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A commonly held theory and an often-used argument in favour of the possession of nuclear weapons is that it deters foreign states from military threats against vital interests. For example, see deterrence theory on Wikipedia, which has plenty of references to further sources. As a more specific example, UK government policy states:

UK nuclear deterrence policy consists of 5 main principles:

preventing attack - the UK’s nuclear weapons are not designed for military use during conflict but instead to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means

which means that the UK government expects that they do have a deterrent effect.

Is there any quantitative evidence that a nuclear capability deters foreign states from threatening vital interests?

Answers should refer to studies that:

  • Quantitatively compare military aggression (threats or actual violence) to vital interests of nuclear vs. non-nuclear states
  • Quantitatively compare military aggression (threats or actual violence) to vital interests of states before or after they became nuclear powers.

Vital interests would be interests that threaten the functioning of a state. For example, the government would be a vital interest. A vital interest is not a small outlying territory, such as the UK's Falkland Islands.

The Wikipedia list of nuclear states includes major military powers such as the USA, China, Russia, but also lesser powers such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Other major powers, such as Germany and Japan, do not have (their own) nuclear weapons.

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  • This question was inspired by [this question on History.SE](http://history.stackexchange.com/q/14254/1392). – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 15:41
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    People have been arguing about this for awhile, I doubt we are going to get a conclusive answer. – rjzii Jun 20 '14 at 15:42
  • @rob That's true for many questions on this site. I'm surprised it hadn't been asked yet. There are surely systematic studies I'm not aware of. – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 15:43
  • What would you expect an answer (in each direction) to look like? What could you study that could show causality? – Oddthinking Jun 20 '14 at 15:46
  • True, but the question of if nuclear weapons deter threats is subject to a lot of arguments. Maybe a slight rewrite for if nuclear powers have received less threats so that it is at least quantifiable? Determent is a bit more subjective and harder to measure since countries would keep a lot of that sort of policy and decision making secret. – rjzii Jun 20 '14 at 15:46
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    Is the question whether the purpose is to deter attack, or whether the effect is to deter attack? Whether it has been a factor in deterring any specific attack in the past? Whether it deters a specific type of attack (e.g. nuclear attack but not a terrorist attack)? IMO the question isn't precise because it doesn't identify a specific, published "claim" that it's skeptical of. The quoted claim is about policy and about what the weapons are "designed" to do (not a claim about whether they actually do that). – ChrisW Jun 20 '14 at 15:47
  • @ChrisW The question is absolutely whether the effect is to deter the attack. The UK government clearly expects that this effect exists. – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 17:34
  • Does my rephrasing satisfy the close-voters and the down-voter? – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 17:35
  • Over what time span are we talking about? The entirety of nuclear history? – Is Begot Jun 20 '14 at 17:58
  • @Geobits Yes. I think the period and scope are sufficiently small to do so. – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 17:59
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    I think you need to be still more specific. Nuclear weapons are not intended to deter *all* threats, as the UK statement says. – DJClayworth Jun 20 '14 at 18:09
  • @DJClayworth Ok. Following the UK government I have limited it to *vital interests*, and tried to characterise those. – gerrit Jun 20 '14 at 18:22
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    Producing such data would merely show correlation (or the lack of it), not causation. If nuclear weapons are adopted by growing major powers, aggressive countries or countries predicting future aggression against themselves, we can't conclude that any increase in threats means nuclear weapons were not deterrents. – Oddthinking Jun 21 '14 at 05:07
  • I really don't see how we can answer this conclusively in the current form. Think about the definition of deterrent and you will notice that it's basically impossible to disprove. – Sklivvz Jun 21 '14 at 07:51
  • @Oddthinking That's why I was thinking of comparing countries that are of comparable military and economic power, differing only in nuclear capability or not. – gerrit Jun 22 '14 at 02:47
  • Nuclear deterrent is designed to deter other nuclear powers from using nuclear weapons. As no nuclear power has used a nuclear weapon against another entity in over half a century, this question becomes difficult to answer! There are no cases of what this is deterring actually happening, so the question essentially becomes "would there have been?" which cannot be answered. – Phoshi Jun 23 '14 at 09:44
  • In my understanding and interpretation, nuclear deterrent is also used to deter other powers from using conventional military force against nuclear powers – gerrit Jun 23 '14 at 14:14

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