| Summary/Abstract |
When adversaries consider each other’s capabilities and intentions, they focus on whichever is most threatening. With nuclear weapons, force posture and operational practices are usually considered more important than what leaders declare are circumstances in which they would consider unleashing nuclear weapons. Still, nuclear policies and forces require rationales to guide them. Declaratory policy articulates such rationales, even if decision-making on the development of nuclear weapons and other capabilities sometimes has a bureaucratic-political-economic logic of its own.
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