November 10, 2022
Welcome to the New Age of Nukes
Nuclear weapons are back, and in a disturbingly visceral way. Vladimir Putin’s saber-rattling—“this is not a bluff” he said, warning of nuclear use in Ukraine—has sparked concern across multiple continents. The Biden administration is publicly warning that “catastrophic consequences for Russia” would follow any use of nuclear arms, and Biden himself has said that the explosion of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine could end in Armageddon. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that “the international community should … jointly oppose the use or threats to use nuclear weapons,” despite China’s “no limits” partnership with Russia. The world’s most destructive weapons are suddenly back on the minds of the world’s most powerful leaders.
It was not supposed to be this way. A little more than a decade ago, President Barack Obama articulated an expansive vision of a nuclear-free world. His administration’s Nuclear Security Summits, held from 2010 to 2016, aimed to increase the security of nuclear materials and decrease the chances of their use, by governments or terrorist organizations. His successor Donald Trump pursued an expansion of U.S. nuclear capabilities but employed high-stakes diplomacy aimed at inducing North Korea to give up its own. In 2020, candidate Joe Biden pledged to reduce the role nuclear weapons play in the country’s national security policy, reserving them for the sole purpose of deterring a nuclear attack.
The paradox of nuclear weapons is that they work when not used: They can and do deter aggression.
Nuclear weapons never went away, of course, and have remained a critical element of national security policymaking for decades. But as Cold War-era anxieties faded from memory, so too did the fear of nuclear weapons retreat from the public mind. Today the chances of nuclear use remain low, but they are higher than before the Russian invasion, and possibly higher than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. That is dangerous. The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons in combat has remained in place since 1945 for a very good reason: Their destructive power, and the potential for escalatory effects, remains unparalleled. But the return of nuclear arms as a potentially major instrument of foreign policy means that decisions made now may well shape our world for decades to come.
Read the full article from Foreign Policy.
More from CNAS
-
Colombia Tariffs, Banning Chinese Drones, and Stacie Pettyjohn on Drone Warfare
Podcast
Emily and Geoff play a quick round of Tariff Tarot to dissect Trump’s tariff threats on Colombia last weekend. Then they dig in to the bipartisan debate over banning various c...
By Emily Kilcrease, Stacie Pettyjohn & Geoffrey Gertz
-
Don’t Talk About the War
Commentary
Confronting aggressors and getting them to the negotiation table requires both carrots and sticks—in other words, diplomacy and military power....
By Franz-Stefan Gady
-
Sharper: Trump's First 100 Days
Commentary
Donald Trump takes office in a complex and volatile global environment. Rising tensions with China, the continued war in Ukraine, and instability in the Middle East all pose s...
By Charles Horn
-
Build a High-Low Mix to Enhance America’s Warfighting Edge and Deter China
Commentary
The Trump administration can take immediate actions to improve U.S. military capability, capacity, and warfighting to deter China and reverse negative trends in military power...
By Stacie Pettyjohn, Carlton Haelig, Becca Wasser & Josh Wallin
