EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, RELATIVE VULNERABILITY, AND RESTRAINT

There is considerable variation in how states deal with emerging technologies with national security implications. While existing works help us understand various competitive and cooperative behaviors, restraint remains underexplored. They fail to adequately explain states' self-imposed limitations in the development, deployment, or utilization of emerging technologies. This study argues that beliefs about relative vulnerability can motivate states to adopt more restrained behavior. The argument consists of three main elements. First, emerging technologies can produce asymmetric vulnerabilities for states which are not always resolvable by unilateral actions. Second, when states perceive themselves as relatively or uniquely vulnerable due to an emerging technology, they are more likely to prefer peaceful international interactions in that technology. This often involves efforts to influence the behavior of other states through the construction of norms. Third, restraint may serve as a tool of strategic norm construction by states. As norms are strengthened or weakened by practice, restraint is a way to avoid setting precedents that might justify others' unfavorable behavior and offer a model for others to follow. The study uses observational and experimental evidence to substantiate this claim and test it against other explanations. For this, it presents findings from two in-depth case studies on US antisatellite and cyberspace policy along with results from a survey experiment. This study finds that the relative vulnerabilities from emerging technologies influence state decisions to demonstrate restraint.