Domestic consensus and nuclear deterrence

This article advances a strategic theory on the benefits of integrated deterrence for the US alliance network in East Asia. After assessing the role of nuclear weapons in the region and tracing the evolution of US strategic thought on nuclear policy in East Asia, we evaluate the emerging risks and challenges of contemporary regional nuclear policy. We argue that over-reliance on nuclear weapons may exacerbate Sino-American tensions and pose difficulties for ally reassurance, especially against the backdrop of growing partisan politics in the United States. We outline and evaluate an alternative theory of integrated deterrence, which would prioritize the development of conventional counterforce capabilities and de-center nuclear weapons in the deterrence of nuclear threats. We assess this approach in relation to the escalation and entrapment risks posed by the current theory of regional nuclear deterrence. Finally, we reflect on the implications of US nuclear strategy in a changing regional nuclear environment.

: The February 2007 agreement reached with North Korea to shut down its nuclear reactor and give up its nuclear weapons program was heralded by many as a significant breakthrough following the shock of North Korea's nuclear weapons test in October of the previous year. This optimistic assessment, however, fails to consider the significant hurdles that will confront negotiators as they attempt to fulfill the promise of the February accord. The North Korean regime s hierarchy of nuclear motivations including its perception of the security, leverage and prestige offered by the possession of nuclear weapons as well as the significant time and energies it has invested in developing a nuclear device, make an actual verifiable dismantling of this program unlikely. Further, the historical tendency for negotiations with North Korea to produce few positive results bodes ill for future success. Extant hurdles are further compounded by a U.S. negotiation position that heightens North Korea's security concerns, leaves little room for compromise, and has, unwittingly, encouraged North Korea s development of nuclear weapons. Without some unforeseen and dramatic change in position by either side, the ongoing negotiations regarding North Korea s nuclear weapons program are unlikely to succeed in the near term. The best hope lies in gaining a complete understanding the North Korean position and developing a flexible strategy of engagement and containment. Such a strategy could address the security concerns of the Kim regime while limiting North Korea's ability to proliferate nuclear technology and providing security for the U.S. and its allies. Such an approach, however, would likely require the U.S. to set aside, at least temporarily the potentially costly and unrealistic goal of North Korean denuclearization.

Human life and technological developments are closely related to the legal awareness of the international community. The discovery of nuclear weapons for the first time was by the United States (US). It was used in World War II to attack and bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The incident resulted in the death of 160,000 (one hundred and sixty thousand) people, and damage to almost all the ecosystem. The devastating negative effects resulting from the use of nuclear weapons were then regulated and contradicted the norms outlined in Additional Protocol I of 1977, to the 1949 Geneva Conventions which regulates the methods and methods of war. Although it has been regulated in the 1949 Geneva Conventions (international humanitarian law), however, it turns out that there are still many countries that continue to develop nuclear weapons for reasons of national security. The research method used is a type of normative juridical research and uses a statutory approach and conceptual thinking. The results of the study indicate that the governing norms regarding; research and possession of nuclear weapons are still discriminatory. In practice, there is a distinction between a nuclear state and a non-nuclear state. Furthermore, in the current reality, there are still countries that are classified as not having good intentions to carry out the agenda of disarming and stopping the development of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, according to the results of this study, to overcome these problems, it is necessary to have new legal principles that can be universally binding.

