economic logic of free
riding. According to this logic, technologically capable and militarily threat-
ened states have no choice but to pursue nuclear weapons as long as they
do not entertain an alliance with the United States or any other nuclear
superpower. Yet, once their national security is provided for through an
alliance, the logic goes, they will be happy to dispose of the “burden” of
nuclear armament and pass the costs of their nuclear defense to
Washington. This logic reflects a one-sided analysis of why states pursue
nuclear weapons and an incomplete understanding of asymmetrical alli-
ances like those led by the United States. It assumes the search for security
constitutes the only significant motive for states to seek nuclear weapons.
Consequently, once the security of a state is assured through an alliance,
there will be no more reason to strive for the bomb. However, this inter-
pretation ignores that policymakers’ interest in nuclear weapons is often
driven by other or additional motives, including the desire for more foreign
21
The question of what US leaders could do to increase the chances that allied policymakers (continue to) view
the United States as holding a superior international status is beyond the scope of my theory.
934 J. SCHNEIDER
policy autonomy, the parochial self-interests of bureaucratic players, the

longing for national grandeur, or a leader’s need for personal prestige.22
Crucially, the protection provided by an alliance satisfies none of these
other needs. As a result, even when a client’s security is guaranteed, nonse-
curity motives will often continue pushing allied policymakers toward the
bomb. To achieve a nuclear reversal, hence, further nonproliferation incen-
tives must be at work to overcome these nonsecurity motives for prolifer-
ation. The assurance model’s exclusive focus on security motives misses
these additional forces of restraint.
Even more important, the free-riding logic underlying the assurance
model grossly underestimates many ways that US alliances influence the
behavior of proteges. The free-riding logic reduces an alliance to a structure
that provides partners with security, allowing them to reduce their defense
expenditures.23 This neglects the political dimension of alliances: Alliances
constitute not only forums in which states pool their military resources to
defend themselves against a common enemy. They are also instruments of
control over the allies.24 This is especially true for the United States as a
global power that seeks to maintain and further develop the international
order. To a large extent, Washington works to shape the international
order by way of controlling its clients and prodding them in the direction
desired by US interests.25 Hence, by allying with the United States, clients
may receive military protection at a rather low financial cost. Yet in return,
they pay the heavy political price of being even more exposed to US efforts
at controlling and influencing their foreign and defense policies. This polit-
ical dimension represents an essential part of how US alliances work, but it
has gone unnoticed by the logic of the assurance model. As a consequence,
this model has paid no attention to a powerful nonproliferation incentive
present throughout the nuclear age: despite varying levels of presidential
commitment, US policy has consistently opposed the national acquisition
of nuclear weapons by both foes and allies.26 Thus, allies’ engagement in
22
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; Scott D. Sagan, “The Causes of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,”
Annual Review of Political Science 14 (2011): 232–36.
23
Mancur Olson Jr. and Richard Zeckhauser, “An Economic Theory of Alliances,” Review of Economics and
Statistics 48, no. 3 (August 1966): 266–79.
24
Paul W. Schroeder, “Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management,” in Historical
Dimensions of National Security Problems, ed. Klaus Knorr (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 227–62;
Patricia A. Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2004).
25
Hal Brands and Peter D. Feaver, “What Are America’s Alliances Good For?” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer
2017): 15–30; Victor D. Cha, Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2016).
26
Gavin, “Strategies of Inhibition”; Matthew Kroenig, “Force or Friendship? Explaining Great Power
Nonproliferation Policy” Security Studies 23, no. 1 (January–March 2014): 1–32; Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear
Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2014).
nuclear weapons activities unavoidably pitted them against the declared

policy of the United States as their patron and major international partner.
In contrast, while the alliance coercion model takes these political
dynamics into account, it overstates the American commitment to nonpro-
liferation. The model starts from the sound premise that the uneven distri-
bution of material resources within the alliance enables Washington in
cases of clashing interests to compel its proteges.27 Nevertheless, the coer-
cion model focuses solely on the US ability to coerce clients into nuclear
reversals through threats of military abandonment, a simplistic understand-
ing of coercion among allies. In particular, the theory of alliance coercion
fails to appreciate that employing US coercive threats—even if they are not
executed—not only punishes the partner but also imposes significant polit-
ical costs upon the United States. For instance, blatantly threatening allies
might alienate their leaders from the United States, undermine mutual
trust, and damage overall political cooperation among partners. Any such
actions would harm US foreign policy interests and work to the benefit of
the allies’ common enemy. Most important, the coercion model completely
ignores that overt US threats of military abandonment risk undermining
the domestic stability of militarily threatened proteges, endangering the
joint defense effort that constitutes the main rationale of the alliance.
Given these serious and potentially disastrous consequences, the United
States has only rarely resorted to coercive measures to bring about nuclear
reversals of its allies.28 In some cases, this reluctance to employ coercion
has effectively enabled proteges to acquire nuclear weapons in the face of
American opposition, as happened with Pakistan after Soviet forces invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979. What the Pakistani case makes plain, and
other examples confirm, is that nuclear nonproliferation has typically not
been Washington’s most important policy goal vis-a-vis its clients. Thus, by
overstating the US willingness to privilege nonproliferation, the coercion
model has missed other pathways through which the United States can
often push its proteges toward nuclear reversal even when Washington is
not prepared to threaten alliance termination.
27
Christopher Gelpi, “Alliances as Instruments of Intra-Allied Control,“in Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over
Time and Space, ed. Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 107–39.
28
Only four (South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and Argentina) of fifteen US treaty allies with nuclear weapons
ambitions were confronted with coercive US threats to stop these activities. If one chooses a wider definition
of US allies that also includes Israel and Pakistan, then six out of seventeen allies have faced US coercion over
their nuclear ambitions. Note, however, that only in the South Korean, Taiwanese, and Israeli cases did
Washington’s coercive efforts include the threat of military abandonment (on which the alliance coercion
model relies). Moreover, recent research revealed that US president Lyndon B. Johnson suggested to the Israeli
government that it not take such threats from Washington seriously, raising grave doubts over whether Israel
was subjected to alliance coercion over its nuclear program at all. See Galen Jackson, “The United States, the
Israeli Nuclear Program, and Nonproliferation, 1961–69,” Security Studies 28, no. 2 (April–June 2019): 377–85.
936 J. SCHNEIDER
These shortcomings of the assurance and alliance coercion models have

persuaded some scholars that alliances do not play a major role in the
nuclear reversals of US partners. And yet, I argue that these critics overlook
how the status gap within US alliances and the resulting social pressure
inherent in US demands have impacted the nuclear reversal decisions.
Studying this heretofore-neglected dimension of how US alliances inhibit
nuclear proliferation avoids the limitations of both the assurance and alli-
ance coercion models. Most important, identifying the conditions under
which allied policymakers respond to this social pressure by obeying US
demands explains not only cross-case but also within-case variation in
allied policymakers’ attitudes toward their nation’s nuclear reversal.
Intra-Alliance status theory

My theory claims that allied policymakers’ status conceptions vis-a-vis the
United States play a crucial role in determining their attitudes toward their
nation’s nuclear reversal. The intra-alliance status theory starts from two
main premises, which combine to accord status a major role in US allies’
nuclear reversals. The first premise emphasizes that, as detailed in the pre-
vious section, owing to persistent US opposition to the national acquisition
of nuclear weapons, US allies’ engagement in nuclear weapons activities
automatically involves them in a political conflict with their patron and the
leading power of the West. Since such an asymmetrical confrontation must
surely be considered a deeply uncomfortable situation for client states,
Washington’s desire for nonproliferation serves as a key impetus for allies’
nuclear reversal decisions. Second, intra-alliance status theory presumes
that in most cases overtly threatening allies with military abandonment is
too costly for Washington and therefore only an option of last resort. For
that reason, I argue that the lion’s share of the impact of US opposition to
proliferation upon the nuclear attitudes of allied policymakers stems from
US social pressure, which rests on the status relationship between the
United States and an ally.29 This claim is grounded in extensive research in
29
I further presume that, for US social pressure as an influence mechanism to work at all, allied policymakers
must perceive both the United States and their own country as members of a group (of states) that is
important to them, such as “the transatlantic community,” “the West,” or “the non-Communist world.” Only
sharing such a significant group identity ensures that allied policymakers hold US opinions and interests in
high regard and, thus, makes them receptive to social pressure from Washington. Crucially, the precondition
of a common group identity seems to have been present in all US alliances. However, this prerequisite might
as well be fulfilled in relationships between the United States and nonallies (such as Sweden) or between
another great power and some other country. If so, then my theory’s causal logic may be relevant beyond the
realm of US alliances. The shared-identity presumption derives from research on interpersonal influence: Bernd
Simon and Penelope Oakes, “Beyond Dependence: An Identity Approach to Social Power and Domination,”
Human Relations 59, no. 1 (January 2006): 105–39; John C. Turner, “Explaining the Nature of Power: A Three-
Process Theory,” European Journal of Social Psychology 35, no. 1 (January 2005): 1–22.
social psychology showing that status, as the rank of an actor in a social

