Nuclear Weapons & Nuclear Use

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Robert Kehler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Complete Elimination ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

While nuclear weapons were conceived to end a war, in the aftermath of their operational use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they became the central (and controversial) means to prevent a war. Nuclear deterrence formed the foundation of U.S. Cold War doctrine and the basis of an extended security guarantee to our allies. But the Cold War ended one-quarter century ago, and questions about the efficacy of deterrence, the need for nuclear weapons, and the ethics surrounding them have resurfaced as some call for further major reductions in inventory or the complete elimination of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Discussed from the perspective of a military practitioner, this essay highlights the continuing need for U.S. nuclear weapons in a global security environment that is highly complex and uncertain, and describes the means by which the credibility of the nuclear portion of the strategic deterrent is being preserved even as the role and prominence of these weapons have been reduced.

Niebuhr on U.S. Policy in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-103
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The U.S

Although at one time a Marxian thinker, Niebuhr was in his Christian Realist phase an ardent anticommunist, and his views of communism (assessed here) led naturally to his view that Washington should pursue a policy of containment and nuclear deterrence against the communist bloc. Though rather hawkish, he saw moral tension in the maintenance of nuclear weapons. He stood with a number of other Realists in energetically opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam, concluding that U.S. policymakers had succumbed to the folly of group pride and will-to-power run amok. His position cost him his status as darling of the Washington foreign policy establishment, but he had the courage to speak his mind and was more concerned about the cost of U.S. folly than he was about his reputation.

The Great Debate

2018 ◽  
pp. 333-349
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
State System ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
World State ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Question

In the wake of the development of nuclear weapons, the survival of civilization, and perhaps humanity, hinges on answering the “nuclear political question”: Which political arrangements are needed to provide security from large-scale nuclear violence? Over the course of the nuclear era, a great debate on this question has occurred in three quite different rounds. In the first round, “nuclear one world” ideas about the obsolescence of the state-system and necessity of a world state predominated, but reached both conceptual and practical impasses. In the second round, across much of the Cold War, a trinity of deterrence-centered approaches, simple deterrence, war strategism, and arms control, prevailed. In the currently unfolding third round, proliferation and leakage have weakened confidence in nuclear deterrence, while both war strategism and arms control have become more radical, offering opposite “bombs away” answers of coercive counter-proliferation and preventive war, and deep arms control and nuclear abolition.

Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siracusa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Political Development ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Hydrogen Bomb ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Potential Use

Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction covers the scientific, historical, and political development of nuclear weapons, and how they transformed the very nature of war and peace. Nuclear weapons have not been used in anger since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seventy-five years ago. However, nuclear threats remain fundamental to relations between many states, complicating issues of global security. Their potential use by terrorists is an increasing concern. This book looks at the race to acquire the hydrogen bomb; Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (‘Star Wars’); contemporary defences against possible ballistic missile launches; and the policies nuclear weapons have generated since the end of the Cold War.

scholarly journals On Adapting Nuclear Deterrence to Reduce Nuclear Risk

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Brad Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, changes to the practice of nuclear deterrence by the United States have been pursued as part of a comprehensive approach aimed at reducing nuclear risks. These changes have included steps to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. defense and deterrence strategies. Looking to the future, the United States can do more, but only if the conditions are right. Policy-makers must avoid steps that have superficial appeal but would actually result in a net increase in nuclear risk. These include steps that make U.S. nuclear deterrence unreliable for the problems for which it remains relevant.

7. Reflections on the Atomic Age

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siracusa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Atomic Age ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Nuclear Terrorism ◽  
Regional Conflict ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Cold War

Does the spread of nuclear weapons make the world safer or more dangerous? ‘Reflections on the Atomic Age’ considers this debate's relevance now and in the future. The clarity of the Cold War world has given way to the ambiguities and uncertainties of a world where global security is threatened by regime collapse, nuclear terrorism, new nuclear weapons states, regional conflict, and pre-existing nuclear arsenals. The prediction of mass destruction has so far proved false, but is that because of effective efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, or is it just luck?

scholarly journals Who stole disarmament? History and nostalgia in nuclear abolition discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1387-1403
Author(s):  
Kjølv Egeland
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
Shared Goal ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Arms

Abstract Influential members of the disarmament community have in recent years maintained that further progress towards the international community's nominally shared goal of a world without nuclear weapons depends on recapturing the spirit and practices of cooperation that prevailed in the late 1980s and 1990s. Proponents of abolition, in this view, should focus their efforts on revitalizing the tried and tested arms control formula that was implemented following the end of the Cold War. In this article, I argue that this call to make disarmament great again reflects unwarranted nostalgia for a past that never was, fostering overconfidence in established approaches to the elimination of nuclear weapons. Far from putting the world on course to nuclear abolition, the end of the Cold War saw the legitimation of nuclear weapons as a hedge against ‘future uncertainties’ and entrenchment of the power structures that sustain the retention of nuclear armouries. By overselling past progress towards the elimination of nuclear arms, the nostalgic narrative of a lost abolitionist consensus is used to rationalize the existing nuclear order and delegitimize the pursuit of new approaches to elimination such as the movement to stigmatize nuclear weapons and the practice of nuclear deterrence.

