I don’t think that’s the case. Secretly having a bomb gives you the ability to strike hard, but on its own it doesn’t deter.
If you want to deter, it’s not sufficient to have teeth, you have to show them or at least convince your enemy to believe you have them, and that only seems to be happening by countries that built their own such as Russia, North Korea and Pakistan.
So, how would, say, Canada secretly having a bomb deter anybody from attacking it?
Also, the USA already provides non-nuclear allies with a way to deter by storing on-the-book weapons in their countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing) That doesn’t have to happen off the books.
Are you suggesting there are countries they trust enough to store nuclear bombs there, while they don’t want the world at large to know about that? I can’t think of any country that would qualify for that.
I was thinking about somewhere like Israel or Taiwan, that a sitting president might be willing to push the button to defend a nation, but not have confidence that their successor would do the same, and so put the matter in the hands of the nation itself.
If you want to deter, it’s not sufficient to have teeth, you have to show them or at least convince your enemy to believe you have them, and that only seems to be happening by countries that built their own such as Russia, North Korea and Pakistan.
So, how would, say, Canada secretly having a bomb deter anybody from attacking it?
Also, the USA already provides non-nuclear allies with a way to deter by storing on-the-book weapons in their countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing) That doesn’t have to happen off the books.
Are you suggesting there are countries they trust enough to store nuclear bombs there, while they don’t want the world at large to know about that? I can’t think of any country that would qualify for that.