| Summary/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 policymakers 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.
|