Kashmir. The Panama Canal. West Berlin. The Senkaku Islands. These are all territories that once were – or are still – claimed by more than one state. Territorial disputes such as these exist because two or more states want what only one country can have. States must therefore bargain over how to divide up the proverbial territorial pie. This chapter addresses how nuclear weapons affect this bargaining process. Are nuclear states able to settle territorial disputes more favorably than other countries?

There are two main ways that states can resolve territorial disputes in their favor. First, they can try to extract concessions from their opponents during negotiations. Second, they can impose their will by using military force to seize disputed land. According to the nuclear coercionist school, nuclear weapons should help countries do both of these things more effectively. Nuclear-armed states have an easier time extracting concessions during negotiations, in this view, because the prospect of a nuclear attack looms in the background if their opponents stand firm. In addition, nuclear coercion theory posits that nuclear weapons serve as “shields” that enable states to forcibly take disputed land and then deter retaliation with their nuclear arsenals.

Nuclear skepticism theory, by contrast, holds that nuclear weapons generally do not provide states with any special advantages in territorial disputes. Coercive nuclear threats usually lack credibility, even in potentially high-stakes conflicts over territory. It is therefore difficult for countries to use their arsenals to redraw the map, either directly (by threatening to launch nuclear attacks if the target does not hand over disputed territory) or indirectly (by seizing land militarily and then threatening nuclear escalation if the target attempts to reclaim it).

Which of these views is correct? In this chapter, we attempt to answer this question by analyzing 348 territorial disputes between 1919 and 1995. The findings provide strong support for nuclear skepticism theory. Nuclear states do not extract concessions during negotiations at a higher rate than nonnuclear states.Moreover, nuclear powers are not more likely than their nonnuclear counterparts to gain disputed territory after using force.