... This ideology—like any other—is based on an agglomeration of different myths about the past, present, and future of strategic relations between the nuclear powers.
One of them (which may be called “nuclear revanchism”) is that following major nuclear weapons reductions during the last thirty years, their use would no longer be a worldwide catastrophe, so a nuclear war can now be waged and won. Moreover, it is claimed that the limited and selective use of nuclear weapons through integrated ...
... becoming increasingly loud both in Russia and the US, as are statements that the national security of either side will be guaranteed even if the extension of the treaty is renounced.
Without the New START, there will be a broader issue of maintaining the nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime. We should not forget about the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty either. The United States, by the way, has not ratified the CTBT, but is now criticising Russia for alleged CTBT violations.
Thus, a chain reaction ...
... a compromise does appear, then the most serious concerns of the Trump administration regarding Iran’s politics should be addressed, otherwise, no deal can be concluded. Clearly, the greatest threat coming from Iran is the prospect of it developing nuclear weapons. When it comes to the nuclear deterrence with regard to Iran, two factors are important for the United States: the possibility of verifying compliance on the part of Iran with its obligations and the term of the JCPOA’s validity. At ...
... the target country with fewer opportunities to use it for achieving diplomatic goals.
Second, the breakdown of the JCPOA undermines non-proliferation efforts. North Korea is a case in point proving that while failing to remove sanctions, possessing nuclear weapons provides some leverage in negotiations. At the same time, giving up nuclear weapons leads to the re-imposition of sanctions under new pretexts.
Third, every new round of sanctions forces target countries to adapt and find new ways to carry ...
Review of the NTI report “Nuclear Weapons in the New Cyber Age”
The subject of the interrelation of threats in the fields of information and communication technologies and nuclear weapons is gradually becoming one of the dominant topics in current international security issues....
... years ago, I attended a small public conference where a representative of the NATO Secretariat was speaking. It was a time of internal turmoil in Pakistan. I asked a question: which country does NATO consider to be a greater threat, Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, or Iran, which does not. He thought for a while and said: I still think it’s Iran. I asked why. He said because nobody in Pakistan, neither the government, nor the opposition, had claimed that they would destroy another country, while ...
... crumble too, as it is looking dangerously unlikely that the bare minimum of extending the agreement will be achieved. It is time we started preparing ourselves for the possibility of waking up in March 2021 in a world where there are no restrictions on nuclear weapons.
The potential disintegration of New START would not be catastrophic for Russia, all the more so because the country could derive some benefit from the “inter-treaty” period and approach the next, and hopefully inevitable, stage of ...
... leaving its multilateral dimension intact. The energy of disintegration is bound to spill over the framework of bilateral relations and this is already happening before our eyes. Washington has launched a campaign accusing Moscow of conducting secret nuclear weapons tests. Thus, the future of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that has been signed but not ratified by the US up to now is called into question. It is perfectly obvious that if the nuclear arms race accelerates with the production ...
European Think Tanks reflect on the challenges of emerging military technologies
The following points are the fruit of a particularly rich and constructive
roundtable meeting
in Istanbul on 8-9 April of the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe. The points are intended as material for policy discussion by Task Force participants with their authorities not definitive research. But we believe that they offer a useful perspective on the challenges presented by emerging military technologies...
... regime?
At the beginning of the 21st century, we were able to talk with some confidence about the obvious success of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, the foundations of which had been laid by the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Non-Proliferation Treaty, or
NPT
). Back in the 1960s, the expert community was extremely critical of the regime that was being established, predicting that by the turn of the century, some
30 countries
would possess nuclear weapons....
