Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
A seminar with Benjamin Zala, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow with the International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom.
Three decades after the transition from the first to a second nuclear age with the end of the Cold War, the world stands on the cusp of a third nuclear age where the central dynamics of the nuclear order will change again. This paradigm shift is being driven by the twin factors of the global spread of strategic nonnuclear weapons (conventional forces able to compromise an adversary’s nuclear capabilities) on the one hand, and the abandonment of mutual vulnerability as the cornerstone of stable nuclear-armed relationships on the other. The defining feature of the third nuclear age will be that nuclear force structures, deployments, and postures as well as larger issues such as strategic arms control and nuclear crisis management will be shaped as much by developments in strategic nonnuclear capabilities as by nuclear weapons. The impact of these weapons on nuclear order is unlikely to play out in a uniform manner, and the presentation will lay out three different possible scenarios for a third nuclear age and discuss the management of nuclear dangers associated with each.