hierarchy, crucially affects the outcome of interactions at the level of indi-
viduals and social groups but also between states—especially when brute
coercion is not feasible.30 Applying this insight, intra-alliance status theory
posits that allied policymakers’ attitudes toward the US demand for nuclear
reversal will be mainly determined by how they conceive of the intra-alli-
ance status relation between their nation and the United States: Is it an alli-
ance of equals? Or is it a relationship in which the United States leads and
their nation merely follows?
The conception of their nation’s status vis-a-vis the United States finds
its way into allied policymakers’ thinking about nuclear restraint because
the question of whether they should consent to their country’s nuclear
reversal is cognitively difficult to answer. This difficulty results from a com-
plete lack of easily accessible information: the members of the elite have
never experienced a nuclear reversal of their nation before and thus lack
any firsthand knowledge about its effects. Absent such a precedent, the
effort to calculate these effects abstractly is cognitively demanding because
nuclear reversal decisions are unusually complex, generating enormous
uncertainty. This surely holds true for nuclear reversals that encompass giv-
ing up running nuclear weapons manufacturing programs. Canceling such
advanced nuclear weapons activities constitutes—just like the final decision
to build the bomb—what decision theorists refer to as a “big decision.”31
These decisions propel actors into a whole new world, as they affect a myr-
iad of issues, are largely irreversible, and thus entail great uncertainties and
risks.32 Therefore, the consequences of big decisions cannot be fully calcu-
lated. At the same time, even the decision of giving up more limited
nuclear weapons activities—such as abandoning overt political advocacy for
an indigenous nuclear arsenal—is cognitively demanding in the absence of
firsthand experience on which to rely. Although the decision to refrain
from such statements is reversible and hence does not entail similar risks
as big decisions, it still has many implications, including multifaceted diplo-
matic effects, the consequences of the “verbal disarmament” for a policy-
maker’s bureaucratic and domestic standing, and stock-market effects.
Given these conflicting demands and complex effects, the overall
30
On the impact of status on each of the three levels, see Susan T. Fiske, “Interpersonal Stratification: Status,
Power, and Subordination,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, 5th ed., ed. Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T.
Gilbert, and Gardner Lindzey (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010), 941–82; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Reinhard Wolf, “Respect and Disrespect in International Politics:
The Significance of Status Recognition,” International Theory 3, no. 1 (March 2011): 105–42.
31
For an elaboration of the final decision to build the bomb as a big decision, consult Hymans, Psychology of
Nuclear Proliferation, 9–11; K. P. O’Reilly, Nuclear Proliferation and the Psychology of Political Leadership: Beliefs,
Motivations, and Perceptions (New York: Routledge, 2015), 31–33.
32
On big decisions, see L. A. Paul, Transformative Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
938 J. SCHNEIDER
consequences even of this more limited nuclear reversal decision are inher-
ently hard to predict without using a precedent.
Since the decision over a nuclear reversal is so cognitively difficult, intra-
alliance status theory draws on research about how people make such chal-
lenging decisions.33 The human mind deals with cognitively difficult issues
by engaging in what Daniel Kahneman calls “substitution.” Substitution
means “answering an easier question” in case the original question one is
confronted with is too complex for the mind to come up with an immedi-
ate answer.34 Importantly, substitution happens automatically and uncon-
sciously. In this vein, experimental research has shown that when the mind
lacks information to evaluate the content of a demand, it typically substi-
tutes that question with the easier question judging the process through
which the persons’ mind received the demand, thus focusing on who made
the demand and the way that the demand was voiced.35 Building on these
findings, I posit that allied policymakers, when being requested by US offi-
cials to approve of their nation’s nuclear reversal, will substitute the diffi-
cult content-based question, “Should I agree to a nuclear reversal of my
country?” with the easier process-related one, “Can the United States issue
foreign policy orders toward my country?” The latter question is easy to
answer for the mind because it is not a novel question: members of the
elite in US-allied countries will have experienced several earlier instances in
which Washington ordered their government around. Thus, all uncertainty
involved in this process-based question is familiar to allied policymakers.
Since they have answered that question many times before, their mind can
come up with an answer without much cognitive effort.
In answering this process-related question, members of the nuclear pol-
icymaking elite of US allies unconsciously draw upon their individual con-
ception of their nation’s status vis-a-vis the United States as a heuristic.
Research in social psychology has long established that people use status
judgments as a heuristic to understand and guide their relations with
others.36 This intuitive use of status is possible because humans are hard-
wired to assess the social status of all parties they interact with and
33
Seminal works in this research program include Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment Under
Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” Science 185, no. 4157 (September 27, 1974): 1124–31; Daniel Kahneman,
Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1982).
34
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 97.
35
Kees van den Bos et al., “How Do I Judge My Outcome When I Do Not Know the Outcome of Others? The
Psychology of the Fair Process Effect,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72, no. 5 (May 1997):
1034–46; E. Allan Lind, “Fairness Heuristic Theory: Justice Judgments as Pivotal Cognitions in Organizational
Relations,” in Advances in Organizational Justice, ed. Jerald Greenberg and Russell Cropanzano (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2001), 56–88.
36
For a review of the findings, see Fiske, “Interpersonal Stratification,” 944–46. International relations scholars
working on status agree with this explanation for status’ importance. See, for instance, Dafoe, Renshon, and
Huth, “Reputation and Status as Motives for War,” 377.
compare the status of these actors to the status they accord themselves.37
Crucially, when people in a certain situation act as a member of a group—
say, as a representative of their nation in an international negotiation—they
see themselves and all persons they are interacting with no longer as indi-
viduals but as the groups they are representing.38 As a consequence, the
automatic processes of status appraisal and comparison then take place at
the level of the respective group.39 Hence, owing to frequent interactions
with representatives of the United States, the policymakers of US allies will
always have an intuitive idea of how their nation ranks vis-a-vis the
United States.
My claim that allied policymakers draw on this status conception vis-
a-vis the United States to answer the process-related question is based not
only on the status view’s ready availability. In addition, it is generally very
easy for humans to think in terms of status hierarchies.40 This so-called
“cognitive fluency” of status judgments makes their use as a heuristic par-
ticularly likely.41 Finally, the status conception and the question of, “Can
the United States issue orders toward my country?” overlap widely in that
they both focus on the nature of the relationship of a policymaker’s coun-
try to the United States. This ensures the policymaker’s mind, when it
unconsciously substitutes the process for the content of the US demand,
does not get stuck.42 Given this overlap and the ready availability and cog-
nitive fluency of an allied policymaker’s status conception vis-a-vis the
United States, this status conception is a highly attractive answer for the
process of substitution.
In my definition, allied policymakers’ status conception vis-a-vis the
United States encompasses how they intuitively conceive of their nation’s
status within the alliance compared to the status of the United States.
Policymakers’ status conception constitutes an individual interpretation of
how high their nation ranks vis-a-vis its US ally and not an objective
37
Agnes Moors and Jan De Houwer, “Automatic Processing of Dominance and Submissiveness,” Experimental
Psychology 52, no. 4 (July 2005): 296–302; Kenneth D. Locke, “Status and Solidarity in Social Comparison:
Agentic and Communal Values and Vertical and Horizontal Directions,” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 84, no. 3 (March 2003): 619–31.
38
John C. Turner et al., eds., Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Perspective (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987), 50–51.
39
Marilynn B. Brewer and Joseph G. Weber, “Self-Evaluation Effects of Interpersonal versus Intergroup Social
Comparison,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66, no. 2 (February 1994): 268–75.
40
Emily M. Zitek and Larissa Z. Tiedens, “The Fluency of Social Hierarchy: The Ease with Which Hierarchical
Relationships Are Seen, Remembered, Learned, and Liked,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no.
1 (January 2012): 98–115.
41
Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick, “Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive
Judgment,” in Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, ed. Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffith,
and Daniel Kahneman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55.
42
Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 99.
940 J. SCHNEIDER
appraisal of the intra-alliance status relation. It follows that different mem-

bers of a country’s elite can hold very different status conceptions.43
Importantly, the adoption by allied policymakers of one specific view of
their nation’s status vis-a-vis the United States cannot be reduced to pre-
ceding structural conditions. It is thus exogenous. Although the supporting
evidence is not included in this article since the origins of status beliefs are
beyond the scope of my theory, the German and Korean cases show that
the selection of one status belief vis-a-vis the United States can be the
product of very different factors—such as early personal encounters with
the Anglo-American “world,” or specific career paths, but also broader
ideational currents such as anticolonial thinking or Catholic contempt for
the allegedly materialist and “cultureless” America—and thus follows no
universal pattern. What can be generalized, however, is that once policy-
makers have internalized one status conception in their political socializa-
tion, this status belief will remain immune to any but the most dramatic
changes in the international environment.44
Whichever status conception policymakers adopt, it will not reflect an
objective appraisal of their nation’s status in relation to the United States.
Usually defined as “collective beliefs about a given state’s ranking on valued
attributes”—including wealth and coercive capabilities, but also culture and
sociopolitical organization—a state’s objective status is determined by other
states.45 Allied policymakers’ status view vis-a-vis the United States, in con-
trast, comprises their subjective self-image of their nation’s rank on such
attributes. As a self-image, policymakers’ status conception may accord
their country a rank far exceeding its objective status. Self-images often
draw on a favorably biased reading of one’s qualities and record of accom-
plishments.46 They are also affected by so-called “possible selves”—ideas of
who one could be in the future.47 Thus, if members of the elite hold an
ambitious view of their nation’s future role, this leads to an inflated picture
of the state’s current international status.
To explain how policymakers’ status conception vis-a-vis the United
States shapes their attitude toward the US demand for their nation’s
nuclear reversal, I distinguish two types of status beliefs: an inferior-status
conception and an equal-status conception. Allied policymakers who have
43
For examples beyond status of belief heterogeneity across policymakers, see Henry R. Nau and Deepa M.
Ollapally, ed., Worldviews of Aspiring Powers: Domestic Foreign Policy Debates in China, India, Iran, Japan, and
Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
44
On the stability of status beliefs, see Jonathan Renshon, Fighting for Status: Hierarchy and Conflict in World
Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 57–59, 262–63.
45
Deborah Welch Larson, T. V. Paul, and William C. Wohlforth, “Status and World Order,” in Status in World
Politics, ed. T. V. Paul, Deborah Welch Larson, and William C. Wohlforth (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014), 7.
46
Consult, for example, Anthony G. Greenwald, “The Totalitarian Ego: Fabrication and Revision of Personal
History,” American Psychologist 35, no. 7 (July 1980): 603–18.
47
Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, “Possible Selves,” American Psychologist 41, no. 9 (September 1986): 954–69.
internalized the inferior-status view rank their nation clearly below the
United States, whereas members of the elite holding an equal-status con-
ception see their nation on par with their US ally.
Why—that is, through which causal mechanisms—do these status views
impact nuclear policymakers’ attitudes toward a nuclear reversal? My the-
ory argues that these diverging status conceptions provide allied policy-
makers with different answers as they respond to the process-related
question of, “Can the United States issue foreign policy orders toward my
country?” An inferior-status conception suggests an affirmative answer,
whereas an equal-status view provides a negative response. To be clear, an
affirmative answer means nothing less than that the United States enjoys a
client’s implicit permission to control (a part of) the latter’s foreign pol-
icy—despite divergent preferences on the question of concern.48 However,
such partial surrenders of political control exist in many unequal inter-
national relationships.49 With US alliances, I argue that allied policymakers
agree to this surrender only if they perceive US leadership of their alliance
as legitimate. In this regard, the most recent scholarship finds that the
legitimacy of American leadership rests on other actors’ acceptance of the
United States’ superior status.50 Accordingly, allied policymakers sharing an
inferior-status conception will regard the United States as a legitimate
authority and thus grant it the informal right to control their foreign pol-
icy. In contrast, members of the client’s elite holding an equal-status view
will not consider the United States a legitimate authority and hence dispute
an alleged US right to issue orders they would have to obey.
Whether its allies consider the United States a legitimate authority with
special rights determines Washington’s ability to make the former comply
with US foreign policy demands by way of mere social pressure—that is,
without threatening material consequences in case of noncompliance.51
This proposition receives strong support from five decades of psychological
48
In world politics, persuasion (leading to identical preferences) is believed to require time-consuming processes
of social learning or socialization (based on conditionality). Hence, persuasion cannot explain nuclear reversal
decisions, which are made more swiftly. See Jeffrey T. Checkel, “Why Comply? Social Learning and European
Identity Change,” International Organization 55, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 553–88; Frank Schimmelfennig, Stefan
Engert, and Heiko Knobel, International Socialization in Europe: European Organizations, Political Conditionality,
and Democratic Change (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
49
David A. Lake, Hierarchy in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); David C. Kang,
East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Tribute and Trade (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
50
Anne L. Clunan, “Why Status Matters in World Politics,“in Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth, Status in World Politics,
274–77; Reinhard Wolf, “Taking Interaction Seriously: Asymmetrical Roles and the Behavioral Foundations of
Status,” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 4 (December 2019): 1194–95.
51
Significantly, what I label “social pressure” is distinct from what Alastair Ian Johnston terms “social influence.”
He refers to what psychologists call conformity pressure (or majority influence): the pressure felt by a single
actor to adopt the unanimous attitude of a group. Status is not important to this mechanism. In contrast, my
concept of social pressure captures how status shapes one-on-one interactions. Johnston, Social States: China
in International Institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 74–154.
942 J. SCHNEIDER
research on “obedience to authority.”52 This research program demon-

