Dissertation: “Contested Stories, Uncertain Futures: Strategic Upheaval, Narrative Emergence, and Grand Strategy”
Strategic upheavals in geopolitical threats and military technology, such as the invention of nuclear weapons, generate uncertainty and intense debates about a state’s future strategy. How do decisionmakers reexamine security policy amidst these upheavals? When and why do visions or narratives of foreign policy come to dominate strategic thinking after upheavals, and how do these dominant narratives affect future strategy? This dissertation develops a theory of strategic narrative emergence following upheavals, positing that domestic coalitions of national security decisionmakers compete to mobilize support for their vision for future policy and establish a dominant narrative. They use legitimation contests to build coalitions and undermine opponents. To test the theory, I examine cases of upheaval in US nuclear strategy: the start of the atomic age and debates about nuclear weapons’ role in strategy, and the arrival of nuclear parity and debates about the possibility of détente. Drawing on archival documents and newspaper sources, I track public and private debates to show how these legitimation contests shaped the nuclear narrative. The project offers a novel approach to tracing the development of nuclear strategy, highlighting the roots and evolution of deterrence discourses that persist in contemporary debates about nuclear strategy and arms control.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“‘The Most Humane of All Weapons’: Discrimination, Airpower, and the Pragmatic Turn to Precision” (with Stacie Goddard), European Journal of International Security (2023), https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2023.21.
How did the norm of discrimination become the dominant yardstick to measure the ethics of US airpower? Conventional accounts suggest that as elites and publics embraced norms of discrimination, this pushed US air forces to adopt a precision doctrine, one that demands accurately striking military, and not civilian, targets. Relying on a pragmatic reading of norm contestation and settling, we suggest that conventional explanations have the causal story reversed: it was not the strengthening of the norm of discrimination that led US air forces to commit to precision bombing. It was the commitment to precision bombing that led to the strengthening of the norm of discrimination. As precision technology became available during the interwar period, air-force officers co-opted the language of discrimination to justify their emerging doctrine. This co-optation of the language of discrimination would not only settle these norms as the guiding ethics of airpower. It would also transform them, redefining these norms in ways that privileged the process of precision targeting, rather than the outcome of civilian harm.
Working Papers
“War of Words: Legitimation, Essential Equivalence, and Carter’s Nuclear Strategy” (Under Review)
President Jimmy Carter entered office committed to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign policy. He espoused the logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and expressed optimism about major arms control progress. Yet by the end of his presidency, he had embraced a competitive nuclear posture and accelerated the arms race. What explains this shift in Carter’s strategy? I offer a novel theory of legitimation and domestic coalition competition to understand policy change, in which speakers engage in legitimation contests to win support for their policy vision and undermine opposing coalitions. I introduce co-optation as a rhetorical strategy which, alongside persuasion and rhetorical coercion, can reshape coalitions and guide policy outcomes. Using newspaper and archival sources, I conduct a case study of Carter’s decision to approve the MX intercontinental ballistic missile and the Senate’s failure to ratify the SALT II treaty. Carter approved the MX in part to delegitimize SALT critics. Opponents’ co-optation of his rhetoric, however, enabled further mobilization against the treaty and pushed Carter towards competitive nuclear strategies. The paper highlights the discursive and domestic influences on nuclear strategy, and speaks to debates about the value of nuclear superiority and the lessons of the nuclear revolution.
“Controlling the Apocalypse: Strategic Narrative Emergence and US Nuclear Strategy”
International upheavals in geopolitical threats and military technology, such as the invention of nuclear weapons, generate profound uncertainty about future strategy. Why do certain narratives or visions of foreign policy come to dominate strategic thinking after upheavals? I develop a theory of strategic narrative emergence which posits that domestic coalitions compete to install a new vision for foreign policy after upheavals, using legitimation contests to win support or undermine opponents. Mobilizing support can entrench their rhetoric as part of an emerging dominant narrative. I evaluate the theory in the context of US nuclear policy in the early atomic age. During this time, a strategic narrative emerged depicting nuclear weapons as both uncontrollable forces of total destruction and essential tools in warfighting, centralizing arms racing while sidelining arms control. I conduct a case study of the decision to develop the hydrogen bomb, tracking public and private debates about the value of arms racing and nuclear superiority. I show the strategic narrative’s evolution was contingent on legitimation contests to define concepts of victory and security in the atomic age. The project offers a novel approach to tracing the development of nuclear strategy, highlighting the roots and evolution of deterrence discourses that persist in contemporary debates about nuclear strategy and arms control.