Nuclear Beliefs: A Leader-Focused Theory of Counter-Proliferation

Why do some leaders use preventive military force to destroy another country's nuclear program, while others do not? Despite nuclear proliferation becoming a growing source of concern, counter-proliferation decision making remains poorly understood. Additionally, though the preventive logic pervades the scholarship as one potential state response to relative decline, it remains unclear when this leads to war and when it does not, especially in the nuclear context. This article demonstrates that the decision to consider and use preventive force rests not only on material factors but more importantly on a leader's prior beliefs about nuclear proliferation and the threat posed by a specific adversary. Conducting original archival research and process tracing, this manuscript examines American decision making against the Communist Chinese nuclear program, and demonstrates that Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson held fundamentally different nuclear beliefs that led to radically different preventive war preferences.