The unbearable lightness of luck: Three sources of overconfidence in the manageability of nuclear crises
Résumé
Overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear weapons creates danger. The passing of the last elite
witness of the most dangerous nuclear crisis, that is, the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’, and the current Trump
administration only make this more salient. In this context, this article reviews the scholarly literature
about the limits of predictability and controllability of nuclear crises and investigates three failures of
learning from them. Given that France displays in particularly acute form some of the sources of
overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear crises that can been found in other nuclear armed states,
this article offers the first study of the French experience and evolving interpretation of the Cuban missile
crisis in comparative perspective, based on untapped primary material. In security studies, this article
makes three contributions. First, the publication and interpretation of primary sources is a contribution
in itself given the frequent misconceptions about nuclear dynamics due to theory-driven extrapolations.
Second, it challenges a widespread assumption of automaticity linking a fear-induced deterrent effect and
the presence of nuclear weapons. Third, empirically, this article studies part of a regime of valuation of
nuclear weapons. It finally outlines a research agenda to take luck seriously in security studies.
Domaines
Science politique
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