Empirical studies disprove escalation from ambiguity.

The use-it-or-lose-it pathway confronts the same logical problem as the downward-spiral pathway in terms of the assertions made by NFU supporters. If nuclear weapons are unnecessary for the major power to prevail, as some NFU supporters claim, and if AFU lacks credibility such that the adversary disregards it, then why would that same adversary feel pressure to “use it or lose it” against an NFU state and not an AFU state? 39 The argument that AFU is unnecessary contradicts the argument that AFU is dangerous. The weak state is ultimately choosing between likely annihilation if it does not attack first and certain annihilation if it does. Why would it ever choose the certain suicide of the latter remains unclear.40 We may suppose that if a weaker adversary believes that it is about to be hit first with nuclear weapons and wiped out, then it may take a chance on striking first to try to inflict pain on the major power in order to compel that major power to back down. But why would the major power back down if the adversary has already expended its arsenal, making it more vulnerable to a devastating riposte? There are cases where the weak state tried to impose costs against a stronger opponent to compel the major power to back down, such as Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, as we discuss later. However, in these cases, the weaker state does not attempt to impose costs until after the major power has initiated the conflict. Once the conflict has started, the adversary indeed has nothing to lose by attacking, but until then the adversary will have much to lose. These points raise an interesting question: might a weak state choose to attack first and sacrifice the possibility of better material outcomes for some emotional or psychological utility gained by imposing costs on the major power. Though plausible, such an assumption raises the additional question of whether the state can enjoy this immaterial benefit if it has successfully self-destructed. Similarly, in the event that the state somehow survives the conflict, would it still receive the same benefits? The use-it-or-lose-it pathway is thus empirically very rare. One study finds that preemptive wars—that is, wars either fought to exploit military advantages before they disappear or caused by fear of surprise attack—“almost never happen.” 41 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cases that seem prima facie to have been pre-emptive wars were World War I, China’s entry into the Korean War, and the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. Although World War I does not meet the asymmetrical conditions that our analysis emphasizes, it suggests that use-it-or-lose-it pressures embodied by mobilization schedules can exist in a purely conventional world, where nuclear doctrines are absent. Still, the case of the United States and China in 1950 better approximates the asymmetrical conditions explored by our analysis. According to the pre-emptive-war version of events, China intervened in the Korean War out of concern that the US-led forces moving toward the Yalu River were striving to reunify the peninsula under non-Communist control. By taking over all of Korea, these forces would pose an imminent threat to China’s security.42 Yet Chinese decision makers were not necessarily facing a use-it-or-lose-it conundrum even in this case. Other motivations—promoting the world Communist revolution and forestalling an indefinite US presence on the border—were also present.43 To be sure, China did go on to acquire nuclear weapons, but the evidence suggests that it did so in order to be self-reliant following its dissatisfaction with the support it was receiving from the Soviet Union during the 1950s.44 Of course, just because something has not happened before does not mean that it could never happen. Nevertheless, if we believe that the use-it-or-lose-it pathway is possible, then the fundamental inconsistency in the argument that AFU is dangerous remains. We must believe that the adversary’s incentives to strike first under AFU will reverse if the United States declares NFU, as in the instance where the adversary believes that its armaments could survive a conventional first strike but not a nuclear first strike. Though that is possible, it again goes against arguments made by NFU advocates that the first use of nuclear weapons would provide no tactical benefit to the United States.45 Indeed, when other scholars discuss the adversary’s use-it-or-lose-it incentives, the adversary is presumed to fear a result of any likely US first strike or effort toward regime change, regardless of whether nuclear weapons are used.46 Nuclear weapons may even be a moot point if the strong state is unwilling to use them for normative reasons but maintains its conventional military superiority.