Regarding the political feasibility of nuclear disarmament, it is notable that political parties have in the past advocated for unilateral disarmament, in the wake of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Perhaps the most prominent was UK’s Labour, from 1982 to 1990. Needless to say the sample size is small and there are many factors as plays but to cut the story short they got hammered for this and lost both major elections they contested advocating for this policy by a large margin. I am fairly confident Labour itself sees dropping the policy as one of the reasons they were eventually able to regain power. (Not even Corbyn dared bring it back)
This failure was partly due to a more general perception of Labour as “soft” on defense and communism in those years.
This can be contrasted with Ronald Reagan who was able to gain major traction for disarmament by coordinating with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Yet he had campaigned as a hawk , in fact was initially seen by disarmament advocates as a potential nuclear madman himself.
Possible takeaways would be 1) Committing to disarmament during electoral campaignsis risky → campaigns should focus on leaders who are already in power 2) Coordinated action by the biggest nuclear powers is likely to be more effective than unilateral action by the smallest 3) Political credibility creates room to negotiation. To be able to make compromises on nuclear weapons, political leaders first need to send the message that they definitely would press the button if the situation called for it.
Excellent post!
Regarding the political feasibility of nuclear disarmament, it is notable that political parties have in the past advocated for unilateral disarmament, in the wake of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Perhaps the most prominent was UK’s Labour, from 1982 to 1990. Needless to say the sample size is small and there are many factors as plays but to cut the story short they got hammered for this and lost both major elections they contested advocating for this policy by a large margin. I am fairly confident Labour itself sees dropping the policy as one of the reasons they were eventually able to regain power. (Not even Corbyn dared bring it back)
This failure was partly due to a more general perception of Labour as “soft” on defense and communism in those years.
This can be contrasted with Ronald Reagan who was able to gain major traction for disarmament by coordinating with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Yet he had campaigned as a hawk , in fact was initially seen by disarmament advocates as a potential nuclear madman himself.
Possible takeaways would be
1) Committing to disarmament during electoral campaigns is risky → campaigns should focus on leaders who are already in power
2) Coordinated action by the biggest nuclear powers is likely to be more effective than unilateral action by the smallest
3) Political credibility creates room to negotiation. To be able to make compromises on nuclear weapons, political leaders first need to send the message that they definitely would press the button if the situation called for it.