Since coming to power, North Korea's Kim Jong-un regime has been upgrading its nuclear forces through four nuclear weapons tests and hundreds of test launches of nuclear weapons delivery systems. The North Korean regime has pursued distinct actions to assert its status as a nuclear power following the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Notably, it first specified in the preamble to the amended Constitution in 2012 that it was a nuclear state, and then enacted the Nuclear Weapons States Act in 2013 to disclose its comprehensive nuclear strategy to the public. Afterwards, the regime declared the “completion of national nuclear forces” in 2017, and replaced the Nuclear Weapons States Act (2013) with the Nuclear Forces Policy Act in 2022. While the North Korean regime has been limited in its capacity to pursue nuclear retaliation against the United States, its redrafting of its nuclear legislation has signaled a fundamental change in its nuclear strategy as well as an active will to use nuclear weapons. The new enactment of the Nuclear Forces Policy Act (2022) presents a shift from a “no-first-use (NFU)” nuclear policy to a more aggressive stance that conditionally permits “first-use.” This change coincides with the recent focus of the Kim Jong-un regime on the development of tactical nuclear weapons. Therefore, it should be noted that the newly enacted Nuclear Forces Policy Act carries different implications from the traditional approaches of nuclear weapons states.

This essay challenges the prevailing view of much recent use of force scholarship in the United States that supports the use of a self-defense exception to justify U.S. military action all over the world since 9/11, arguing that instead the traditional framework of the UN Charter provides the appropriate legal framework. The essay notes the slide by US Presidents since 9/11, including Barack Obama, into increasingly aggressive and unmoored understandings of constraints on jus ad bellum rules, and the tendency of the current US President, Donald Trump, to threaten to -- and use -- force unlawfully in violation of international law and with potentially catastrophic consequences. The essay takes issue with scholars arguing that this perpetual war is now the new standard and discusses efforts to push back against this slide into unlawfulness including the activation of the aggression amendments of the International Criminal Court Statute, and the adoption of a new treaty banning the use and possession of nuclear weapons, which opened for signature on September 20, 2017.

This chapter explains the core ideas of deterrence theory, specifically that it is largely associated with nuclear policy. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union adopted a survivable nuclear force to present a ‘credible’ deterrent that maintained the ‘uncertainty’ inherent in strategic stability as understood through the accepted theories of major theorists like Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, and Thomas Schelling. This chapter evaluates the limits and challenges associated with the application of deterrence theory to cyber warfare and argues that while there are major insights from deterrence theory for cyber warfare, there are also major problems introduced by the unique aspect of cyber technology that causes significant problems for deterrence. These are, first, uncertainty associated with awareness and attribution of an attack; and second, the uncertain effects of such an attack.

Officials in India and Pakistan insist that no expense should be spared to achieve national security. The development of nuclear weapons and missiles, they contend, is required to deter foreign hostility and political coercion. This claim could be correct: Nuclear deterrence might foster peace and security in South Asia. But at what cost? Will Indian or Pakistan replicate the Soviet experience, whereby the costs of creating and maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent bankrupt the government and society? Are India and Pakistan threatening their future prosperity, prestige, and security for questionable security gains? This chapter identifies the costs of the nuclear deterrent programs pur- sued by India and Pakistan. Five categories of costs are examined: the finan- cial burden, the opportunity costs, the domestic political reverberations, and the international political price This discussion is followed by a brief assess- ment of the military risks that India and Pakistan now face in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests.

Thе article analyzes the concept of strategic stability and its contemporary development in domestic military-political thought. The authors note that the expansion of the meaningful content of the concept of strategic stability in the Russian Federation occurred as a result of the development of strategic non-nuclear deterrence forces and the US policy to reduce the dependence of American foreign and defense policy on the factor of nuclear deterrence. These changes in the military-political situation in the world have led to a reduction in the stability of the relations of key states, despite some proliferation of nuclear weapon technologies in Asian countries. The article attempts to prove that the Russian Federation is able to withstand the new challenges associated with qualitative changes in the relations of mutual deterrence with the United States. As to this, the authors consistently analyze the historical context and conceptual foundations of deterrence policy, including recent documents adopted at the highest level in Russia. In addition, the authors analyze the recently adopted cruise missile systems in Russia and the United States, as well as anti-missile defense systems that alter the balance of power for a guaranteed response to strategic nuclear forces. Taking into account the current technological developments and the timeline for their implementation, the authors conclude that Russia has been able to achieve significant results in the field of aerospace defense, while naval defense and the introduction of new means of nuclear weapon delivery need additional attention from authorities. Finally, the authors believe that the development of the domestic military-industrial complex directly depends on the country's economic development, which means that the degree of effectiveness of Russian strategic weapons system must remain significantly higher than that of foreign counterparts.

