Vipin Narang
Biographic Data
| ID | 4134645 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vipin Narang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vipin |
| FAMILY NAME | Narang |
| SIGNATURE | NARANG V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8669-9964 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 170 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Adversary Perceptions of Nuclear No-First-Use Pledges
The United States has repeatedly debated whether to adopt a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) pledge. Advocates for such a pledge emphasize its potential advantages, including strengthening crisis stability, decreasing hostility, and bolstering nonproliferation and arms control. But these benefits depend heavily on nuclear-armed adversaries finding a U.S. NFU pledge credible. A new theory based on the logic of costly signals and tested on evidence from …
The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age
In The Fragile Balance of Terror , the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables. The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: mi…
Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation
Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. This book is the first to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Ja…
Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation
North Korea: Risks of Escalation
The most effective allied framework would employ deterrence by punishment at the nuclear level, and deterrence by denial at the conventional level
India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities
Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy? Continued aggression by Pakistan against India, enabled by Islamabad's nuclear strategy and India's inability to counter it, has prompted the leadership in Delhi to explore more flexible preemptive counterforce options in an attempt to reestablish deterrence. Increasingly, Indian officials are advancing the logic of counterforce targeting, and they have begun to lay out exceptions to India's l…
India’s nuclear strategy twenty years later: From reluctance to maturation
This article traces the evolution of India’s nuclear strategy over the past 20 years, as it went from reluctant nuclear power to a mature nuclear weapons nation. It explores the various doctrinal and postural choices India has made, and confronts, as its threat environment evolves and as its institutions have matured. Most notably, it analyzes various options to address the dilemma of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons threat, and how India can …
Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War: Tests Using New Data
This article uses an original data set, the Wartime Civil-military Relations Data Set, to test arguments about the causes of victory and defeat in war. Our analysis provides strong initial support for the notion that civil-military relations powerfully shape state prospects for victory and defeat. Specifically, states whose militaries have a significant internal role or whose regimes engage in coup-proofing appear to have a substantially lower pr…
Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India
Identifying the links between democracy and foreign security policy has proven elusive. This paper engages this research agenda by developing a novel theory of “accountability environments” and exploring it in the case of India. We hypothesize that the varying electoral salience of foreign security policy and the clarity of responsibility for policy outcomes combine to create different accountability environments in which politicians operate. Acc…
Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb
How do states pursue nuclear weapons? Why do they select particular strategies to develop them, and how do these choices affect the international community's ability to prevent nuclear proliferation? The bulk of the proliferation literature focuses on why states want nuclear weapons. The question of how they pursue them, however, has largely been ignored. This question is important because how states try to acquire nuclear weapons—their strategie…
Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers: North Korea and Iran
What if nuclear aspirants get the bomb? How likely are they to use it? Which nuclear strategies might emerging nuclear powers adopt? These may seem like academic questions, but they are loaded with
Five Myths about India's Nuclear Posture
What Does It Take to Deter? Regional Power Nuclear Postures and International Conflict
Existing nuclear deterrence scholarship evinces a pervasive “existential bias,” assuming that once a state merely possesses nuclear weapons, it should be able to deter armed conflict. The empirical literature expresses this bias by simply dichotomously coding a state based on whether it has nuclear weapons, thereby treating all nuclear states as equivalent. Thus, whether nuclear weapons deter conflict, and how much is required to do so, is unclea…
Institutions and Worldviews in Indian Foreign Security Policy
This article explores the intersection of strategic worldviews and domestic institutions in the creation of India's foreign policy.We first show that Indian electoral politics have weak links with foreign policy. Insulated bureaucracies and small groups of elites dominate policy making because most elected officials are focused on winning votes and building coalitions around other issues. The ideas of the strategic elite are thus very important. …
Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability
A probe of various regional power nuclear postures reveals that such postures, rather than simply the acquisition of nuclear weapons, can have differential effects on deterrence and stability dynamics. The India-Pakistan dyad is a useful candidate for exploring these various effects because the three regional power nuclear postures—catalytic, assured retaliation, and asymmetric escalation—have interacted with each other in South Asia. In particul…
Who Are These Belligerent Democratizers? Reassessing the Impact of Democratization on War
