Articles

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 risks of nuclear escalation are greater than ever given the possibility of misinterpreted cyber espionage and military strikes against early warning systems. 

The 2016 nuclear security summit was a pivotal moment for the decades-long effort to secure nuclear material around the globe. More than 50 national leaders gathered in Washington for the last of four biennial meetings that have led to significant progress in strengthening measures to reduce the risk of nuclear theft.

This article considers a number of political explanations for gas policy and shows that it is usually the economic interests of big energy firms that frequently take precedence, although these are often ignored and hidden as factors.

Ever since the 1973 oil embargo, and especially since the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis of 2006, Western policy makers have paid a great deal of attention to energy security. Yet there is no consensus as to what energy security is, what methodologies are most useful for conceptualizing and operationalizing the term, or even whether it is possible to generalize about anything as complex and contextually dependent as energy security. This enormous diversity of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological perspectives on the study of energy security complicates any assessment of the state of the field. It is, however, precisely because ‘energy security’ is such an elusive concept that academics, statesmen, and analysts of energy politics should not strive to coalesce around one precise definition.

Gazprom, Russian's prime state owned gas producer, is facing severe pressure stemming from international gas market dynamics, EU regulation and the Ukraine crisis. Slowing gas demand coupled with shifting pricing models and a persisting transit issue pose significant challenges for Gazprom's business going forward.

Existing studies show that, on average, national champions in energy-rich states tend to ‘stick around’ by maintaining strong links with their respective governments in the distribution of rents. Yet the foundations of preference formation—the particular role of national champions, their relationship to their respective governments and a limited number of third suppliers in that process—have neither been theorised nor investigated empirically in countries that are net importers of gas.

When do states acquire nuclear weapons? History shows that only two types of states decide that the bomb is essential to their security: 1) very powerful states; and 2) weak states that lack ironclad security guarantees.