The unbearable lightness of luck: Three sources of overconfidence in the manageability of nuclear crises

Overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear weapons creates danger. The passing of the last elitewitness of the most dangerous nuclear crisis, that is, the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’, and the current Trumpadministration only make this more salient. In this context, this article reviews the scholarly literatureabout the limits of predictability and controllability of nuclear crises and investigates three failures oflearning from them. Given that France displays in particularly acute form some of the sources ofoverconfidence 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 missilecrisis in comparative perspective, based on untapped primary material. In security studies, this articlemakes three contributions. First, the publication and interpretation of primary sources is a contributionin 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 andthe presence of nuclear weapons. Third, empirically, this article studies part of a regime of valuation ofnuclear weapons. It finally outlines a research agenda to take luck seriously in security studies