Exploring how the United States manages its still-powerful nuclear arsenalArms control agreements and the end of the Cold War have made the prospect of nuclear war a distant fear for the general public. But the United States and its principal rivals—China and Russia—still maintain sizable arsenals of nuclear weapons, along with the systems for managing them and using them if that terrible day ever comes.Managing U.S. Nuclear Operations in the 21st Centuryfocuses on how theories and policies are put into practice in managing nuclear forces in the United States. It addresses such questions as: What have been the guiding priorities of U.S. nuclear strategy since the end of the Cold War? What nuclear attack options would the president have during a war? How are these war plans developed and reviewed by civilian and military leaders? How would presidential orders be conveyed to the uniformed men and women who are entrusted with U.S. nuclear weapons systems? And are these communications systems and supporting capabilities vulnerable to disruption or attack? The answers to such questions depend on the process by which national strategy for nuclear deterrence, developed by civilian leaders, is converted into nuclear war plans and the entire range of procedures for implementing those plans if necessary. The chapter authors have extensive experience in government, the armed forces, and the analytic community. Drawing on their firsthand knowledge, as well as the public record, they provide unique, authoritative accounts of how the United States manages it nuclear forces today. This book will be of interest to the national security community, particularly younger experts who did not grow up in the nuclear-centric milieu of the Cold War. Any national security analyst, professional, or government staffer seeking to learn more about nuclear modernization policy and the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be interested in this book. It should also be of interest to professors and students who want a deep understanding of U.S. nuclear policy.

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Hamas–Hezbollah war with Israel following the 7 October 2023, the Iran–Israel shadow war escalated into direct military conflict. While addressing the characteristics of Iran's deterrence strategy, the present contribution argues that in case of escalation in the Middle East region, the so‐called ‘forward defence’ doctrine may not guarantee the survival of the Islamic Republic in Iran. Consequently, any direct military aggression against Iranian nuclear facilities could provoke Iran's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and prompt a significant reevaluation of its nuclear strategy. This study draws on 18 semi‐structured interviews conducted with Iranian military, political and religious officials and historians and scholars specialising in nuclear security. It goes against research that asserts Shia Islam serves as a barrier to Iran's development of nuclear weapons.

Few words evoke more passionate debate and reveal such widely divergent views as the word “nuclear”. Whether in reference to “nuclear weapons”, “nuclear energy”, or “nuclear terrorism”, nuclear-related questions and issues continue to garner the attention or suffer the opprobrium of scholars, decision-makers, and international and regional organisations. Ever since the nuclear genie was let out of the bottle, fears of impending nuclear disaster—whether in the form of all-out nuclear war or nuclear terrorism—have gripped the attention of policy makers and scholars (for a recent restatement of these fears, cf. Niemeyer 2023; Jacobsen 2024; Karam 2021; Narang & Sagan 2022). As Robert Gates, the former United States (US) Secretary of Defence, noted, every high-ranking government official is kept awake at night by the spectre of a nuclear-armed terrorist group inflicting unimaginable destruction on society (quoted in Coetzee 2020:371). Also, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, frequent Russian nuclear sabre-rattling has reignited fears about an all-out nuclear blowout, while the safety of nuclear power plants during this war has remained a very real concern (Williams 2024). The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and how that development could (but not necessarily would) lead to a nuclear cascade in the Middle East also looms large (Coetzee 2021). At the same time, Chinese modernisation of its nuclear forces continues apace, while nuclear-armed North Korea’s rambunctious behaviour persists (Kristensen et al. 2024). Uncertainty about its external security situation is constraining South Korea, a country historically at odds with nuclear weapons possession, to begin contemplating or, at the very least, publicly discussing the merits and demerits of a South Korean nuclear weapons programme (Kelly & Kim 2024; Cha 2024:1). In the context of the unfolding bipolar or, as some contend, multipolar world, fears about the stability of nuclear deterrence have proliferated. Disruptive technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI), cyber warfare, hypersonic weapons, to quantum computing, ostensibly pose insurmountable risks to deterrence stability, especially in relation to the survivability of second-strike nuclear forces and nuclear command and control systems (Lieber & Press 2017; Lieber & Press 2018; Coetzee 2021).

