According to the US government, the Russian government is developing a programme to arm some of its satellites with nuclear warheads. Should the Kremlin acquire this capability, it could destroy key parts of the civilian satellite infrastructure by detonating a single nuclear weapon in low Earth...

While a second Trump Presidency would be challenging for transatlantic ties, US nuclear assurances to its NATO allies in Europe would likely be the last casualty - not the first - of a fraying relationship. There is an intrinsic incompatibility between the United States completely abandoning its...

The threat of the use of nuclear weapons by the aggressor is a significant factor in the ongoing war. Also in future, the Ukrainian government (any leadership) will be interested in its own nuclear weapons at least as long as Russia is ruled by an ill-predictable authoritarian regime. Nuclear...

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel's national security in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflecting upon the nuclear challenge between Iran and Israel and Iran's expanding activities in the region....

This paper reviews the case of nuclear energy. Currently, the worldworld is facing one of the greatest energy crises due to the Russo-Ukrainian war. This conflict has lead to limited sources of gas, causing a dramatic decrease in energy supply, leading to emerging energy crisis risks. This is...

Replacing the US nuclear guarantee with a French nuclear umbrella for Europe would face major political and logistical challenges. Nevertheless, given the growing un­certainty in Europe and Asia, the German government should consider scenarios and options that go beyond today’s deterrence...

This paper aims to analyze the strategic environment of Taiwan to explore the possibility and feasibility of R.O.C. nuclear armament. I examine quantitative and qualitative indicators by reviewing relevant literature and documents and use identified trends to make plausible inferences on driver...

This study estimates the economic effects of nuclear weapons development efforts in Pakistan using synthetic control group methods. Pakistan started its nuclear weapons program in 1972 and conducted its first test in 1998. This paper focuses on the growth impacts during the 1973 to 1997 period,...

There are disturbing connections between two existential threats to our civilization, the increasing impact of global heating and biodiversity/ecosystem losses, and the threat posed by the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, many of them on hair-trigger alert. Taken together with the...

Banning nuclear weapons is an aspiration at the core of most disarmament and non-proliferation initiatives. It gained new momentum with the "Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons." The negotiation of that treaty, and its subsequent approval and entry into force, sheds light on the...

A close reading of Russia’s nuclear statements and actions during the first seven months of its war against Ukraine reveals a threefold approach. Moscow is walking a fine line between a well-crafted and successful deterrence strategy to prevent foreign military intervention; a more modest and...

While the world’s attention is focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine and the inten­sifying conflict between the US and China, the security situation on the Korean Peninsula has continued to deteriorate. North Korea is steadily advancing the expansion of its military capabilities and...

President Vladimir Putin escalated Russia's war on Ukraine in September 2022, announcing a partial mobilisation and repeating his threat to use nuclear weapons. But what really ended efforts to bring about peace - which had continued since the 24 February invasion - was the proclaimed annexation...

In the West, Russia’s nuclear deterrence strategy is often described as one of “escalate to deescalate”. The thinking goes that Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons at an early stage in a conflict in order to “deescalate” and terminate the confrontation quickly in its favour....

As diplomatic initiatives have thus far failed to achieve the objective of a complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), and given that a military solution is generally considered to be unfeasible, sanctions have become the central...

Chinese foreign policy is at the crossroads of regional interests and global power rivalry in the Middle East, especially in Iran. China's interests in the Middle East increasingly collide with those of the US, which has brought about a significant re-orientation of Chinese foreign policy on...

Originally scheduled for 2020, the 10th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had to be deferred four times. It was not until August 2022 that the 191 NPT states finally met. At least since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, observers had expected that...

At the end of 1983 Gallup polls showed that 52 percent of Americans thought that the probability of a world war in the next 10 years was 50% or higher; by 1989 the percentage had dropped to 29%. Fear of war of this pervasiveness is bound to have an effect on decisions about present versus...

Since the advent of the nuclear age, scholars have sought to provide rationales behind decisions to pursue, forgo, or relinquish nuclear weapons programs. Security, status, cost, technical capabilities, and domestic considerations have played central roles in explaining those choices. Classical...

This paper demonstrates that a survey-based measure of the perceived likelihood of nuclear war in a country is negatively correlated with the country's rate of net private saving, holding other determinants of saving constant. This result is established using date on twenty OECD countries for...