Minimizing the Danger of Nuclear Weapons

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Steven P. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Disarmament ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
The Cold War

Many of those concerned about global peace advocate a policy of nuclear disarmament in order to eliminate the danger posed by these weapons. The logic is that eliminating the weapons would eliminate the danger they pose. But I argue that these are separate goals, that eliminating the weapons would not eliminate the danger, and in fact might make it worse. After the cold war, many thought that it was finally possible to rid the world of nuclear weapons, but since 1991, the world has not moved substantially towards this goal. The reason is that nuclear weapons create a security dilemma in which efforts to use them to make societies safer, through the practice of nuclear deterrence, end up making them less safe. This is because efforts (through minimum deterrence) to use them to avoid a deliberate nuclear attack create risk of nuclear war by escalation, and efforts (through counterforce deterrence) to minimize the risk of nuclear war by escalation, create the risk of deliberate nuclear attack. The way out of this dilemma is through delegitimization of nuclear weapons.

Doctrine «deterrence by denial» in modern diplomacy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Bartosh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Prominent Component ◽  
Limited Scale ◽  
Hybrid War ◽  
The Cold War

The security environment today is more complex and demanding than at any time since the end of the cold war, which increases the need for States and their coalitions to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of deterrence and defense policies. The issue of deterrence is becoming central to the national security policies of the great Powers, and deterrence strategies are becoming a prominent component of foreign policy and diplomacy in a multipolar world. At the same time, the effectiveness of traditional methods of deterrence through punishment decreases, while the importance of the doctrines of coercion and deterrence through denial increases, which play an increasing role as tools of hybrid war as a new form of interstate confrontation and naturally complement strategic nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence with high-precision weapons in conventional equipment. In conditions of limited scale of military operations, the doctrine of deterrence by punishment quickly turns into coercion, when it is necessary not only to "dissuade" the aggressor, but also to oust him and force him to retreat from the accomplished limited, hidden conquest. Against the background of the decline in the possibilities of deterrence by punishment, the doctrine of "Deterrence by denial", designed to create physical obstacles to the enemy, to make it difficult for him to achieve his goal, is gaining more and more development in politics and diplomacy. The effectiveness of this form of deterrence depends on the fear associated with the costs that will be incurred by the enemy during the act of aggression in the place where it will occur. Deterrence by negation is designed to make aggression unprofitable, make it harder to capture a target, and make it harder to hold it. The transformation of deterrence doctrines leads to the emergence of new tasks and tactics of modern diplomacy in a rapidly changing world.

Apartheid's Bomb and Regional Liberation: Cold War Perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Anna-Mart van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
The South ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
The Cold War

South Africa had a small, highly classified nuclear weapons program that produced a small but potent nuclear arsenal. At the end of the 1980s, as South Africa was nearing a transition to black majority rule, the South African government destroyed its nuclear arsenal and its research facilities connected with nuclear armaments and ballistic missiles. This article, based on archival research in the United States and South Africa, shows that the South African nuclear weapons program has to be understood in the context of the Cold War battlefield that southern Africa became in the mid-1970s. The article illuminates the complex U.S.–South African relationship and explains why the apartheid government in Pretoria sought nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the face of extensive Soviet-bloc aid to black liberation movements in southern Africa, the escalating conflict with Cuban forces and Soviet-backed guerrillas on Namibia's northern frontier, and the attacks waged by the African National Congress from exile. A clear link can be drawn between the apartheid government's quest for a nuclear deterrent, liberation in southern Africa, and the Cold War.

scholarly journals Possession of nuclear weapons – between legality and legitimization

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Tomasz Srogosz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
The World ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Cold War

Summary Recently in Russian policy there was a return to the Cold War practices, which include, inter alia, nuclear deterrence, and even threatening to use nuclear weapons. That policy, however, is carried out in the changed international space compared with the times of the Cold War. The period of detente in relations between world powers was dominated inter alia by discussion on the humanitarian intervention. Human rights, tied to the value of justice, become the most important component of international order. Thus, justice has become the value of the international legal order equivalent to peace. In such a reality, the legitimacy of nuclear weapons should be based not only on the deterrence, but also on the need to protect human rights, tied with justice. Possession of nuclear weapons per se is contrary to this value. This fact should be taken into account in the world powers’ policies. Banning nuclear weapons, in accordance with the Radbruch formula, should be a result of these policies.

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