Magazine Article - The Washington Monthly
Americans Aren’t as Averse to Using Nuclear Weapons as You Might Think
With U.S.-North Korea tensions heightened after weeks of fiery and furious rhetoric from President Trump and Kim Jong-un—pushing the world closer to nuclear conflict than it has been in decades—it’s worth taking a breath to consider what forces have kept the world’s nuclear-armed states from irradiating and annihilating each other in a shower of bombs.
Some explanations of nuclear non-use say that nuclear weapons have become, counterintuitively, a stabilizing force on the international system. Once the U.S. and Soviet Union both developed second-strike capability—the ability to respond to a nuclear strike with one of your own—deploying nuclear weapons in the first place became rather unattractive.
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For Academic Citation:
Caton, Alex. “Americans Aren’t as Averse to Using Nuclear Weapons as You Might Think.” The Washington Monthly, August 31, 2017.
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With U.S.-North Korea tensions heightened after weeks of fiery and furious rhetoric from President Trump and Kim Jong-un—pushing the world closer to nuclear conflict than it has been in decades—it’s worth taking a breath to consider what forces have kept the world’s nuclear-armed states from irradiating and annihilating each other in a shower of bombs.
Some explanations of nuclear non-use say that nuclear weapons have become, counterintuitively, a stabilizing force on the international system. Once the U.S. and Soviet Union both developed second-strike capability—the ability to respond to a nuclear strike with one of your own—deploying nuclear weapons in the first place became rather unattractive.
Want to Read More?
The full text of this publication is available via the original publication source.- Recommended
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