strated extensively that people obey explicit orders from authorities
although they privately oppose the orders and material incentives are
absent. It argues that people do not dare stand up alone against a legitimate
authority because it is provocative and overbearing. Notably, experiments
have demonstrated not only that an authority’s ability to exert social pres-
sure successfully and thus induce others to obey their orders hinges on its
legitimacy, but also that an authority’s legitimacy results from its superior
status.53 Accordingly, the intra-alliance status theory posits that allied poli-
cymakers’ susceptibility to US social pressure is determined by their status
conception vis-a-vis the United States. Those holding an inferior-status
view will be receptive to social pressure from Washington since they see
the United States as a legitimate authority. Thus, rejecting explicit US
demands would make them feel highly uncomfortable, although they expect
no material punishment.54 In contrast, policymakers sharing an equal-status
view are insusceptible to US social pressure because they dispute the legit-
imacy of its leadership and are therefore prepared to confront the United
States over its demands openly.
Importantly, these propositions on US social pressure concentrate on
bilateral alliances. After all, it is standing up alone—that is, without the
open support of other allies—against the United States as a higher-ranking
power that policymakers holding an inferior-status view are desperate to
avoid. When a conflict arises within a bilateral alliance, this isolated pos-
ition of the ally is always present. In a multilateral alliance, it is not.
Accordingly, in relation to multilateral alliances, the intra-alliance status
theory expects US social pressure to prompt obedience among allied policy-
makers sharing an inferior-status view only if the latter’s nation, in its dis-
pute with the United States, does not have any overt diplomatic backing
from other alliance members. Psychological experiments within the obedi-
ence to authority research program support this refined proposition. They
have shown that the social pressure from a legitimate authority fails to
52
Thomas Blass, “The Milgram Paradigm after 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know about Obedience to
Authority,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 29, no. 5 (May 1999): 955–78.
53
Tom R. Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation,” Annual Review of Psychology 57
(2006): 379–80; Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper,
1974), 93–112.
54
Thus, social pressure is not just implicit coercion (that is, explicit US threats are absent, yet the ally complies
since it still anticipates material punishment). As Nicholas L. Miller’s research has shown, allies have not
anticipated US coercion in response to their nuclear weapons activities—at least until 1977, when new US
legislation made nonproliferation sanctions mandatory. Until then, realpolitik views on alliances were expected
to prevail over nonproliferation concerns in Washington. See Miller, Stopping the Bomb. Yet, even after 1977,
legal loopholes and fewer allies’ dependence on US military aid have given most allies reason to believe the
United States will not employ such sanctions. It is far from clear, for example, that the United States would
respond to Saudi Arabian nuclear weapons activities with strong sanctions. See (former National Security
Council official) Eric Brewer, “Knowing When to Walk: What Is the Best Alternative to a Formal US-Saudi
Nuclear Agreement?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 4, 2019, https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/knowing-
when-to-walk-what-is-the-best-alternative-to-a-formal-us-saudi-nuclear-agreement/#.
induce obedience when the recipient does not face the pressure in an iso-
lated position but is joined by like-minded supporters.55 Accordingly, in
multilateral alliances, even policymakers sharing an inferior-status view will
resist US social pressure as long as their stance against a nuclear reversal
enjoys official support from at least one other member state of their alli-
ance. Even then, however, these nuclear policymakers will fear losing their
partners’ diplomatic backing and the resulting isolation of their country in
its dispute with Washington. As the “lone dissenter” in a multilateral alli-
ance, confronting the higher-ranking United States would be just as risky
as in a bilateral alliance.
Although the intra-alliance status theory focuses on American social
pressure as an influence mechanism, it does not claim that coercive threats
will never be valuable in moving US clients toward nuclear restraint.
Rather, the theory argues that because coercive threats are much more
costly than social pressure—the latter requiring Washington only to com-
municate its nuclear reversal demand to the allied government explicitly
and, in multilateral alliances, to keep other member states from overtly
supporting the recipient’s refusal to obey the demand—the United States
will always give social pressure priority. And since this approach works so
well with policymakers sharing an inferior-status view, the United States
will rarely need to escalate to threats to get these particular policymakers’
acquiescence in a reversal.
Regarding members of the policymaking elite who have internalized an
equal-status conception, however, coercive threats have a crucial role to
play. Since these members of the elite are insusceptible to Washington’s
social pressure, threats of painful coercive measures will be necessary,
though not sufficient, to alter these policymakers’ calculations, thus forcing
them to abandon their nation’s nuclear weapons activities. Hence, by
including already explored mechanisms within a broader framework, intra-
alliance status theory offers a distinct pathway to move even these policy-
makers toward acquiescing to a nuclear reversal.
Regarding the scope of my theoretical arguments, one caveat is in order.
Like other theories of nuclear reversal, the intra-alliance status theory does
not claim to illuminate proliferation decision making after a state has com-
pleted its nuclearization.56 The acquisition of nuclear weapons unleashes
powerful bureaucratic and psychological forces that make abandoning all
55
Stanley Milgram, “The Liberating Effects of Group Pressure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1, no.
2 (February 1965): 130–31.
56
For a definition of this threshold, see Jacques E. C. Hymans, “When Does a State Become a ‘Nuclear Weapons
State’? An Exercise in Measurement Validation,” Nonproliferation Review 17, no. 1 (March 2010): 161–80.
944 J. SCHNEIDER
nuclear weapons activity much harder than before.57 Given these trans-
formed causal dynamics, my theory does not expect that US social pressure
will lead allied policymakers sharing inferior-status beliefs to support a
reversal decision subsequent to nuclear acquisition. The theory applies only
to the pre-acquisition period.
In explaining the influence of individual status conceptions vis-a-vis the
United States on nuclear policymaking, one question remains: How do the
different attitudes of an ally’s policymakers toward a nuclear reversal aggre-
gate into the proliferation behavior of that state? Overall, this aggregation
is dependent upon the institutional context. Generalizing about the out-
come of this aggregation process is difficult, however, because domestic
nuclear decision-making processes vary considerably across states—for
example, in terms of how many institutional veto players are involved.
These processes may also vary across different nuclear decisions within the
same country.58 Taking the varying effect of the decision-making process
upon nuclear policies into account, what can be said is that—absent US
coercive threats—allied states will not undertake a nuclear reversal if poli-
cymakers sharing an equal-status conception enjoy veto power over the
reversal decision. The exact meaning of the caveat “holding veto power”
depends on the institutional setting of the case at hand.
My psychological explanation for why the nuclear policymakers of US
allies agree to or reject their nation’s nuclear reversal is inspired by, yet dis-
tinct from, Hymans’s psychological theory of proliferation. Hymans’s key
explanatory variable—the national identity conception (NIC) of a state’s
leader—resembles my focus on policymakers’ status conception vis-a-vis
the United States, for one key dimension of Hymans’s concept of an NIC
concerns leaders’ view of their nation’s international status. However, there
are at least two important differences between our theories.
First, in Hymans’s theory, the main reference point to which political
leaders will compare their nation in terms of status is the so-called key
comparison to other. In the case of militarily threatened states, like US
allies, the chief rival of the country will typically occupy that role. In con-
trast, my intra-alliance status theory is only concerned with how allied poli-
cymakers conceive of their nation’s status vis-a-vis the United States.
Crucially, the two status beliefs do not correlate. Although some allied
57
Solingen, Nuclear Logics, 19; Lanoszka, Atomic Assurance, 19–21; Harald M€ uller and Andreas Schmidt, “The
Little-Known Story of Deproliferation: Why Countries Give Up Nuclear Weapons Activities,” in Forecasting
Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century, vol. 1: The Role of Theory, ed. William C. Potter and Gaukhar
Mukhatzhanova (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 149–51.
58
Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Veto Players, Nuclear Energy, and Nonproliferation: Domestic Institutional Barriers to a
Japanese Bomb,” International Security 36, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 154–89; James Joseph Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt:
Power, Ideas, and Institutions in International Politics” (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
2001), 129–31.
leaders holding an oppositional-nationalist NIC might also rank their coun-

try on par with the United States, this does not seem to be a gen-
eral pattern.59
Second, the two theories aim at different phenomena. Hymans’s depend-
ent variable is the final decision to manufacture a nuclear arsenal. In con-
trast, I explain policymakers’ stances toward terminating their country’s
nuclear weapons activities. True, Hymans also speculates about the implica-
tions of NICs for ancillary nuclear policy questions. For example, he surmi-
ses that leaders whose NIC accords their nation a low status (vis-a-vis their
key comparison other) should be unlikely to resist the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).60 Crucially, however, Hymans is careful
not to equate NPT accession with nuclear reversal.61 Hence, Hymans does
not make predictions for when states stop their nuclear weapons activities,
whereas my theory aims solely at explaining such reversal decisions,
whether they coincide with NPT accession or not.62
Testing the argument

