Description
Nuclear coercion theory was built to explain how states bargain under the shadow of the bomb. It has little to say about the anti-colonial wars that nuclear-armed states fought against the movements that sought to displace them. Measured by compliance, these wars appear as failures, recorded and set aside, which leaves unasked what the bomb did in them short of producing compliance. This paper takes coercive engagement as its object: how a nuclear capability entered the reasoning of the actors in these wars and what it did there, whether or not behavior changed. A typology sorts engagement by target, mode, and the signaling environment in which the capability is read. The framework makes three claims. First, the coercion apparatus is state-scoped, its premises presupposing a state. Second, reverse coercion runs the other way: a movement converts the coercer's bomb into a charge against it and into diplomatic capital of its own. Third, constitutive resolve resists material coercion: where a movement's existence is its resistance, a threat denominated in casualties can harden it. Two probe cases show the framework organizing behavior that the published record documents: South Africa during the Angolan and Namibian wars, and France during the Algerian War. The framework’s propositions specify observable implications that primary sources would bear out. Throughout, the paper treats the movements as strategic agents reasoning about the bomb on their own account, against a Cold War historiography that reduces them to instruments of their sponsors.