Does a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear energy among the US public relate to connections with nuclear weapons? The United States is projected to decline as the global leader in nuclear power production due to stagnation in the industry. Alongside this trend, US public skepticism of nuclear energy...

There are disturbing connections between two existential threats to our civilization, the increasing impact of global heating and biodiversity/ecosystem losses, and the threat posed by the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons, many of them on hair trigger alert. Taken together with the...

The probability of nuclear war is a major factor in many important policy questions, but it has gotten little scholarly attention. This paper presents a model for calculating the total probability of nuclear war. The model is based on 14 interrelated scenarios for how nuclear war can break out,...

There is no doubt that the NPT regime is far from being equal for all states involved. As the predominant hegemonic power since WWII, the United States plays a major role in deciding the fates of non-great power proliferators. This article tries to find the logical explanation of the phenomenon...

Nation 1 is seeking to join the nuclear club. Nation 2, its enemy, would like to prevent this, and has the potential to destroy 1's bomb-making facilities. It is uncertain whether 1 has a bomb. So are its intentions. 1 could be seeking to deter an attack. Alternatively, if no bomb is present, 1...

1. The dawn of the Nuclear Age -- 2. From basic physics to awesome weapons -- 3. Australia and the British bombs -- 4. The Australian Atomic Energy Commission -- 5. Ranger, the Fox Report and uranium exports -- 6. The politics of uranium in the 1970s and 1980s -- 7. Chernobyl, Climate Change and...

The administration of President Donald J. Trump has consistently used fear of China to undermine nearly five decades of bipartisan consensus on US–Russian nuclear arms control. The negative consequences of these actions may last far beyond the Trump presidency. If generations of agreement...

Is India backing out from its commitment to No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons (NWs)? It was a highly debated issue in newspapers and electronic media in August 2019. What triggered this question? In this chapter, I intend to, after explaining significance of NWs in Indian defence strategy...

This Comment draws together two seemingly independent legal developments, exposes how these developments are at cross-purposes with one another, and proposes a solution to avoid negative consequences. The first development is the Iran Nuclear Accord, which has recently entered the implementation...

This chapter begins by examining the questions, “What are America's interests, vis-à-vis North Korea?” and “What should America be willing to do to ensure the integrity of its interests?” Between 1950 and the late 1980s, the U.S. government predominately viewed North Korea as a direct...

The nuclear dimension of the crisis in the Korean peninsula has been compounded since the end of the Cold war, particularly since the North Korean regime announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003. The nuclear and ballistic programmes of the...

The nuclear dimension of the crisis in the Korean peninsula has been compounded since the end of the Cold war, particularly since the North Korean regime announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003. The nuclear and ballistic programmes of the...

We explore how investor attention paid to dangerous nuclear tests in an adjacent country influences financial market outcomes. To measure the attention paid to North Korean nuclear threats, we introduce a weekly Google search volume index for keywords on North Korean nuclear events. Using a...

Nuclear deterrence is central to international relations theory and practice. Most people assume that countries must possess nuclear weapons in order to reap deterrence benefits from their nuclear programs. Nuclear deterrence without bombs is seemingly impossible, since countries would be unable...

Reviews the prominent works in recent years on the relative merits of total nuclear disarmament, and argue that while nuclear weapons have not become irrelevant, they have become less relevant as a result of the processes of globalization

As a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its “hybrid war” in the Donbas, the present-day nonproliferation regime, with its exceptional treatment of the permanent Security Council members, could in the future, paradoxically, encourage rather than stem the construction or acquisition...

Large-scale nuclear war sends large quantities of smoke into the stratosphere, causing severe global environmental effects including surface temperature declines and increased ultraviolet radiation. The temperature decline and the full set of environmental effects are known as nuclear winter....

The Iran - US nuclear conflict drags on despite repeated attempts to resolve it. While the US views a nuclear-armed Iran as a serious threat to its strategic interests in the Middle East and as an existential threat to Israel, Iran sees the US as a global bully bent on destroying the Islamic...

The European reference network for critical infrastructure protection (Erncip) has a Thematic Group for Radiological and Nuclear Threats to Critical Infrastructure (RN thematic group). It produced, in its 2014 work programme, a report on radiological and nuclear information sharing between the...