In the analysis below, I examine my theoretical propositions against evi-
dence from West Germany and South Korea. To summarize: The main
hypothesis of the intra-alliance status theory posits that absent US coercive
threats, allied policymakers will agree to a nuclear reversal only if (1) they
hold an inferior-status conception vis-a-vis the United States; (2) no other
alliance member openly supports their rejecting a nuclear reversal; and (3)
Washington explicitly communicates its demand for a nuclear reversal to
the ally. As a supplementary hypothesis, the theory claims that allied poli-
cymakers sharing an equal-status conception will accept a nuclear reversal
only if Washington employs explicit coercive threats.
The German and South Korean cases of nuclear reversal lend themselves
particularly well to testing my theoretical claims. First, they are character-
ized by within-case variation on the dependent variable: the respective
state’s nuclear policymakers disagreed over the reversal decision—notably,
59
For example, most “China hawks” in Japan, including former prime minister Shinzo Abe, appear to share an
oppositional-nationalist NIC (vis-a-vis China, their key comparison other), but seem to consider their nation’s
status as clearly inferior to the United States (see the conclusions of this article). Consequently, assuming the
presence of US social pressure, my and Hymans’s status-based theories make very different predictions for the
proliferation-related behavior of Japanese “China hawks.”
60
Hymans, Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation, 38–40.
61
Although Hymans surmises that leaders holding an NIC that ranks their country on par (or higher) than their
key comparison other should reject the NPT, he admits that such leaders might as well join the treaty in an
effort to acquire the technology for building the bomb. Consequently, in Hymans’s theory, NPT membership
may or may not imply nuclear weapons restraint.
62
Historically, differentiating nuclear reversal from NPT accession is significant. States’ nuclear reversal sometimes
coincided with their accession to the NPT, as in the case of West Germany. Yet this has not been a general
pattern. Several nonnuclear weapon states—for example, South Korea—have continued their nuclear weapons
activities, or started new ones, after joining the treaty.
946 J. SCHNEIDER
at a single point in time (or almost at the same time)—while the domestic
and international environments remained largely constant. If this variation
of nuclear attitudes across each country’s policymakers can indeed be tied
to divergent status beliefs, this would boost our confidence in the logic of
intra-alliance status theory. Second, the proponents of the assurance and
alliance coercion frameworks have treated both West Germany and South
Korea as important cases in support of their respective theoretical claims.
By showing that their accounts of even these crucial cases have serious
shortcomings while my theory receives strong support, I position the intra-
alliance status theory as a serious alternative. Third, selecting a member of
a multilateral alliance (West Germany) allows me to test the second condi-
tion of my theory’s main hypothesis, which focuses on the lack of support
from other alliance members. Conversely, studying one ally vis-a-vis whom
Washington did resort to coercive threats (South Korea) permits me to
evaluate the theory’s supplementary hypothesis, which centers on the neces-
sity of coercion in relation to policymakers sharing equal-status views.
Fourth, including a non–North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally
(South Korea) into the analysis helps dispel doubts that US social pressure
may only work within NATO due to its exceptional level of integration.
To measure allied policymakers’ individual conception of their nation’s
status vis-a-vis the United States, I draw primarily on the qualitative-inter-
pretative literature on the respective members of the policymaking elite and
their country’s foreign policy. Scholars have used this method effectively to
gauge leaders’ foreign policy beliefs and identity conceptions.63 As an add-
itional indicator, I employ primary sources that most likely reflect the pol-
icymaking elite’s genuinely held status beliefs, such as memoranda of
confidential conversations. Notably, most of these secondary accounts and
some archival materials focus on events long before the allied policymakers
confronted their nation’s nuclear reversal. This temporal separation allows
me to dismiss endogeneity concerns that these members of the elite
adopted their status beliefs vis-a-vis the United States only during the
nuclear reversal dispute to rationalize their response to US nonproliferation
efforts.64 Moreover, my qualitative data for measuring policymakers’ status
views—whether drawn from episodes before the nuclear reversal or from
the period when this shift was undertaken—excludes all material directly
related to the ally’s nuclear weapons activities. This approach ensures that
63
For example, Elizabeth N. Saunders relied on secondary accounts to measure all but three postwar US
presidents’ beliefs about the origins of international threats, as she readily admits. See Saunders, Leaders at
War, 15 and 229n39. Similarly, in Hymans’s work, the review of the interpretative literature does the heavy
lifting in measuring leaders’ NICs, although the quantitative content-analysis part of his multimethod
measurement strategy usually gets the most attention from scholars. See Hymans, Psychology of Nuclear
Proliferation, 49–50.
64
Robert Jervis, “Understanding Beliefs,” Political Psychology 27, no. 5 (October 2006): 649–58.
the attitude of a member of the policymaking elite toward his nation’s

nuclear reversal could not have shaped the coding of his status conception
vis-a-vis the United States—an outcome that would risk a tautological
explanation.
West Germany
The nuclear reversal of the Bonn Republic was only achieved in 1974,
when West Germany ratified the NPT. This step put an end to the—
unsuccessful—efforts by German policymakers since the 1950s to give their
country a share in the control of multilateral nuclear forces, or at least pre-
serve the option to participate in such nuclear sharing schemes in
the future.65
With respect to West Germany’s nuclear policymaking elite during the
1960s and early 1970s, a careful review of the interpretivist literature and
the available archival evidence makes clear that a vast majority of German
policymakers shared an inferior-status view vis-a-vis the United States.
Only a clear, but vocal, minority—representing one wing of one of the
three major political parties—held an equal-status view. The policymakers
of both the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Free Democratic Party
(FDP) must invariably be ascribed an inferior-status conception vis-a-vis
the United States.66 In late 1969, these two parties formed a coalition gov-
ernment with Willy Brandt serving as chancellor. Since 1966, the SPD had
been part of the Grand Coalition that had also included the then still dom-
inant Christian Democratic parties (CDU/CSU). Having internalized an
inferior-status view, the SPD’s policymakers displayed a strong tendency to
avoid any foreign policy confrontation with the United States. Tellingly, in
a Bundestag hearing in January 1967, Brandt, as foreign minister,
demanded Bonn make clear to the French that Germany could just not
stand up to Washington, because, “in contrast to them [the French], we are
not a great power” but merely “a European middle-power … . We have
Atlantic commitments.”67
65
In his famous pledge of 1954, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had only renounced manufacturing nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons on West German soil, but neither the acquisition of, nor participation in the
decision to use, nuclear weapons produced elsewhere.
66
Judith Michel, Willy Brandts Amerikabild und -politik 1933–1992 [Willy Brandt’s Image of America and his Policies
toward the United States, 1933–92] (V&R Unipress: G€ ottingen, 2010); Hans-J€ urgen Grabbe, Unionsparteien,
Sozialdemokratie und Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika 1945–1966 [The Christian Democratic Parties, the Social
Democrats, and the United States, 1945–66] (D€ usseldorf: Droste, 1983); Ronald J. Granieri, “Political Parties and
German-American Relations: Politics beyond the Water’s Edge,” in The United and Germany in the Era of the
Cold War 1945–1990: A Handbook, vol. 1: 1945–1968, ed. Detlef Junker (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 141–48.
67
Quoted in Joachim Wintzer, ed., Der Ausw€artige Ausschuss des Deutschen Bundestages: Sitzungsprotokolle
1965–1969, vol. 1 [The Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee: Meeting Transcripts, 1965–69, vol. 1] (D€ usseldorf:
Droste, 2006), 318.
948 J. SCHNEIDER
This modest view of Germany’s status and the accompanying subordin-

ation could also be found in the thinking of Egon Bahr, Brandt’s close aide
in the Foreign Office and the SPD’s foreign policy architect at that time.
As Bahr noted in a 1969 planning study, Germany “does not belong to the
world’s great and leading powers.” Consequently, Bahr advised, Germany
must “attempt, whenever possible, to swim not against, but with the polit-
ical current” of Western diplomacy, with US policy being the key reference
point.68 This notion of “following the wind” of American diplomacy
reflects an inferior-status view.
Besides the SPD and FDP, all policymakers representing the moderate
majority of the CDU—including Chancellors Ludwig Erhard and Kurt
Georg Kiesinger, Foreign and then Defense Minister Gerhard Schr€ oder,
Rainer Barzel and Karl Carstens as chairmen of the CDU/CSU parliamen-
tary group, and NPT expert Kurt Birrenbach—likewise conceived of
Germany as ranking clearly below the United States.69 Revealing this status
belief, Chancellor Kiesinger explained to Charles de Gaulle in January 1967
that Germany, as a divided nation at the front line of the Cold War, was
“to a certain extent an object of international politics.”70 As a result,
Kiesinger argued, Germany did “not possess the same room to maneuver”
as France to resists US policies.71 Similarly, Barzel considered the Federal
Republic “in terms of foreign policy not even a middle power.”72
In contrast, policymakers from the conservative wing of the CDU and its
Bavarian sister party, the CSU, are ascribed an equal-status conception vis-
a-vis the United States in the literature. Often labeled “Gaullists” for their
greater readiness to confront Washington over issues of political import-
ance, this camp was led by CSU chair Franz Josef Strauss and included
CDU conservatives like Konrad Adenauer and foreign policy expert Alois
Mertes, but also hard-line diplomats like Bonn’s ambassador to NATO,
68
Memorandum from Bahr, September 21, 1969, Akten zur Ausw€artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
1969, vol. 2 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1969, vol. 2] (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 2000), 1049–50.
69
Philipp Gassert, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 1904–1988: Kanzler zwischen den Zeiten [Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 1904–88:
The Chancellor in between the Christian Democratic and Social Demoratic Eras] (Munich: DVA, 2006); Torsten
Oppelland, Gerhard Schr€oder (1910–1989): Politik zwischen Staat, Partei und Konfession [Gerhard Schr€oder
(1910–89): Politics in between the State, the Party, and the Protestant Denomination] (D€
usseldorf: Droste, 2002);
Kai Wambach, Rainer Barzel: Eine Biographie [Rainer Barzel: A Biography] (Paderborn: Sch€ oningh, 2019); Tim
Szatkowski, Karl Carstens: Eine politische Biographie [Karl Carstens: A Political Biography] (Cologne: B€ ohlau,
2007); Hans-Peter Ernst Hinrichsen, Der Ratgeber: Kurt Birrenbach und die Aubenpolitik der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland [The Adviser: Kurt Birrenbach and the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany] (Berlin:
Verlag f€ur Wissenschaft und Forschung, 2002); Ronald J. Granieri, The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the
CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 (New York: Berghahn, 2003).
70
Memorandum of conversation Kiesinger-de Gaulle, January 14, 1967, Classified records section (B 150), vol. 94,
Political Archive of the German Foreign Office, Berlin, 12.
71
Memorandum of conversation Kiesinger-de Gaulle, January 13, 1967, Akten zur Ausw€artigen Politik der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1967, vol. 1 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany,
1967, vol. 1] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), 77.
72
Transcript of Barzel speech on “The International Political Environment of the Federal Republic” in Bonn on
February 2, 1981, Records of Rainer Barzel, vol. 258, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz (hereafter BArchK), 1.
Wilhelm Grewe.73 Drawing on Europe’s historical preeminence and a

