My new article, “Military Regimes and Resistance to Nuclear Weapons Development,” is out in Security Studies.
Why have so few military regimes seriously pursued nuclear weapons? Only Pakistan has succeeded, and a civilian leader started that program.
I argue that military regimes governing nonnuclear weapons states are likely to prefer to invest in conventional rather than nuclear forces - even in the presence of external security threats. 1/2
I theorize there are 2 domestic sources of this surprising proliferation behavior in military regimes:
1) The resource distribution preferences of the military organization, and
2) The need to manage (repress) the domestic conflicts that threaten the regime’s political survival.
I use case evidence from Egypt, Brazil, and Pakistan to test these arguments. The details may surprise you. 2/2