This study uses multivariate econometric and time series analysis techniques to examine historical trends in the felonious killing of law enforcement officers in the United States from 1947 to 1998. Of particular interest is the extent to which the correlates of police murder rates are characterized by historical specificity. We also focus on the ability of economic deprivation, deterrence, and social disorganization theories to explain trends in police murder rates across time. The findings of this study indicate (a) that police murder rates in the United States are characterized by distinct historical periods (1947 to 1971, 1972 to 1998) in which the structural correlates of police murder vary and (b) that both economic deprivation and deterrence theories are relevant for understanding trends in police murder although the effects of the latter are historically specific.

Members of the Japanese government and the Japanese security elite welcomed the 2010 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Report, praising its emphasis on the twin goals of pursuing disarmament and protecting international peace and stability. Unlike many non-nuclear weapon states, Japan does not condition its support for nonproliferation upon nuclear weapon states’ progress on denuclearization. Despite general enthusiasm for the review in Japan, concerns remain. The NPR emphasizes the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of non-state actors; from Japan's vantage point, state actors—North Korea, China, and Russia—are just as worrisome. While disarmament advocates in Japan had hoped the NPR would endorse a no-first-use doctrine or “sole purpose” declaration, defense officials and strategists were relieved it did not go that far, fearing that to do so would undermine US extended deterrence and leave Japan vulnerable to attack by North Korean biological or chemical weapons. US policy toward China shadows many Japanese concerns about security policy in general and nuclear policy in particular. In the absence of more clarity on the Sino-US relationship, Japanese concerns can be expected to increase. Nonetheless, the Japanese government has responded positively to the release of the NPR, in large part due to unprecedented levels of coordination and consultation between Tokyo and Washington during the drafting process. Tokyo now seeks continued close consultation on nuclear strategy and policy to develop a better understanding of the concept of extended deterrence and what Tokyo can do to support this shared goal.

India does not currently exercise a great deal of influence in the Middle East, but as a rising economic and political power on the world stage, it will likely play a critical role in the future of the region. New Delhi’s engagement with the Middle East, in configuration with its general approach to foreign policy, has been driven by a policy of non-alignment. However, recent dialogue between New Delhi and Washington, which started after the end of the Cold War, challenges this policy. Given the current international configuration of threats, challenges, and power, India finds itself at the crossroads of decisions regarding its foreign policy. In its approach to the Middle East, five factors impact New Delhi’s strategy: 1) regional power of China, 2) conflict over Kashmir with Pakistan, exasperated with possession of nuclear weapons by both states, 3) threat of Islamic terrorism, 4) increasing dependency on energy imports, and 5) existential need to uphold friendly relations with the United States-which also serves as the main frame for outlining India’s policy in the region.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed in 1968, is a unique international document in that it prohibits possession of nuclear weapons—the most destructive weapons yet invented—by an overwhelming majority of states, while tolerating retention of the same weapons by a handful of states. However, the Treaty is meant to be only a transitional measure; its ultimate goal is to achieve global nuclear disarmament. As a step towards this goal, the parties to the NPT undertook to cease the nuclear arms race. The negotiating history, which is reflected in the preamble to the Treaty, and the official statements made during the NPT Review Conferences, suggest that the relevant NPT clause was understood by the signatories as requiring a series of arms control measures, the most important of which was the termination of nuclear test explosions. Demands to prohibit these explosions date back to the beginning of the nuclear era. So far, however, only partial bans have been achieved.