Catholic sense of spiritual superiority over an allegedly secular materialist
America, these German conservatives shared a distinct “conception of the
West,” one in which the traditional Continental great powers—Germany
and France—ranked equal to the United States.74 Thus, as early as 1951,
Adenauer again envisioned Germany as a great power, telling trusted jour-
nalists that “if we want to become a great power again—and this is what
we Germans have to do—then we must start acting like a great power.”75
These diverging views of their nation’s status vis-a-vis the United States
shaped German policymakers’ attitudes toward a nuclear reversal, which
came in the form of the country’s accession to the NPT. Importantly, all
members of the policymaking elite in Bonn were agreed in their dislike of
the NPT—a broad consensus that included the SPD and Brandt.76 Thus,
Brandt admitted behind closed doors in 1969 that he had “never said that
it was a good treaty.”77 Perceptive US diplomats likewise reported from
Bonn in late 1967 that “among the 50 to 60 top politicians and officials” in
West Germany “there is no one who supports the NPT.”78 However,
Washington’s explicit demands, beginning in December 1966, for Bonn to
join the treaty—which exerted strong social pressure on the West German
policymaking elite—eventually led all policymakers sharing an inferior-sta-
tus conception to change their attitude and endorse the German ratification
of the NPT. Their colleagues with equal-status views, by contrast, stuck to
their opposition to the treaty.79
This outcome is puzzling for both the assurance model and alliance coer-
cion theory. The assurance model insufficiently explains why one group of
73
Detlef Bischoff, Franz Josef Strauß, die CSU und die Außenpolitik: Konzeption und Realit€at am Beispiel der Großen
Koalition [Franz Josef Strauss, the CSU, and Foreign Policy: Concept and Reality during the Grand Coalition]
(Meisenheim: Verlag Anton Hain, 1973); Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer: Der Staatsmann, 1952–1967 [Adenauer:
The Statesman, 1952–67] (Stuttgart: DVA, 1991); Georg S. Schneider, Alois Mertes (1921–1985): Das
außenpolitische Denken und Handeln eines Christlichen Demokraten [Alois Mertes (1921–85): The Foreign Policy
Thinking and Behavior of a Christian Democrat] (D€ usseldorf: Droste, 2012); Tim Geiger, Atlantiker gegen
Gaullisten: Außenpolitischer Konflikt und innerparteilicher Machtkampf in der CDU/CSU 1958–1969 [Atlanticists
versus Gaullists: Foreign Policy Conflicts and Intra-Party Power Struggles in the CDU/CSU, 1958–69] (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 2008).
74
The quote is from Granieri, Ambivalent Alliance, 15. See also Geiger, Atlantiker gegen Gaullisten [Atlanticists
versus Gaullists], 48–62.
75
Quoted in Hanns J€ urgen K€ usters, ed., Konrad Adenauer: Teegespr€ache 1950–1954 [Konrad Adenauer: Tea
Conversations, 1950–54] (Berlin: Siedler, 1985), 93.
76
On the consensus, see William Glenn Gray, “Abstinence and Ostpolitik: Brandt’s Government and the Nuclear
Question,” in Ostpolitik, 1969–1974: European and Global Responses, ed. Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 244–68 or Andreas Lutsch, “Problem Solved? The German Nuclear
Question and West Germany’s Accession to the NPT (1967–1975),” in Joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty:
Deterrence, Non-Proliferation, and the American Alliance, ed. John Baylis and Yoko Iwama (New York: Routledge,
2019), 99–100.
77
Quoted in a summary of Brandt’s meeting with the leaders of the CDU/CSU on the NPT, April 29, 1969,
Records of the Chancellery (B 136), vol. 6904, BArchK, 13.
78
Memorandum from Edward Fried of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant
(Rostow), November 3, 1967, FRUS 1964–1968, vol. 15 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1999), doc. 235, 593.
79
For the roll-call vote on NPT ratification, see Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages [Meetings of the
German Bundestag] 86, February 20, 1974 (Bonn: Heger, 1977), 5290–91.
950 J. SCHNEIDER
policymakers in Bonn decided to ratify the NPT while at the same time—
that is, while enjoying the same protection of the same US alliance—
another group of German policymakers kept rejecting this step.
Importantly, the dividing line ran through the CDU. Therefore, simplistic
explanations stressing party politics fail to account for German policy-
makers’ diverging stances on the NPT. On the other hand, the coercion
model is ill-suited to explain West Germany’s nuclear reversal since
Washington never employed threats of military abandonment to force
Bonn into the NPT.80
In contrast, variation in status views vis-a-vis the United States can
account for why some West German members of the elite voted to ratify
the NPT and others kept refusing accession to the treaty. Yet the intra-alli-
ance status theory gets not only the covariation right. The way West
German policymakers approached the question of NPT ratification and
then justified their choice for or against accession is also consistent with
my theory’s causal mechanism. Thus, debating NPT accession, they did not
focus primarily on the treaty’s stipulations but—as my theory’s substitution
mechanism would expect—on whether Bonn could refuse foreign policy
orders from the United States. In so doing, policymakers sharing an infer-
ior-status view repeatedly revealed the major impact of their status beliefs
and—due to NATO’s multilateral nature—the accompanying concern that
Bonn would face Washington’s NPT requests from an isolated position
once the other allies ceased supporting Germany’s critical stance. Thus, in
July 1968, when Germany’s European NATO allies were about to sign the
NPT, Brandt urged the chancellor to follow suit. Abstaining, Brandt said,
would put Bonn under social pressure “from East and West” while “no one
will be prepared to show solidarity with us and defend us. We remain
alone.”81 For Brandt, losing European support necessitated deference to
US demands.
In the view of SPD foreign policy thinker Bahr, likewise, the status gap
between Germany and the United States was key and made joining the
NPT inevitable. As he noted privately in mid-1968, “The question is, can
the German government [resist] the combined pressure from East and
West … and afford going it alone not just without, but against the Allies?
Only one answer should be possible here if one gauges the Federal
Republic’s political weight realistically.” As a mere middle power, West
80
Gene Gerzhoy claims the United States explicitly threatened West Germany with military abandonment should
it abstain from the NPT. However, this interpretation receives no support from the historical record. For a
review of the available evidence, see Jonas Schneider and Gene Gerzhoy, “Correspondence: The United States
and West Germany’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons,” International Security 41, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 182–84.
81
Letter to Kiesinger from Brandt, July 15, 1968, Akten zur Ausw€artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
1968, vol. 2 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1968, vol. 2] (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1999), 870. Italics added.
Germany had no choice: “It might well be feasible to hang on to such a

policy [of not signing the NPT] vis-a-vis the East.” Yet “straining our rela-
tionship with our protector, the United States, is much more serious,” Bahr
warned, because “at the same time, we will become isolated from our other
allies once they sign the treaty.”82 Hence, at least from an isolated position
within NATO, Bonn could not resist the US request for Germany to join
the NPT.
Chancellor Kiesinger shared this assessment that Bonn could not but
acquiesce in an NPT brought into existence by the United States. As early
as November 1966, he commented privately, “We cannot reject a Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.”83 That Kiesinger made this judgment before see-
ing even the first US-Soviet draft of the NPT is strikingly consistent with
my theory’s substitution mechanism, according to which the treaty’s provi-
sions mattered little for the chancellor’s decision. To infer from his state-
ment that Kiesinger did not mind deferring to US priorities would be a
mistake, though. In a confidential meeting of CDU/CSU policymakers on
the NPT, Kiesinger lamented that West Germany was “a virtual protector-
ate of the USA.”84 However, holding an inferior-status conception, he did
not get angry over this protectorate-like status, but seemed rather resigned:
as Kiesinger confided in early 1969, “in the end, there is, of course, nothing
you can do against a superpower and you will have to sign [the NPT].”85
Owing to his view of Germany’s inferior status, it became imperative for
Kiesinger to heed US requests on the NPT once Germany lacked diplo-
matic backing from other NATO states. In August 1968, when Bonn’s
European allies moved to join the treaty and Brandt and Bahr urged
Kiesinger to follow suit, only Italy’s last-minute suspension of its planned
NPT signing (in response to the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia)
temporarily rescued Kiesinger’s government from losing its last supporter
on NPT matters. The chancellor thus felt the looming isolation: fending off
requests from CDU hard-liners to reject the NPT openly, Kiesinger insisted
that “there is one thing we cannot afford under any circumstances, namely
being isolated.”86 However, this is what happened in late January 1969
when Italy finally signed the NPT. Galvanizing the situation further, in
early February 1969 incoming president Richard Nixon sent Kiesinger a
82
Memorandum from Bahr on “The Nonproliferation Treaty and German Interests,” n.d., Records of Egon Bahr,
vol. 395, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Bonn (hereafter AdsD), 6–8.
83
Quoted in handwritten note from Helmut Schmidt on negotiations with the CDU/CSU over a coalition
government, November 23, 1966, Records of Helmut Schmidt, vol. 5077, AdsD, 9.
84
Handwritten note from Barzel on a meeting with Kiesinger, Stoltenberg, Strauss, Birrenbach, and St€ ucklen on
the NPT, February 10, 1969, Records of Rainer Barzel, vol. 81, BArchK, 6.
85
Off-the-record press briefing by Chancellor Kiesinger, January 23, 1969, Records of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, vol. 8/
2, ACDP, 3.
86
Quoted in G€ unter Buchstab, ed., Kiesinger: “Wir leben in einer ver€anderten Welt”: Die Protokolle des CDU-
Bundesvorstands 1965–1969 [Kiesinger: “We Live in a Changed World”: Transcripts of the CDU Executive Meetings,
1965–69] (D€usseldorf: Droste, 2005), 1083–84.
952 J. SCHNEIDER
backchannel message making clear that even the Republican administration

would not let Bonn off the hook. Although Nixon assured the chancellor
that he would never force Bonn to sign the NPT, the president unmistak-
ably conveyed his preference that Germany join the treaty.87 Now West
Germany faced US social pressure from an isolated position within NATO.
In a confidential meeting of senior CDU/CSU policymakers two days later,
Kiesinger hastily cut down the list of Germany’s remaining demands on
the treaty. “Pursue only what can be achieved. Insist upon this,” Barzel
annotated Kiesinger’s order, “but beyond this: [demand] nothing or [face]
life-endangering isolation!”88 What held Kiesinger back from signing the
NPT before the elections in fall 1969 was only the subsequent pledge of
Nixon that he would accept further delays during the election year, thus
temporarily suspending US social pressure on Bonn.89
The German election in 1969 ushered in a new coalition government of
the SPD and FDP that quickly moved to sign the NPT. However, the new
government did not ratify the NPT pending conclusion of a verification
agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
European Atomic Energy Community, Europe’s atomic energy authority.
After this accord had been reached in 1973, though, German leaders shar-
ing an inferior-status view pushed for ratifying the NPT lest Bonn might
again become isolated within NATO over the treaty. As Germany would
have no allied support, SPD and FDP policymakers argued that Germany,
as a middle power, just could “not elude the treaty [NPT] efforts of the
superpowers, and least of all the efforts of the Americans.”90 CDU moder-
ates like Kiesinger displayed the same resignation. Reacting to Strauss’s
nonpublic protestations that NPT membership would degrade Germans to
helots, or slaves, of the United States, Kiesinger stressed that, for the choice
of joining the treaty, “the crucial question is our relationship with our
allies … . Helots, well, helots—we are not helots, but sadly we are in fact
wards! Wards! And [we] cannot retain our freedom by any stretch of the
imagination without the protection of the alliance, and this means, in fact,
without the protection of the United States.”91
87
Handwritten letter to Kiesinger from Ambassador Pauls (Washington), February 8, 1969, Akten zur Ausw€artigen
Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1969, vol. 1 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of
Germany, 1969, vol. 1] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000), 168.
88
Handwritten note from Barzel, February 10, 1969, 2.
89
Kiesinger admitted as much in a closed meeting. See Stefan Marx, ed., Die CDU/CSU-Fraktion im Deutschen
Bundestag: Sitzungsprotokolle 1966–1969 [The CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag: Meeting
Transcripts 1966–69], CD supplement (D€ usseldorf: Droste, 2011), 1176–78.
90
Quoted in Wolfgang H€ olscher and Joachim Wintzer, eds., Der Ausw€artige Ausschuss des Deutschen Bundestages:
Sitzungsprotokolle 1972–1976, vol. 1 [The Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee: Meeting Transcripts, 1972–76, vol.
1] (D€usseldorf: Droste, 2010), 511.
91
Transcript of a meeting of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on the NPT, February 12, 1974, Records of Karl
Carstens, vol. 24, BArchK, 52–53.
Nixon’s patience in 1969—and the election results—had spared Kiesinger

