Varieties of Assurance

Abstract Strategies that seek to assure other states about their security have the potential to reduce international conflict and dissuade states from seeking nuclear weapons. Yet, relative to other tools of statecraft such as deterrence, assurance remains understudied. To facilitate further empirical research on assurance strategies, this article identifies variations in the terminology scholars and policymakers have used to refer to such strategies and describes the concept of assurance associated with each variant. It seeks to clarify and standardize usage and show that there is a general, overarching concept of assurance that links the different variants. It also summarizes existing bodies of empirical research that are relevant to assessing the utility of different forms of assurance.