{"id":16021,"date":"2026-05-13T05:23:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/the-risk-of-relying-on-cooler-heads-to-prevail-in-nuclear-war-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T05:23:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:23:58","slug":"the-risk-of-relying-on-cooler-heads-to-prevail-in-nuclear-war-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/the-risk-of-relying-on-cooler-heads-to-prevail-in-nuclear-war-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Risk of Relying on Cooler Heads to Prevail in Nuclear War – Georgetown Journal of International Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel R. Post, Paul Slovic, and Rose McDermott
May 12, 2026
At the center of every nuclear crisis sits a human mind, tasked with weighing losses, judging moral boundaries, and making irreversible decisions under extreme pressure. The stability of the nuclear world depends not only on material capabilities and strategic doctrines but also on the psychological limits of those empowered to act. This article explores how cognitive biases, and emotional responses can distort nuclear decision-making and lower the threshold for escalation. These vulnerabilities necessitate better decision processes, clearer assessment of consequences, and stronger safeguards against catastrophic error.<\/em>
With the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist\u2019s Doomsday Clock<\/a> set closer to midnight than at any point in history, the risk of nuclear catastrophe is once again at the center of public attention. The Bulletin\u2019s explanations focus on familiar dangers\u2014geopolitical rivalry, arms racing, regional wars, and eroding arms-control agreements. Yet these external threats can obscure a more intimate and less examined source of nuclear risk. At the center of every nuclear crisis sits a human mind, tasked with weighing losses, judging moral boundaries, and making irreversible decisions under extreme pressure. The stability of the nuclear world depends not only on weapons, doctrines, and arms control agreements, but also on the psychological limits of those entrusted to use them.
In a recent New York Times interview<\/a>, when asked if there was anything that could constrain his power on the world stage, President Donald Trump answered: \u201cYeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It\u2019s the only thing that can stop me, and that\u2019s very good.\u201d While blunt, Trump\u2019s statement is typical for nuclear decision-making. Throughout the nuclear era, the ultimate constraint on nuclear use has been that leaders with launch authority have kept their cool in crisis. In the United States, the President has this sole authority, and the world relies on the minds of successive presidents to never order such a launch.
However, minds are sometimes deceived. Human beings do not always make purely rational decisions. Cognitive biases and common psychological mechanisms may distort judgment in high-stakes situations in predictable ways. These ways include the affect heuristic, in which emotions, such as fear or anger, strongly influence decisions, and psychic numbing<\/a>, a well-documented coping mechanism that protects the mind from unbearable losses. This approach leads to policymakers treating deaths as dry statistics rather than human suffering. Furthermore, comparative thinking, in which a worse option makes<\/a> other harmful choices appear acceptable by comparison, can distort nuclear decision-making.
In addition to these cognitive mechanisms, personal dispositions and attitudes can significantly shape choices. Individuals with more punitive tendencies, for example, may favor harsher responses independent of strategic considerations. Together, these influences can push decision makers toward immediate emotional reactions rather than long-term strategic reasoning.
First, the <\/a>affect heuristic<\/a> explains that emotional reactions drive different risk behaviors. Fear and anger are most important in the context of nuclear crises. Prior research<\/a> shows that fear leads to higher risk estimates and risk-averse choices; anger leads to lower risk estimates and risk-seeking choices. For instance, imagine a coercive attack on the United States in which the President is considering military responses to the demands of an adversary. Should the situation inspire fear of significant losses, escalation, or precedent-setting, the President will likely have a lower risk tolerance, which may lead to strategic restraint and decision-making that aims to minimize danger. However, if the President and others advising them feel angry while making decisions, they are more likely to consider riskier approaches.
In our research<\/a>, a significant majority of civil and military respondents reported that they would feel anger rather than fear in this imagined scenario. In the military sample, 89 percent of respondents reported that they would feel high levels of anger, whereas only 29 percent reported that they would feel high levels of fear when on the receiving end of a significant military escalation. Understanding the relationship between emotion and risk should inform decision-making processes to limit undue influence of short-term emotional reactions, especially under nuclear crisis and stress conditions.  Decisions about using nuclear weapons are not an area where excessive, emotion-driven risk-taking can be tolerated, even though deterrence itself depends on a measured willingness to take risks.