a major intraparty fight over the NPT. For the conservatives in his own
party and the CSU’s policymakers, sharing an equal-status view, insisted
Germany could certainly refuse the US demand to join the treaty even
without allied support. In early 1967, Adenauer had publicly challenged
Washington over the NPT and also privately condemned Kiesinger’s NPT
stance as “weak” and submissive to US orders.92 Strauss also sent Kiesinger
a defiant letter, underscoring that even a West German isolation over the
NPT was no reason to back down: “Neither out of fear of world opinion
nor under the pressure of American extortion must we sign a treaty that
irrevocably reduces Germany to a divided object of a super cartel of the
world powers.”93 That this refusal to bend to US policies was directly tied
to Strauss’s ambitious vision for Germany’s status became apparent in a
closed meeting in February 1974, where he angrily argued against ratifying
the NPT. To Strauss, stressing Germany’s isolation over the NPT was
the argument of helots [slaves], not the argument of free men. We in the Federal
Republic … as the second largest or maybe even the largest trading nation in the
world and as the strongest economic partner in the Atlantic area behind the United
States—have our own interests … . The British have chosen their [nuclear] option,
the French haven chosen their [nuclear] option, and the rest of the Europeans have
in any way quit world history some time ago … but the key nation, the destined
nation [for Europe’s return to greatness as a federal entity] is the Federal Republic
of Germany.94
According to Strauss, West Germany could reject the NPT, if only it

would have the stomach to stand up to America and act in accordance
with its rank as a major power.
With skepticism toward the NPT prevalent among all policymakers in
Bonn, the divergent views on the appropriate response to Washington’s
NPT efforts reveal these policymakers’ distinct status conceptions vis-a-vis
the United States. Whereas Brandt and Kiesinger saw Germany as a mere
middle power and an object of diplomacy and, therefore, tried to avert
confrontations with Washington, Adenauer and Strauss intuitively listed
Germany among the European great powers that could definitely resist
US policies.
Examining the views of these conservatives not only shows that members
of the elite holding an equal-status view were insusceptible to social pres-
sure from Washington. In addition, there is evidence supporting the
hypothesis that these policymakers would have agreed to a nuclear reversal
92
Letter to Kiesinger from Adenauer, February 27, 1967, Records of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, vol. 1, ACDP, 2.
93
Letter to Kiesinger from Strauss, February 15, 1967, Records of Kurt Georg Kiesinger, vol. 285, ACDP, 2.
94
Transcript of a meeting of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, February 12, 1974, 22.
954 J. SCHNEIDER
only when confronted with coercive US threats. For example, in a confi-

dential 1968 memorandum on the likely consequences of a West German
abstention from the NPT, Bonn’s ambassador to NATO, Grewe, concluded
that Germany could endure US social pressure even if it was completely
isolated, and thus advised Bonn to reject the NPT. Grewe added, however,
that Germany could later reconsider its refusal “if the price for not signing
becomes too high.”95 As he had just ridiculed the impact of social pressure,
this statement can only mean that Grewe may have endorsed joining the
NPT only if the costs of abstaining had come to include coercive US
threats. Since such threats were never employed against Germany over the
NPT, however, members of the policymaking elite holding an equal-status
view could reject this nuclear reversal until the end.
South Korea
After considerable efforts spanning twelve years, South Korea finally ended
its nuclear weapons activities during the summer of 1980.96 Unlike in West
Germany, nuclear decision-making power in autocratic South Korea in the
1970s and 1980s was largely concentrated in the hands of the country’s
military dictators:97 President Park Chung-hee (1961–1979) and his succes-
sor, President Chun Doo-hwan (1980–1988). Below, I exploit the unfore-
seen leadership change from Park to Chun to argue that their divergent
conceptions of South Korea’s status vis-a-vis the United States explains
Seoul’s sudden embrace of a nuclear reversal so soon after Chun
assumed power.
The interpretative literature describes Park Chung-hee as holding an
equal-status conception vis-a-vis the United States. Park continuously
sought to free South Korean foreign policy from the influence of the
region’s great powers, including the sway of the United States.98 Lee Hu-
rak, a close aide and confidante of Park’s, privately revealed Park’s view of
Korea’s equal rank vis-a-vis the United States. Referring to the possible-
selves conception of a future unified Korea, he asserted that “a nation with
95
Memorandum to Ruete from Grewe, September 5, 1968, Akten zur Ausw€artigen Politik der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland 1968, vol. 2 [Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1968, vol. 2]
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), 1096–97.
96
Ignoring the research by Korean historians that I present below, existing accounts of South Korea’s nuclear
weapons activities have erroneously dated the country’s nuclear reversal decision to 1981.
97
See the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s “East Asia Biweekly Review,” January 10, 1978, http://www.foia.cia.
gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001091919.pdf, 12–14.
98
Chong-Sik Lee, Park Chung Hee: From Poverty to Power (Palos Verdes, CA: KHU Press, 2012), 302–12; Hyung-A
Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee: Rapid Industrialization, 1961–79 (New York: Routledge, 2004);
Scott A. Snyder, South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2018), 24–25, 43; Seo-Hyun Park, Sovereignty and Status in East Asian International
Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 135–40.
40–50 million people is a powerful country. One hundred years ago, we

yielded to big powers because we were weak. In the future, the big powers
will yield to us.”99 Reflecting this equal-status conception, Park sought an
alliance “of greater equality than in the past,” according to his senior
diplomats.100 In doing so, Park often challenged Washington’s foreign poli-
cies, and did not shy away from angrily lecturing its senior officials, includ-
ing the US president.101 Clearly, Park regarded deference as humiliating
and was very uncomfortable obeying US orders. Mirroring this assessment,
the US State Department described Park in 1968 as “very proud, independ-
ent, nationalistic, but not chauvinistic.”102 That Paul Cleveland, a senior
official in the US embassy in Seoul in the 1970s and 1980s, labeled Park “a
strong nationalist kind of character” fits neatly into this picture.103
In sharp contrast, Chun Doo-hwan shared an inferior-status view vis-
a-vis the United States. Even though Chun, as a conservative and authori-
tarian military officer, was a strict Park loyalist and generally interested in
raising Korea’s prestige, he never objected to Washington’s dominant role
within the US-Korean alliance and the resulting massive US meddling in
Seoul’s foreign and defense policies.104 A foreign policy adviser who had
worked for both Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan has written of their
“marked difference in their views toward the United States.”105 Accepting
an inferior role for South Korea in the alliance, President Chun did not
challenge Washington, but instead followed the US lead in foreign affairs.
Consequently, in a midterm assessment of his presidency, the US Central
Intelligence Agency reported that “Chun has personally worked hard to
appear responsive to US interests.”106 In so doing, he was always willing to
obey Washington’s explicit foreign policy orders.107 And according to
Cleveland, the US embassy official, this submissive stance was linked to
99
Quoted in Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books,
2001), 23–24.
100
Memorandum to the Secretary of State from Anthony Lake, “Planning Talks with the Republic of Korea,” May
19, 1979, Records of Anthony Lake, 1977–1981, box 5, RG 59, National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, MD (hereafter NARA), 3.
101
William H. Gleysteen, Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence: Carter and Korea in Crisis (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 1999), 46.
102
Quoted in Kim Seung Young, “Security, Nationalism, and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles: The
South Korean Case, 1970–82,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 12, no. 4 (December 2001), 57.
103
Transcript of Cleveland interview with Thomas M€uller-F€arber, December 2, 2011, 3.
104
Choong Nam Kim, The Korean Presidents: Leadership for Nation Building (Norwalk, CT: East Bridge, 2007),
157–213; Chae-Jin Lee, A Troubled Peace: U.S. Policy and the Two Koreas (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006), 112–29; Kyudok Hong, “South Korean Strategic Thought toward Asia in the 1980s,” in
South Korean Strategic Thought toward Asia, ed. Gilbert Rozman, In-Taek Hyun, and Shin-wha Lee (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 38, 51.
105
Quoted in Kim, “Security, Nationalism, and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles,” 70.
106
CIA report on “South Korea – Chun at ‘Midterm’: An Intelligence Assessment,” July 1984, CIA Research Tool at
NARA, 1.
107
For example, upon US requests, Chun dropped the plan to retaliate against North Korea after a terrorist
attack by the North had killed several members of the South Korean cabinet in Burma in 1983. See Lee,
Troubled Peace, 119–20.
956 J. SCHNEIDER
Chun’s realization that South Korea could just not deal on par with the US
superpower: “Compared with Park, who showed a strong nationalistic
pride, Chun was much more realistic.”108
Holding these divergent status views, Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-
hwan responded very differently to US demands for South Korea to stop
its nuclear weapons activities. After US intelligence agencies in fall 1974
had learned of South Korea’s secret efforts to develop a nuclear weapons
capability, the Ford administration moved to thwart them. In particular,
the US administration attempted to get the Park regime to cancel its
planned purchase of a reprocessing plant from France, which would have
provided Seoul with plutonium for nuclear weapons. To make President
Park change his mind, Washington at first refrained from issuing coercive
threats, confining its proactive bilateral efforts beginning in August 1975 to
social pressure in the form of strong explicit demands.109 For example, US
assistant secretary of state Phillip Habib urged the South Korean ambassa-
dor to the United States in several conversations in fall 1975 to halt the
deal with France, but did not resort to any threats. Since President Park
held an equal-status view, however, these US efforts were bound to fail: act-
ing defiantly, Park let Habib know that obeying such American orders was
not possible for South Korea “as a matter of honor.”110
Given Park’s demonstrated insusceptibility to social pressure, the Ford
administration finally resorted to explicit coercive threats. Notably, only
then did Park Chung-hee respond to US entreaties. In December 1975, the
US ambassador to South Korea, Richard Sneider, made it plain to Park’s
advisers that bilateral civil nuclear cooperation and the entire alliance were
on the line if Seoul did not cancel the purchase of the reprocessing plant.
Sneider warned that the question was “whether Korea [was] prepared [to]
jeopardize availability of [the] best technology and largest financing cap-
acity which only [the] US could offer, as well as [the] vital partnership with
[the] US, not only in nuclear and scientific areas but in [the] broad polit-
ical and security areas.”111 Furthermore, in January 1976, Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger conveyed an even stronger threat to Park.112 Only days
later, South Korea annulled the purchase contract. A few years later, Park
privately told a US congressional staffer that Kissinger had threatened to
108
Quoted in Kim, “Security, Nationalism, and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles,” 70.
109
“ROK Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plans,” August 16, 1975, State Department telegram 195214, National
Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 582, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=3513547-Document-18-
State-Department-telegram-195214-to.
110
Quoted in Oberdorfer, Two Koreas, 72.
111
“ROK Nuclear Reprocessing,” December 16, 1975, telegram from US Embassy, Seoul, Wilson Center Digital
Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114608, 3.
112
The exact wording of this threat remains classified. See “ROK Nuclear Reprocessing,” January 5, 1976,
telegram from US Embassy, Seoul, Wilson Center Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/
document/114605, 1.
terminate the alliance and that this threat had led Park to acquiesce in the
reprocessing deal’s cancelation.113
Even after this episode, however, the Park regime did not give up all its
nuclear weapons activities. As US intelligence reports reveal, South Korea’s
effort to develop a nuclear warhead did not stop until December 1976.114
Moreover, Seoul continued to pursue reprocessing technology at least until
1978, when US president Jimmy Carter prevented a transfer of French
reprocessing technology to Korea by intervening personally with French
president Giscard D’Estaing and threatening Park Chung-hee with blocking
$300 million in US loans.115 Besides, members of the Park regime kept
declaring publicly and privately that South Korea needed its own
nuclear arsenal.116
This pattern in Park’s nuclear decision making—to respond only to coer-
cive US threats, though not necessarily by ceasing all nuclear weapons
activities—reflected his overall view of how Korea should react and deal
with US criticism and tutelage. According to his biographer, Park was con-
vinced the United States would make concessions to South Korea—in the
proliferation realm and in other fields—only if Seoul insisted on its own
interests, showed determination, and achieved results against all odds.117
Once South Korea had achieved nuclear weapons capability, Park sensed,
the United States would surely fall into line and accept Korea’s nuclear
deterrent just like it had accepted the Israeli bomb.118 To Park, deferring to
US priorities was out of the question.
President Chun displayed a completely different response to US social
pressure. Although he deemed a South Korean nuclear deterrent desirable,
Chun moved quickly after assuming the presidency in May 1980 to ban
any statements in favor of nuclear weapons—and had this ban enforced
through strict censorship.119 Most important, in summer 1980 Chun
reportedly dispatched a trusted military officer to Washington to negotiate
with the Carter administration over South Korea’s nuclear reversal.120 As a
result, in August 1980, the Chun regime fired the thirty most senior scien-
tists of the Agency for Defense Development (which was in charge of
113
Peter Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas in Korea (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
1991), 204–5n21.
114
CIA report on “South Korea: Nuclear Developments and Strategic Decision Making,” June 1978, http://www.
foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0001254259.pdf, 7, 13.
115
Jonathan D. Pollack and Mitchell B. Reiss, “South Korea: The Tyranny of Geography and the Vexations of
History,” in The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices, ed. Kurt M. Campbell,
Robert J. Einhorn, and Mitchell B. Reiss (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 263.
116
Franklin B. Weinstein and Fuji Kamiya, ed., The Security of Korea: US and Japanese Perspectives on the 1980s
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 115; Oberdorfer, Two Koreas, 73–74.
117
Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee, 202.
118
CIA, “South Korea: Nuclear Developments and Strategic Decision Making,” 13.
119
Sangsun Shim, “The Causes of South Korea’s Nuclear Choices: A Case Study in Nonproliferation” (PhD diss.,
University of Maryland, 2003), 12, 49.
120
Shim, “The Causes of South Korea’s Nuclear Choices,” 232.
958 J. SCHNEIDER
armaments research and had been working on a nuclear warhead until

