The Sheathed Sword: From Nuclear Brink to No First Use

After a brief post-Cold War interlude, nuclear weapons have returned to their prominent place in world affairs. Yet our current nuclear age will not be a replay of the Cold War. New technologies, changing political contexts, and the death of old arms control agreements mean that today’s nuclear strategists have to navigate unchartered waters filled with fresh perils. Unfortunately, in the nuclear world, the consequences of failure can be catastrophic. The immediate imperative today is to lower the possibility of nuclear weapons use during a crisis or conflict involving nuclear powers. While deliberate or pre-emptive nuclear use is less likely, the rising danger of our time is that nuclear weapons will be employed due to some combination of miscommunication, misjudgment, misperception and sheer accident. We argue that if all nuclear weapons powers were to adopt no-first-use policies, these dangers would become much more manageable.

How can such a global agreement on no-first-use be reached? After all, states often have very different ideas about how they can deter each other. Leading scholars and practitioners also have different perceptions about the implications of new technologies on nuclear weapons, on whether coercion works, and where the greatest sources of danger lie.

Section I looks at the role of nuclear weapons in global security Section II examines the literature on nuclear coercion and consider the devastating effects of a limited nuclear war on the world’s climate.

Section III looks at the issues around no first use.

Section IV is a series of studies of how individual states view nuclear weapons and the desirability of a GNFU agreement.