At the same time, psychic numbing, the way that the human mind struggles to comprehend large-scale human tragedy and death, can distort decision-making. For example, if the President must kill a random civilian in the situation room before attaining nuclear launch codes, this decision feels more visceral than the prospect of killing millions. However, this person is just as faultless as the millions of civilians that would die from a nuclear war. As numbers grow, lives become dry statistics while identifiable losses remain psychologically salient. If leaders cannot comprehend an action\u2019s consequences, they cannot rationally compare its strategic costs and benefits against alternative options. This limitation carries implications for nuclear decision-making.
Third, comparative thinking endangers nuclear stability. An inferior option makes an otherwise unacceptable option appear more acceptable, which can sway decision-makers. For example, limited strikes appear preferable relative to large-scale attacks, but they may still be unacceptable when evaluated on their own terms. However, advisors are likely to present a menu of options to presidents, which creates bias in crises where time to engage in slow, reasoned analysis is inherently limited. As Hannah Arendt warned<\/a>, actions may seem justified not because they are good, but because they appear less evil than the alternatives placed beside them. Once the nuclear threshold is reframed as<\/a> a choice between evils rather than a boundary not to be crossed, restraint becomes psychologically precarious.
Lastly, personal dispositions also significantly impact nuclear decision-making. Recent research<\/a> shows that those who support punitive policies such as the death penalty or harsh punishments for illegal immigrants are significantly more likely to support nuclear weapons<\/a>, including first use against adversaries. The idea of punishing an adversary with nuclear weapons, however, may be self-injurious or worse. In a large nuclear exchange, the consequences are global. Thus, decisions must ensure that no matter the mind of the individual, choices are made with the most fulsome strategic analysis and consideration of consequences, not driven by inclinations toward punitive policies.
These behavioral patterns are not curiosities of public opinion but reflect fundamental features of human psychology. The same cognitive mechanisms apply to presidents, advisors, military leaders, and the broader public alike. While decision-makers operate in environments with more information, they still rely on the same human brains. Expertise does not confer immunity from psychic numbing, loss aversion, or comparative framing, and high-pressure environments can amplify these effects. Modern decision settings may heighten vulnerability: rapid timelines, complex option menus, and highly technical briefings invite comparative thinking that makes extreme actions appear acceptable by contrast.
In recent research conducted with colleagues and forthcoming in the Texas National Security Review, <\/em>we find that these psychological mechanisms significantly shape nuclear decision-making and, in combination, increase support for nuclear use. For example, the study observed significant changes in preferences due to the decoy effect. Using a fictionalized scenario (similar to the one used in previous studies<\/a>) involving a military conflict with Iran, the study asked respondents to choose between supporting continuing a ground war that the United States was expected to win or using a nuclear weapon to rapidly end the conflict and save U.S. soldiers\u2019 lives.
Importantly, in every scenario, the leaders expected the United States to win the war, making nuclear use unnecessary for strategic success. The study found that adding a nuclear option that would kill 100,000 civilians, adjacent to one that would kill two million, increased the number of participants willing to cross the nuclear threshold and use nuclear weapons. Overall, 37.4 percent of respondents changed their preference when the lower casualty \u201cbetter\u201d option was made available. Furthermore, the study found that highly punitive individuals who explicitly acknowledged comparing the lethality of the two bombs were 25 times more likely to choose the strike causing 100,000 deaths than respondents who lacked those traits. Perhaps most concerning, many of these individuals considered selecting the smaller bomb a morally virtuous decision because it would spare their own troops. These findings demonstrate the profound risk of relying solely on the judgment of individual leaders to safeguard populations from nuclear catastrophe.