1976), thus crippling the human resource basis for any nuclear weapons
option.121 Within a few months of assuming office, Chun had stopped
Seoul’s nuclear weapons activities.
Regarding the causes of this rapid nuclear reversal, the assurance model
falls short.122 As Chun mistrusted the Carter administration’s pledges of
protection just as much as Park had done before, the notion that Korean
faith in the US security guarantee had increased toward the end of the
Carter presidency receives no support from the historical record.123 This
notion cannot explain Chun’s nuclear reversal decision. Instead, the defini-
tive account of the Park presidency reports that after Park’s assassination
in late 1979, the Carter administration quickly approached Chun to discuss
South Korea’s nuclear weapons activities, exerting significant social pressure
on him: “Washington in fact swiftly made quid pro quo negotiations with
Chun” over the nuclear issue, according to this account.124 Notably, in con-
trast to what the alliance coercion model would expect, there are no indica-
tions that these negotiations involved any US threats against South Korea
or Chun personally. According to the above-mentioned book, Seoul and
Washington resolved the nuclear issue in “quid pro quo negotiations” in
which “Chun cunningly exploited his position” as Korea’s new strongman
“to obtain US acquiescence in his seizure of power through his second
military coup of 17 May 1980.”125 This account of rather amicable talks
receives further support from Kang Chang-sung, who headed the Defense
Security Command at the end of the Park era. Kang reports that Chun, in
exchange for tacit US acceptance of his regime, agreed to cease all Korean
nuclear weapons activities.126
The argument that the weak legitimacy of Chun’s regime—and not his
inferior-status view—was responsible for his acquiescence in the nuclear
reversal is also not persuasive.127 It neglects that Park’s regime, too, had
witnessed a drastic crisis of legitimacy since 1978, a crisis that had ushered
in Park’s assassination in October 1979.128 Yet while Park had continued
121
Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee, 201–2.
122
For an assurance-based account, consult Alexandre Debs and Nuno P. Monteiro, Nuclear Politics: The Strategic
Causes of Proliferation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 386–90. Note, however, that Debs and
Monteiro erroneously date the South Korean nuclear reversal decision to 1981, as opposed to summer 1980.
123
For persuasive evidence that Chun still did not trust the American security guarantee in 1980, consult John A.
Wickham, Korea on the Brink: From the “12/12 Incident” to the Kwangju Uprising, 1979–1980 (Washington, DC:
National Defense University Press, 1999), 120–21.
124
Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee, 199.
125
Ibid.
126
Choe Sang Hun, “South Korea Was Close to A-Bomb Development in Early 1980s,” Associated Press, October
5, 1995.
127
For a theoretically informed version of this argument, see Cho Sung Ju, “From Proliferation to Renunciation:
Why Some States Give Up Nuclear Ambitions While Others Do Not” (PhD diss., University of Virginia,
2009), 342–58.
128
Chong-Sik Lee, “South Korea 1979: Confrontation, Assassination, and Transition,” Asian Survey 20, no. 1
(January 1980), 64–70; Gleysteen, Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence, 2–3, 51–52.
Seoul’s nuclear weapons activities during the 1978–1979 crisis of his regime
and defiantly ignored US nonproliferation requests, Chun—under the same
conditions of fragile legitimacy—quickly seized the opportunity to fulfill
the US demand for a nuclear reversal and thereby restore a harmonious
US-Korean relationship. This variation reflected Park and Chun’s different
conceptions of Korea’s status vis-a-vis the United States.
Implications for US nonproliferation policy

This article offers a theory about an additional and heretofore neglected
contributor to US alliances’ proliferation-inhibiting effect. Existing theories
have focused either on how alliances assure US partners, thereby allegedly
obviating their need for an indigenous nuclear arsenal, or on the military
dependence of US allies that enables Washington to force clients into a
nuclear reversal through threats of military abandonment. In contrast, the
intra-alliance status theory draws on the social pressure inherent in explicit
US demands on its proteges because of the United States’ superior inter-
national status. Only allied policymakers holding an inferior-status concep-
tion respond to this social pressure by obeying Washington’s demand for
their nation’s nuclear reversal.
To test this theory, the article has focused on the cases of West Germany
and South Korea, examining which status conception vis-a-vis the United
States respective nuclear policymakers held and how these policymakers
responded to US social pressure to give up their nuclear weapons activities.
As the intra-alliance status theory would expect, both in Bonn and Seoul
only allied policymakers who had internalized an inferior-status conception
agreed to a nuclear reversal. Given the multilateral NATO framework of
the US-German alliance, policymakers in Bonn sharing this conception
only acquiesced in a nuclear reversal when it became apparent that West
Germany would lose other allies’ support for its critical stance on the NPT,
thus becoming the lone dissenter against US nonproliferation efforts.
Meanwhile, German policymakers ranking their nation on par with the
United States persistently rejected a nuclear reversal. Hence, Germany
joined the NPT only when the coalition government in Bonn no longer
included policymakers sharing an equal-status conception. In South Korea,
likewise, a nuclear reversal was only achieved under a leader holding an
inferior-status view. Shortly after assuming the presidency, Chun Doo-
hwan bent to US social pressure and abandoned South Korea’s nuclear
weapons activities to improve US-Korean ties. Only months earlier,
President Park Chung-hee, who had held an equal-status conception, had
refused the US request for a nuclear reversal.
960 J. SCHNEIDER
The logic that allied policymakers’ response to Washington’s demands

for a nuclear reversal hinges on their status view vis-a-vis the United States
has important implications for US nonproliferation policy. In particular,
this insight could enable Washington to tailor its nonproliferation efforts
toward allies to the specific status conception of the allied policymakers at
hand. To be sure, policymakers’ status beliefs vis-a-vis the United States
cannot be manipulated by other governments. Yet Washington can exert
social pressure on the policymaking elite of US allies and work to isolate
such states if they are members of a multilateral alliance. For example, if
US intelligence were to find out about nuclear weapons ambitions of a
close ally, US policymakers might be reluctant to apply painful sanctions.
Such coercive steps could weaken a strategically important partner.
Interdependencies could give that ally the power to retaliate and inflict
unacceptable damage on American interests. Facing such costs, US policy-
makers could be tempted to look the other way—at least as long as the
ally’s nuclear activities do not cross certain thresholds. If Washington
knew, however, that the policymaking elite of the ally shares inferior-status
beliefs, my theory suggests US leaders could use social pressure to bring
about the ally’s nuclear reversal.
In another scenario, if a multilateral ally resisted social pressure from
Washington, US decision makers could be interested in the causes of such
steadfastness and the most cost-efficient policy to overcome it. If they knew
that the ally’s policymakers shared inferior status views, the intra-alliance
status theory suggests the resistance was made possible by the diplomatic
support of some other member of the alliance. Thus, to achieve a nuclear
reversal, US policymakers would need to thwart that diplomatic backing
and isolate the ally holding nuclear ambitions. In contrast, if the leaders of
the same US ally held an equal-status belief, the theory recommends
Washington not waste any time with attempts at isolating the ally diplo-
matically and instead move straight to the sanctions track—an insight that
may save US policymakers precious time and resources.
Even before enabling more targeted active nonproliferation efforts, the
intra-alliance status theory could improve the US government’s capability
to predict which specific allied leaders are most likely to frustrate American
nonproliferation policies. Regarding East Asia, for example, experts have
been worrying that the unrestrained development of North Korea’s nuclear
weapons capability might trigger South Korean or Japanese nuclear weap-
ons activities.129 Although it is not clear that Seoul will pursue a nuclear
arsenal, South Korea’s left-leaning political leadership seems to hold an
129
See, for example, David E. Sanger, Choe Sang-Hun, and Motoko Rich, “North Korea Rouses Neighbors to
Reconsider Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), October 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/
2017/10/28/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-japan-south-korea.html.
equal-status conception vis-a-vis the United States. President Moon Jae-in,

