Month: September 2026

Exporting nuclear secrecy. The transatlantic diffusion of nuclear secrecy practices in the postwar period (1945-1953)

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

Fraise, Thomas. “Exporting nuclear secrecy. The transatlantic diffusion of nuclear secrecy practices in the postwar period (1945-1953)”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Online First, 1-23. © The Author (2026) DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2026.2732196

This article examines how United States (US) nuclear secrecy standards shaped the domestic nuclear policies of Western European states between 1945 and the launch of Atoms for Peace. Focusing on the United Kingdom (UK), Sweden and France, it argues that the spread of nuclear secrecy in Europe cannot be explained solely by domestic dynamics but also resulted from international power asymmetries that structured an emerging economy of nuclear secrecy.

Drawing on policy diffusion theory, the article identifies two mechanisms through which US secrecy norms diffused to partner states: coercion and imitation. Coercion operated through conditional access to valued resources—scientific information, technology, and political cooperation—when European practices were deemed incompatible with US containment priorities. Imitation, by contrast, reflected European policymakers’ efforts to conform to what they perceived as appropriate behaviour within an asymmetric relationship, adopting stricter secrecy practices to signal reliability and secure future cooperation. Based on archival evidence, the article shows how US expectations reshaped European information-control regimes, demonstrating how international power relations can produce domestic secrecy practices. In doing so, it highlights the central role of diffusion mechanisms in early nuclear ordering efforts.

Maria Mälksoo and Thomas Fraise at the EISA PEC2026 in Lisbon, 1-4 September 2026

Maria Mälksoo and Thomas Fraise participated in the European International Studies Association’s 19th Pan-European Conference at the ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal on 1-4 September 2026.

Maria Mälksoo co-convened a pre-conference workshop with Dr Andrew Hom (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Lauren Rogers (University of Leuven) on ‘Ritual Times of War and Peace’ (with 13 participants). She also spoke at two book roundtables (on Mirko Palestrino’s Military Victory Beyond the Battlefield, Oxford University Press 2025 and Dorothy Noyes and Tobias Wille’s edited volume on Exemplarity in World Politics, Bristol University Press 2025).

Together, Maria Mälksoo and Thomas Fraise presented their respective work in progress at the panel ‘Temporal politics of catastrophe: War, climate and competing visions of survival’. Maria’s paper was entitled ‘Ritual Endtiming as International Ordering’ and Thomas’s ‘Apocalyptic World-Ordering: The Logic of the Liberal International Order’.

Thomas Fraise also featured his paper ‘Nuclear Deterrence as Ontological Security: The Origins of NATO’s Extended Nuclear Deterrence’, chaired a panel ‘Martial Materialities of Environmental Devastation’, and presented his paper (co-authored with Sterre Van Buuren and Benoît Pelopidas) ‘The Climate Security Costs of the New Nuclear Arms Race’.