The Hegemon's Tool Kit

At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system that has, for more than fifty years, controlled the spread of these catastrophic weapons. The Hegemon's Tool Kit details how that regime works and how, disastrously, it might falter.

In the early nuclear age, experts anticipated that all technologically-capable states would build these powerful devices. That did not happen. Widespread development of nuclear arms did not occur, in large part, because a global nuclear nonproliferation regime was created. By the late-1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had drafted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and across decades the regime has expanded, with more agreements and more nations participating. As a result, in 2022, only nine states possess nuclear weapons.

Why do most states in the international system adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation regime? The answer lies, Gibbons asserts, in decades of painstaking efforts undertaken by the US government. As the most powerful state during the nuclear age, the United States had many tools with which to persuade other states to join or otherwise support nonproliferation agreements.

The waning of US global influence, Gibbons shows in The Hegemon's Tool Kit, is a key threat to the nonproliferation regime. So, too, is the deepening global divide over progress on nuclear disarmament. To date, the Chinese government is not taking significant steps to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and as a result, the regime may face a harmful leadership gap.

Rebecca Davis Gibbons is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Maine. Follow her on X @RDavisGibbons.

Edgar's research is in many ways original and innovative, and it thus opens a wide new field of research in Soviet studies that others might want to expand.

Paul Musgrave, University of Massachusetts Amherst:

Why has nuclear nonproliferation been so successful? Skillfully blending interviews, historical research, and theory, Rebecca Davis Gibbons shows the United States underwrote a universal nonproliferation regime—and how the erosion of US leadership may lead to that regime's collapse.

Nicholas L. Miller, Dartmouth College, author of Stopping the Bomb :

The Hegemon's Tool Kit is a major contribution to our understanding of how the nonproliferation regime works. Rebecca Gibbons convincingly demonstrates that US leadership has been central to its success—an important finding as America's global position is increasingly coming under challenge.

Rachel Whitlark, Georgia Institute of Technology, author of All Options on the Table:

Rebecca Davis Gibbons offers an important account of the painstaking efforts the United States has undertaken to secure adherence to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Highlighting the US's centrality to that regime, Gibbons provides a clarion call for those invested in its persistence.

Scott D. Sagan, Stanford University, co-author of The Spread of Nuclear Weapons:

The Hegemon's Toolkit offers fascinating analyses of key historical moments in the evolution of American policy on nuclear nonproliferation. Impressive and important.