who has led the country since 2017, has apparently shared that view for a
long time, seeking “an equal relationship”130 and maintaining that South
Korea must learn “to say ‘No’ to the Americans.”131 In this vein, since
assuming the presidency, Moon has insisted that a US military attack
against North Korea would require his consent, and vowed to decline any
such request from Washington.132 Relatedly, his government has sought to
reclaim wartime operational control of South Korea’s military forces,
which—as a reflection of the traditionally unequal alliance—has been in the
hands of US military commanders since 1950.133 Given Moon’s status view,
a US effort relying solely on social pressure to get Seoul to acquiesce to a
nuclear reversal would probably not be successful.
In contrast, most regional experts agree that current Japanese politics is
dominated by the inferior-status conception vis-a-vis the United States.
Even the conservative wing of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which
former prime minister Shinzo Abe represents, appears to have internalized
the inferior-status view.134 Meanwhile, very few Japanese politicians seem
to hold an equal-status conception vis-a-vis the United States, seeking—in
the words of Shintaro Ishihara, the notorious former governor of Tokyo
prefecture—a Japan that is “the first among equals” of the Western major
powers.135 Crucially, in today’s Japan, these rebellious politicians remain
politically marginalized and do not hold veto power over nuclear policy.136
With inferior-status views prevailing among policymakers in Tokyo,
Washington would most likely be able to make Japan agree to a nuclear
reversal through mere social pressure.
In the Middle East, in contrast, the ability of the United States to shape
the nuclear trajectory of its allies by social pressure alone looks likely to
be—at least sometimes—frustrated by equal-status conceptions. While it is
far from clear whether Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Egypt will engage in
130
The quotation describes the independent-minded faction of the political Left in South Korea, to which Moon
has belonged. Jongryn Mo, “What Does South Korea Want? Less US, More Self-Reliance,” Policy Review, no.
142 (April/May 2007): 46. See also Mo, “What Does South Korea Want?, 48–49; Lee Jong-seok, Peace on a
Knife’s Edge: The Inside Story of Roh Moo-hyun’s North Korea Policy (Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-
Pacific Research Center, 2017), 51–70.
131
Moon quoted in Choe Sang-Hun, “Ouster of South Korean President Could Return Liberals to Power,” NYT,
March 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/asia/south-korea-liberals-impeachment.html.
132
Choe Sang-Hun, “Allies for 67 Years, U.S. and South Korea Split Over North Korea,” NYT, September 4, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-south-us-alliance.html.
133
Choe Sang-Hun and Rick Gladstone, “South Korea Says It’s Speeding Up Arms Buildup to Counter the North,”
NYT, September 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/world/asia/south-korea-military-north.html.
134
Gerald L. Curtis, “Japan’s Cautious Hawks: Why Tokyo is Unlikely to Pursue an Aggressive Foreign Policy,”
Foreign Affairs 92, no. 2 (March/April 2013): 77–86; Narushige Michishita and Richard J. Samuels, “Hugging
and Hedging: Japanese Grand Strategy in the Twenty-First Century,” in Nau and Ollapally Worldviews of
Aspiring Powers, 146–80.
135
Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be the First among Equals (London: Simon &
Schuster, 1989).
136
Jeffrey Lewis, “If Japan Wanted to Build a Nuclear Bomb, It’d Be Awesome at It,” Foreign Policy, June 26,
2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/26/if-japan-wanted-to-build-a-nuclear-bomb-itd-be-awesome-at-it/.
962 J. SCHNEIDER
nuclear weapons activities in response to Iran’s nuclear endeavors, the lat-

ter two countries are currently ruled by leaders who seem to hold equal-
status views. President Recep Erdogan apparently envisions Turkey as a
great power walking in the footsteps of the Ottoman Empire and acting on
par with the United States.137 In Egypt, President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi and
his inner circle similarly seem to share an equal-status conception.138 After
three decades in which Egypt was a deferential US client state, Sisi “seeks
to restore the country to what its history and vanity suggest is its rightful
role,” both in the region and vis-a-vis the United States.139 Given the
apparently prevailing status conceptions in Ankara and Cairo, a US effort
relying solely on social pressure to make either country undertake a nuclear
reversal would likely fail—even if Turkey were isolated within NATO. This
is cause for concern because it is also questionable if Washington would be
prepared to pay the huge political costs of resorting to painful sanctions
against Turkey or Egypt.140
In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the United States holds greater sway with
the ruling family. The reshuffling of numerous key posts since the assump-
tion of the throne by King Salman notwithstanding, the Saudi leadership
still appears to share an inferior-status view vis-a-vis the United States. As
the official Saudi support—despite considerable private misgivings—for the
Obama administration’s Iran deal amply demonstrated, the country’s new
leadership, like the old one, simply does not dare to break with the United
States over an issue of major importance to Washington.141 To be sure,
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has steered the Kingdom toward
unusually muscular foreign and defense policies—toward Yemen, Qatar,
and others—some of which seem to conflict with US interests. However,
since these Saudi initiatives had the White House’s backing, Mohammed
bin Salman’s confrontational regional policies are consistent with his infer-
ior-status conception vis-a-vis the United States.142 As a result, if Saudi
Arabia were to start a nuclear weapons effort, Washington would almost
certainly be able to stop it with social pressure. Given that threatening
137
Soner Cagaptay, Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019),
18–20; Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby, “Erdogan’s Grand Vision: Rise and Decline,” World Affairs 175, no. 6
(March/April 2013), 41–50.
138
Elliot Abrams, “What Relationship with the United States Does Sisi Want?” Pressure Points (blog), November 6,
2014, http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2014/11/06/what-relationship-with-the-united-states-does-sisi-want/.
139
Michael Wahid Hanna and Daniel Benaim, “Egypt First: Under Sisi, Cairo Is Going Its Own Way,” Foreign
Affairs, January 4, 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/egypt/2018-01-04/egypt-first.
140
On US dependence on Egyptian cooperation, see Tom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Ties with Egypt Army
Constrain Washington,” NYT, August 16, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/world/middleeast/us-
officials-fear-losing-an-eager-ally-in-the-egyptian-military.html.
141
Michael R. Gordon, “Kerry Wins Gulf States‘Cautious Support for Iran Deal,” NYT, August 3, 2015, https://www.
nytimes.com/2015/08/04/world/middleeast/gulf-states-cautiously-support-iran-nuclear-deal.html.
142
On US support, see Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Upstart Saudi Prince Who’s Throwing Caution
to the Winds,” NYT, November 14, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-
mohammed-bin-salman.html; Ben Hubbard, MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman (London:
William Collins, 2020).
Saudi Arabia is a very unattractive option for the United States, this con-
clusion is welcome news for US nonproliferation policy.143
This brief survey of US allies that are currently also proliferation con-
cerns seems to confirm that there is both cross-case and within-case vari-
ation in leaders’ conceptions of their country’s status vis-a-vis the United
States. The article has offered and tested a theory proposing that these indi-
vidual-level differences matter for how policymakers respond to
Washington’s nonproliferation requests. By painting a more fine-grained
picture of how US alliance ties impact foreign leaders’ attitudes toward
nuclear restraint, the theory will hopefully be useful not just to scholars but
also to practitioners of nonproliferation policy.
Acknowledgments
For their comments and suggestions, the author would like to thank Stephen Aris, Andy
Beyer, Alex Bollfrass, Bill Burr, Nicolas Bouchet, Mario E. Carranza, Myriam Dunn
Cavelty, Sven-Eric Fikenscher, Francis Gavin, Payam Ghalehdar, Mauro Gilli, William
Glenn Gray, Anne I. Harrington, Liviu Horovitz, Ulla Jasper, Seung-Young Kim, Wilhelm
Knelangen, Martin Koch, Joachim Krause, Sascha Langenbach, Alexander Lanoszka,
Andreas Lutsch, Marco Martini, Oliver Meier, Nuno P. Monteiro, Enzo Nussio, Christian
Patz, Roland Popp, Monika Povilenaite, Ingo Rohlfing, Tom Sauer, Bernd Simon, Matias
Spektor, Etel Solingen, Jan Thiel, Oliver Thr€anert, Marc Trachtenberg, Andreas Wenger,
Reinhard Wolf, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors of Security Studies. The author is
especially grateful to Thomas M€ uller-F€arber for sharing the transcripts of his interviews
with former US officials. Errors are mine.
Funding
This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [KR 3878/2-1, KR 3878/
2-2].
143
On US dependence on Saudi Arabian cooperation, see Steve Levine, “Frenemies Forever: How Washington
Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Saudi Arabia, Again,” Foreign Policy 184 (January/February
2011): 31–33.

Beyond Assurance and Coercion US Alliances and The Psychology of Nuclear Reversal

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Beyond Assurance and Coercion: US Alliances and the

According to this narrative, the assurance-related effectiveness of US alli-

disagreement among the nuclear policymaking elite over the necessity of a

nation’s status as inferior to the United States are highly receptive to US

literature that emphasizes the crucial role of US nonproliferation efforts in

abandonment will inhibit the nuclear ambitions of these militarily threat-

Shortcomings of the assurance and coercion models

policy autonomy, the parochial self-interests of bureaucratic players, the

nuclear weapons activities unavoidably pitted them against the declared

These shortcomings of the assurance and alliance coercion models have

Intra-Alliance status theory

social psychology showing that status, as the rank of an actor in a social

appraisal of the intra-alliance status relation. It follows that different mem-

research on “obedience to authority.”52 This research program demon-

leaders holding an oppositional-nationalist NIC might also rank their coun-

Testing the argument

the attitude of a member of the policymaking elite toward his nation’s

This modest view of Germany’s status and the accompanying subordin-

Wilhelm Grewe.73 Drawing on Europe’s historical preeminence and a

Germany had no choice: “It might well be feasible to hang on to such a

backchannel message making clear that even the Republican administration

Nixon’s patience in 1969—and the election results—had spared Kiesinger

According to Strauss, West Germany could reject the NPT, if only it

only when confronted with coercive US threats. For example, in a confi-

40–50 million people is a powerful country. One hundred years ago, we

armaments research and had been working on a nuclear warhead until

Implications for US nonproliferation policy

The logic that allied policymakers’ response to Washington’s demands

equal-status conception vis-a-vis the United States. President Moon Jae-in,

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