Articles

27 Items

Ukrainian Armed Forces use M777 howitzers donated due to the 2022 Russian invasion

Ukrainian Ground Forces via Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Distressing a system in distress: global nuclear order and Russia’s war against Ukraine

| Nov. 08, 2022

While prosecuting its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has relied heavily on nuclear threats, turning the war in Ukraine into a dangerous nuclear crisis with profound implications for the global nuclear order and its two constitutive systems of nuclear deterrence and nuclear restraint. These two interconnected systems, each aiming to manage nuclear possession and reduce the risk of nuclear use, are at once complimentary and contradictory. While tensions between these systems are not new, the war in Ukraine exacerbates them in unprecedented ways. The system of nuclear deterrence seems to be proving its worth by inducing restraint on Russia and NATO, while the system of restraint is undermined by demonstrating what happens to a country not protected by nuclear deterrence. The latter lesson is particularly vivid given Ukraine’s decision to forgo a nuclear option in 1994 in exchange for security assurances from nuclear powers. Russia’s use of nuclear threats as an enabler for escalation and the specter of Russian tactical nuclear use against Ukraine goes well beyond its declared nuclear doctrine. The outcome of the war in Ukraine thus has critical importance for deciding the value of nuclear weapons in global security architecture and for resolving the conundrum between the systems of deterrence and restraint.

Israelis, social protesters, and left wing activists march against the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 24, 2012.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Survival

Striking Iran: The Debate in Israel

| December 2012–January 2013

"Although the unusual public nature and stridency of the debate struck many around the world, it is still hard for those abroad to understand how great the effect on the Israeli public has been. The Iranian nuclear programme had been the one consensual issue in an otherwise politically frenetic and deeply divided country and was dealt with, so the public believed, in a manner appropriate to the severity of the threat."

A nuclear security officer armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and 9mm hand gun patrols the coastal area of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, May 5, 2004, in Avila Beach, Calif.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Daedalus

Reducing the Greatest Risks of Nuclear Theft & Terrorism

| Fall 2009

"Keeping nuclear weapons and the difficult-to-manufacture materials needed to make them out of terrorist hands is critical to U.S. and world security — and to the future of nuclear energy as well. In the aftermath of a terrorist nuclear attack, there would be no chance of convincing governments, utilities, and publics to build nuclear reactors on the scale required for nuclear energy to make any significant contribution to coping with climate change."

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

How American Treaty Behavior Threatens National Security

Summer 2008

In recent years, American treaty behavior has produced growing concern among both allies and less friendly nations. On such fundamental issues as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, human rights, civil liberties, environmental disasters, and commerce, the United States has generated confusion and anger abroad. Such a climate is not conducive to needed cooperation in the conduct of foreign and security policy. Among U.S. actions that have caused concern are the failure to ratify several treaties; the attachment of reservations, understandings, and declarations before ratification; the failure to support a treaty regime once ratified; and treaty withdrawal. The structural and historical reasons for American treaty behavior are deeply rooted in the United States' system of government and do not merely reflect superpower arrogance.

Magazine Article

Six Years After 9/11

| Sep. 11, 2007

BEIRUT -- This week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States sees the top American military and diplomatic officials in Iraq speaking to the US Congress about American strategy in Iraq. The juxtaposition is noteworthy: Six years ago, a small band of Al-Qaeda militants attacked the United States and killed some 3000 people. Today, an army of over 160,000 American troops wages a war in Iraq that has seen tens of thousands of people killed since 2003. Neither policy makes much sense to anyone in the world, other than to those fanatics on both sides who decided to pursue these actions.