So, what can policymakers do to address these challenges? They must take the human mind seriously as a domain of nuclear risk. The future of nuclear restraint depends on ensuring that leaders and their advisors fully grasp the nature of nuclear threat and that its consequences remain vivid and psychologically coherent. It is also important that leaders do not let punitive personal dispositions or deceptive comparisons influence their decisions. Several steps could help mitigate the biases inherent in decision-making under such conditions.
First, when presenting response options, advisors should render their consequences as imaginable and vivid as possible, including immediate casualties and long-term humanitarian impacts. This may help counteract psychic numbing. Second, nuclear options should be evaluated alongside conventional and non-response options, rather than in isolation. This reduces the risk that comparatively better nuclear options be misperceived as genuinely good ones. Third, decision-making procedures must guard against anger and vengeance replacing strategy. This requires allowing time for deliberation, formalizing consultation, and encouraging or even requiring structured dissent and debate. Lastly, consequence briefings and course-of-action analysis must include long-term political, military, economic, environmental, and humanitarian costs in addition to short-term metrics such as fatalities and the geographic scope of destruction.
Even the best-designed decision processes, however, cannot substitute for strengthened external guardrails that reduce the likelihood of crises in the first place. Arms control and nuclear risk\u2011reduction measures, including constraints on destabilizing deployments, confidence\u2011building mechanisms, crisis communication channels, and renewed efforts to slow arms racing, lower both the frequency and intensity of situations in which fragile human judgment is tested. In a world defined by speed, uncertainty, and deception, fewer and less acute crises may be the most reliable way to reduce the risk of irreversible error.
No single measure eliminates nuclear risk, but taken together,<\/a> these steps can strengthen decision-making and reduce the risk of psychologically biased responses. A clear-eyed understanding of human personality and cognitive limits is vital to ensuring nuclear stability. If cooler heads are to prevail, individual judgment must be reinforced through education, training, procedural and decision-making safeguards, expert advice, and the deliberate consideration of long-term strategic outcomes. These reforms are possible within the current framework of nuclear deterrence and would meaningfully reduce nuclear risk.
Disclaimer:<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>The views expressed in this article are solely the authors\u2019 and do not reflect or represent the<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>views of the U.S. Naval War College, the U.S. Navy, or any other U.S. government agency.<\/em>
. . .<\/strong>
Commander Daniel Post, U.S. Navy<\/a><\/strong>, is a Permanent Military Professor in the Strategy and Policy department at the U.S. Naval War College. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from the United States Naval Academy, an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, an MA in Political Science from Brown University, and his PhD in Political Science from Brown University. His research focuses on nuclear strategy and policy, deterrence, decision-making, escalation dynamics, limited nuclear war, and conflict termination. He is a former Navy Helicopter Pilot, and his most recent assignment was as Nuclear Strike Advisor and the Chief of Strike Advisor Training, Global Operations Center at U.S. Strategic Command.<\/em>
Paul Slovic<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His recent work examines “psychic numbing” and the failure to respond adequately to mass human tragedies. He is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.\u00a0In 2022, Dr. Slovic received the Franklin Institute\u2019s\u00a0Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in the Science of Decision Making. <\/use> <\/svg><\/a><\/em>
Rose McDermott<\/a><\/strong> is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She directs the Watson Postdoctoral Program. She received her Ph.D. in political science and a master’s degree in experimental social psychology from Stanford University. She has taught at Cornell University and UCSB. McDermott has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University, and has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. She is the author of six books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and the author of over two hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as American foreign and defense policy, experimentation, national security intelligence, gender, social identity, cybersecurity, emotion and decision-making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.<\/em>\u00a0
Image Credit: Trump White House Archived<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>, via Flickr<\/p>\n

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Daniel R. Post, Paul Slovic, and Rose McDermottMay 12, 2026At the center of every nuclear crisis sits a human mind, tasked with weighing losses, judging moral boundaries, and making irreversible decisions under extreme pressure. The stability of the nuclear world depends not only on material capabilities and strategic doctrines but also on the psychological limits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}