In a key finding in the democratic peace literature, Mansfield and Snyder argue that states with weak institutions undergoing incomplete transitions to democracy are more likely to initiate an external war than other types of states. We show that the empirical data do not support this claim. We find a dearth of observations where incomplete democratizers with weak institutions participated in war. Additionally, we find that the statistical relati…
Who Are These Belligerent Democratizers? Reassessing the Impact of Democratization on War
In a key finding in the democratic peace literature, Mansfield and Snyder argue that states with weak institutions undergoing incomplete transitions to democracy are more likely to initiate an external war than other types of states. We show that the empirical data do not support this claim. We find a dearth of observations where incomplete democratizers with weak institutions participated in war. Additionally, we find that the statistical relati…
Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War: Tests Using New Data
This article uses an original data set, the Wartime Civil-military Relations Data Set, to test arguments about the causes of victory and defeat in war. Our analysis provides strong initial support for the notion that civil-military relations powerfully shape state prospects for victory and defeat. Specifically, states whose militaries have a significant internal role or whose regimes engage in coup-proofing appear to have a substantially lower pr…
What Does It Take to Deter? Regional Power Nuclear Postures and International Conflict
Existing nuclear deterrence scholarship evinces a pervasive “existential bias,” assuming that once a state merely possesses nuclear weapons, it should be able to deter armed conflict. The empirical literature expresses this bias by simply dichotomously coding a state based on whether it has nuclear weapons, thereby treating all nuclear states as equivalent. Thus, whether nuclear weapons deter conflict, and how much is required to do so, is unclea…
Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability
A probe of various regional power nuclear postures reveals that such postures, rather than simply the acquisition of nuclear weapons, can have differential effects on deterrence and stability dynamics. The India-Pakistan dyad is a useful candidate for exploring these various effects because the three regional power nuclear postures—catalytic, assured retaliation, and asymmetric escalation—have interacted with each other in South Asia. In particul…
Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb
How do states pursue nuclear weapons? Why do they select particular strategies to develop them, and how do these choices affect the international community's ability to prevent nuclear proliferation? The bulk of the proliferation literature focuses on why states want nuclear weapons. The question of how they pursue them, however, has largely been ignored. This question is important because how states try to acquire nuclear weapons—their strategie…
Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India
Identifying the links between democracy and foreign security policy has proven elusive. This paper engages this research agenda by developing a novel theory of “accountability environments” and exploring it in the case of India. We hypothesize that the varying electoral salience of foreign security policy and the clarity of responsibility for policy outcomes combine to create different accountability environments in which politicians operate. Acc…
Institutions and Worldviews in Indian Foreign Security Policy
This article explores the intersection of strategic worldviews and domestic institutions in the creation of India's foreign policy.We first show that Indian electoral politics have weak links with foreign policy. Insulated bureaucracies and small groups of elites dominate policy making because most elected officials are focused on winning votes and building coalitions around other issues. The ideas of the strategic elite are thus very important. …
India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities
Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy? Continued aggression by Pakistan against India, enabled by Islamabad's nuclear strategy and India's inability to counter it, has prompted the leadership in Delhi to explore more flexible preemptive counterforce options in an attempt to reestablish deterrence. Increasingly, Indian officials are advancing the logic of counterforce targeting, and they have begun to lay out exceptions to India's l…
Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers: North Korea and Iran
What if nuclear aspirants get the bomb? How likely are they to use it? Which nuclear strategies might emerging nuclear powers adopt? These may seem like academic questions, but they are loaded with
North Korea: Risks of Escalation
The most effective allied framework would employ deterrence by punishment at the nuclear level, and deterrence by denial at the conventional level
Five Myths about India's Nuclear Posture
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Adversary Perceptions of Nuclear No-First-Use Pledges
The United States has repeatedly debated whether to adopt a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) pledge. Advocates for such a pledge emphasize its potential advantages, including strengthening crisis stability, decreasing hostility, and bolstering nonproliferation and arms control. But these benefits depend heavily on nuclear-armed adversaries finding a U.S. NFU pledge credible. A new theory based on the logic of costly signals and tested on evidence from …
Who Are These Belligerent Democratizers? Reassessing the Impact of Democratization on War
In a key finding in the democratic peace literature, Mansfield and Snyder argue that states with weak institutions undergoing incomplete transitions to democracy are more likely to initiate an external war than other types of states. We show that the empirical data do not support this claim. We find a dearth of observations where incomplete democratizers with weak institutions participated in war. Additionally, we find that the statistical relati…
