Understanding the development of US nuclear doctrine and NATO requires understanding the western allies’ position after the end of WWII. They may, unfortunately, require support for quite some time as the conflict continues. If you want to help, consider donating to Ukrainian aid organizations like Razom for Ukraine or to the Ukrainian Red Cross. Wikipedia also appears to be a no-strategic-ambiguity zone.Īnd once again before we get started, a reminder that the conflict in Ukraine is not notional or theoretical but very real and is causing very real suffering, including displacing large numbers of Ukrainians as refugees, both within Ukraine and beyond its borders. The two darker shades of blue have arsenals with global capabilities, the lightest shade have only regional capabilities. Via Wikipedia, a map of current nuclear weapon-states, sorted by stockpile size and range. If there are any of my Global History of Warfare students lurking around thinking about paper ideas, researching some other county’s nuclear doctrine and its evolution often makes for really good second papers. I know the logic and thinking behind the US nuclear position best, but not all nuclear powers have the same doctrine or assumptions. But of course the current nuclear weapons states extend beyond this: the USA, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel 1 all have nuclear weapons. Now to be clear about the scope of our discussion: I am mostly here going to focus on nuclear deterrence for my country, the United States and its major military alliance, NATO. I am going to say this several times because it is a fundamental truth about nuclear weapons: if you aren’t at least a bit worried, you aren’t paying attention). Presumably, since Russian nuclear forces are currently on high alert, Perimeter is active, which should be a chilling thought. Strangelove, you are dangerously under-informed (though while we’re here it seems worth noting that the Soviet automated-launch doomsday device of the film mostly actually exists, as a system called Dead Hand in the West and Perimeter in Russia and still in use by Russia. Strangelove is a great movie, but if you only have your deterrence theory from Dr. Everyone has an opinion about nuclear weapons, but the gap between having an opinion and having an informed opinion is both massive and rarely spanned. Nevertheless, outside of those security studies fields at the college level, we generally don’t teach nuclear deterrence theory in school and so while this is actually one of the most studied and theorized concepts in the modern world (note that this doesn’t mean the theory is necessarily correct, but it does mean that a lot of very smart and well informed people have been grappling with these ideas for a while now), in my experience there is a tendency by the general public to assume that they are the first to notice this or that absurd-seeming conclusion. As we’ll see, there is a certain inescapable logic to many of the conclusions of deterrence theory, but the conclusions themselves viewed without considering that logic seem absurd (and occasionally are, even with the logic). Nuclear deterrence can be an odd topic to discuss with people outside of the security studies (military history, political science, IR, etc) space. Of course this is a complex and much debated topic, so what I want to provide is an introductory overview of the concepts of the sort I’d provide for an introductory class on the topic and, as with last week, end with some implications for understanding some of the concerns around Putin’s unprovoked and unlawful invasion of Ukraine. This week I wanted to expand on something I touched on only briefly in our ‘explainer’ on Putin’s War in Ukraine: the “delicate balance of terror” of nuclear deterrence. Thanks to our ever helpful volunteer narrator, this post is now also available in audio format.
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