Nuclear Issues

The authors write that Vietnam will play host to a critical meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and it will benefit from their peace efforts regardless of the outcome.

All the world's nuclear-armed states (except for North Korea) have begun modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, leading many observers to predict that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race. While that outcome is not yet inevitable, it is likely, and if it happens, the new nuclear arms race will be different and more dangerous than the one we remember. More nuclear-armed countries in total, and three competing great powers rather than two, will make the competition more complex. Meanwhile, new non-nuclear weapon technologies — such as ballistic missile defense, anti-satellite weapons, and precision-strike missile technology — will make nuclear deterrence relationships that were once somewhat stable less so.

The paper provides a detailed analysis of the contemporary Sino-Indian conventional ground and nuclear force balances and carefully reconstructs how mutual developments in these areas are perceived by both New Delhi and Beijing.

Nuclear espionage is always a challenge. Governments conceal their nuclear activities from curious foreign eyes. And even the biggest intelligence budget and the latest spy gadgetry do not guarantee omniscience.

This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countries—China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"In a complete volte-face the nuclear supplier states that created the NSG (then the London Group) in 1975 due to proliferation concerns raised by India's perfidy are contemplating its inclusion. Paradoxically, that sounds like a death knell of the NSG and the non-proliferation regime."