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Alive and Kicking: The Greatly Exaggerated Death of Nuclear Deterrence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Extract

Despite the radical changes in the global political and military situation in the past ten years, U.S. nuclear forces retain the same mission and the same basic structure they had when Moscow was the seat of the “Evil Empire.” As it has for decades, the United States maintains thousands of nuclear warheads on a variety of land-, sea- and air-based platforms. These forces are on a level of high alert, ready to launch within minutes of an attack warning. It is a distinctly Cold War footing in a world that has long since come in from the cold of U.S.–Soviet antagonism.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2001

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References

1 A distinction should be drawn between the stability of the NPT regime and its success. Saying the NPT is not in imminent danger does not mean it has been completely successful—clearly, it has not. India, Israel, and Pakistan, which never joined the NPT, have nuclear weapons, and Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, which did join, are either trying to develop them or have attempted to do so in the relatively recent past. However, the efforts of each of these six nations substantially predates the current arms control stalemate. India, for example, first tested a nuclear device in 1974. The point is that none of these states have developed nuclear weapons because of increasing frustration with the slow pace of disarmament or perceived contradictions in U.S. security policy in the post—Cold War worldGoogle Scholar.

2 For an excellent study of why states choose to give up nuclear weapons or eschew developing them in the first place, see Reiss, Mitchell, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995Google Scholar).