Posturing for Peace? Pakistan's Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability
A probe of various regional power nuclear postures reveals that such postures, rather than simply the acquisition of nuclear weapons, can have differential effects on deterrence and stability dynamics. The India-Pakistan dyad is a useful candidate for exploring these various effects because the three regional power nuclear postures—catalytic, assured retaliation, and asymmetric escalation—have interacted with each other in South Asia. In particul…
Institutions and Worldviews in Indian Foreign Security Policy
This article explores the intersection of strategic worldviews and domestic institutions in the creation of India's foreign policy.We first show that Indian electoral politics have weak links with foreign policy. Insulated bureaucracies and small groups of elites dominate policy making because most elected officials are focused on winning votes and building coalitions around other issues. The ideas of the strategic elite are thus very important. …
Five Myths about India's Nuclear Posture
What Does It Take to Deter? Regional Power Nuclear Postures and International Conflict
Existing nuclear deterrence scholarship evinces a pervasive “existential bias,” assuming that once a state merely possesses nuclear weapons, it should be able to deter armed conflict. The empirical literature expresses this bias by simply dichotomously coding a state based on whether it has nuclear weapons, thereby treating all nuclear states as equivalent. Thus, whether nuclear weapons deter conflict, and how much is required to do so, is unclea…
Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers: North Korea and Iran
What if nuclear aspirants get the bomb? How likely are they to use it? Which nuclear strategies might emerging nuclear powers adopt? These may seem like academic questions, but they are loaded with
Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb
How do states pursue nuclear weapons? Why do they select particular strategies to develop them, and how do these choices affect the international community's ability to prevent nuclear proliferation? The bulk of the proliferation literature focuses on why states want nuclear weapons. The question of how they pursue them, however, has largely been ignored. This question is important because how states try to acquire nuclear weapons—their strategie…
India’s nuclear strategy twenty years later: From reluctance to maturation
This article traces the evolution of India’s nuclear strategy over the past 20 years, as it went from reluctant nuclear power to a mature nuclear weapons nation. It explores the various doctrinal and postural choices India has made, and confronts, as its threat environment evolves and as its institutions have matured. Most notably, it analyzes various options to address the dilemma of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons threat, and how India can …
Civil-military Pathologies and Defeat in War: Tests Using New Data
This article uses an original data set, the Wartime Civil-military Relations Data Set, to test arguments about the causes of victory and defeat in war. Our analysis provides strong initial support for the notion that civil-military relations powerfully shape state prospects for victory and defeat. Specifically, states whose militaries have a significant internal role or whose regimes engage in coup-proofing appear to have a substantially lower pr…
Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India
Identifying the links between democracy and foreign security policy has proven elusive. This paper engages this research agenda by developing a novel theory of “accountability environments” and exploring it in the case of India. We hypothesize that the varying electoral salience of foreign security policy and the clarity of responsibility for policy outcomes combine to create different accountability environments in which politicians operate. Acc…
India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities
Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy? Continued aggression by Pakistan against India, enabled by Islamabad's nuclear strategy and India's inability to counter it, has prompted the leadership in Delhi to explore more flexible preemptive counterforce options in an attempt to reestablish deterrence. Increasingly, Indian officials are advancing the logic of counterforce targeting, and they have begun to lay out exceptions to India's l…
North Korea: Risks of Escalation
The most effective allied framework would employ deterrence by punishment at the nuclear level, and deterrence by denial at the conventional level
Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation
Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. This book is the first to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Ja…
Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation
The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age
In The Fragile Balance of Terror , the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables. The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: mi…
When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Adversary Perceptions of Nuclear No-First-Use Pledges
The United States has repeatedly debated whether to adopt a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) pledge. Advocates for such a pledge emphasize its potential advantages, including strengthening crisis stability, decreasing hostility, and bolstering nonproliferation and arms control. But these benefits depend heavily on nuclear-armed adversaries finding a U.S. NFU pledge credible. A new theory based on the logic of costly signals and tested on evidence from …
Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (11 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 works) · Nuclear weapon (9 works) · Nuclear Issues and Defense (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · International trade (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works)