November 12, 2024
It is common to see Russian Orthodox priests sprinkling holy water on nuclear missiles. Moreover, all nuclear states, except China, give holy names to nuclear missiles. State leaders constantly use religious rhetoric to signal their nuclear resolve. These anecdotes have two things in common: they carry a religious symbolism, and they convey information on the resolve of nuclear weapons programs. In other words, they are signals that carry religious symbolism—religious signals. Therefore, this research asks why do states use religious signals? The international relations literature on credible signaling does not account for religious signals. Even the literature on religious fundamentalism does not refer to suicide terrorism as signaling. However, religious signaling is a growing global phenomenon, particularly in the nuclear realm. Hence, I propose a typology of religious signals and argue that when issuing a religious signal, the sender uses “hand-tying,” a costly signal, to convey information about their resolve. More specifically, religious signals demonstrate a sacred obligation to the divine and the religious community. Sacrilege of sacred obligation incurs divine and social penalties—costs. I find some preliminary support for this argument through Russia and Pakistan’s nuclear programs. I conclude that religious signals might achieve different effects depending on the audience. For domestic audiences, religious signals can help to gain trust. For international audiences, actors might use religious signals to coerce or deter non-religious audiences or audiences from a different religion from the sender. Finally, I identify the divine as an audience and find that actors use religious signals as a mechanism to seek divine protection.
Speaker: Shira Cohen, Political Science PhD Student, University of California, Berkeley
Moderator: Jeff Knopf, Professor of Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
07:09 Religion and Nuclear Weapons
09:28 What is the religious signal? Test case: Russia
20:02 Who sends religious signals? Test case: Russia
25:53 Effects of religious signals on different audiences. Test case: Pakistan
39:45 There broader picture
41:55 Q&A
