Changing the discourse on nuclear weapons: The humanitarian initiative

2015 ◽  
Vol 97 (899) ◽  
pp. 711-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Minor

AbstractThis article examines the progress of the humanitarian initiative to reframe the nuclear weapons discourse internationally. The initiative seeks to shift debate away from theories of strategic stability and towards a focus on the impact of nuclear weapons themselves. This effort has now gathered significant support at an international level, and its implications are increasingly recognized by both nuclear-armed and non-nuclear-armed States. The initiative has been underpinned by the deliberate logic of humanitarian disarmament. A treaty banning nuclear weapons, around which momentum is gathering, would be an achievable, legally coherent and logical next step developing from the initiative.

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Nataliya Romashkina ◽  
◽  
Dmitry Stefanovich ◽  

Purpose: To identify the current strategic stability problems associated with the destructive impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the basis of analysis and systematization according to various parameters of cyber risks and threats to international security and global stability that can reduce the level of strategic stability and to develop relevant proposals that can lay the foundation for creation of a deterrence policy in the ICT domain. Research method: analysis, synthesis and scientific forecasting, expert assessment, comparative analysis of the cyber domain within the framework of a systematic approach. Result: the article presents analysis and systematization risks and threats to international security and global stability emanating from the cyber sphere according to various parameters. The article proves the impact of the accelerated development of information and communication technologies (ICT) on strategic stability, and that ensuring the cybersecurity of nuclear weapons requires special attention. The global problems of strategic stability at the current stage are posed and the conclusions are that the protection of strategic weapons, early warning systems, air and missile defense, communications, command and control over nuclear weapons from harmful ICTs are the pressing global problems of our time. Specific scenarios of cyber threats leading to a decrease in the level of strategic stability below the necessary and sufficient level have been elaborated, and proposals have been formulated to minimize the corresponding escalation threats. Proposed measures can become a basis for a deterrence policy in the ICT domain, as it was done during the period of bipolarity with regard to nuclear weapons, and become the foundation for broader international agreements on arms control in the so-called nuclear information space of the future.


2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Schömann ◽  
André Sobzack ◽  
Eckhard Voss ◽  
Peter Wilke

This article describes the results of a major study on the impact of codes of conduct and international framework agreements (IFAs) on social regulation at company level. The limits of labour legislation at the national, as well as the international, level provide a strong motivation for both multinationals and trade unions to negotiate and sign IFAs. IFAs offer a way to regulate the social consequences of globalisation and to secure adherence to labour and social standards. They thus form part of the growing political debate on the international working and production standards of private actors. Examination of the negotiation process, the motivations of the parties, and the content of the agreements and implementation measures provides valuable insights into the impact of IFAs on multinationals' behaviour in respect of social dialogue and core labour standards. Finally, the article highlights the influence of such agreements on public policy-making and the limits of private self-regulation at European and international level, addressing the growing and controversial debate on the need for supranational structures to regulate labour standards and industrial relations.


1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau

The nuclear age has ushered in a novel period of history, as distinct from the age that preceded it as the modern age has been from the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages have been from antiquity. Yet while our conditions of life have drastically changed under the impact of the nuclear age, we still live in our thoughts and act through our institutions in an age that has passed. There exists, then, a gap between what we think about our social, political, and philosophic problems and the objective conditions which the nuclear age has created.This contradiction between our modes of thought and action, belonging to an age that has passed, and the objective conditions of our existence has engendered four paradoxes in our nuclear strategy: the commitment to the use of force, nuclear or otherwise, paralyzed by the fear of having to use it; the search for a nuclear strategy which would avoid the predictable consequences of nuclear war; the pursuit of a nuclear armaments race joined with attempts to stop it; the pursuit of an alliance policy which the availability of nuclear weapons has rendered obsolete. All these paradoxes result from the contrast between traditional attitudes and the possibility of nuclear war and from the fruitless attempts to reconcile the two.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis

A rational strategy for the employment of nuclear weapons is a contradiction in terms. The enormity of the destruction, either executed or threatened, severs the nexus of proportionality between means and ends which used to characterize the threat and use of force. This does not mean, however, that all nuclear strategies are equally irrational. The nuclear policy of the Reagan administration—which is essentially the same as that of the Carter administration and which has its roots in developments initiated by even earlier administrations—is particularly ill-formed. As I will demonstrate, the basic reason for this is that the strategy rests on a profound underestimation of the impact of nuclear weapons on military strategy and attempts to understand the current situation with intellectual tools appropriate only in the pre-nuclear era.American strategy for the past several years—the “countervailing strategy”—has been based on the assumption that what is crucial is the ability of American and allied military forces to deny the Soviets military advantage from any aggression they might contemplate. The U.S. must be prepared to meet and block any level of Soviet force. The strategy is then one of counterforce—blocking and seeking to destroy Soviet military power. The goal is deterrence. Although it is concerned with how the U.S. would fight many different kinds of wars, both nuclear and non-nuclear, it is not correct to claim that the strategy seeks to engage in wars rather than deter them.


Author(s):  
Kathleen M Carley ◽  
Geoffrey P Morgan ◽  
Michael J Lanham

We describe a multi-country, multi-stakeholder model for the accrual and use of nuclear weapons and illustrate the model’s value for addressing nuclear weapon proliferation issues using a historic Pacific Rim scenario. We instantiate the agent-based dynamic network model for information and belief diffusion using data from subject matter experts and data mined from open source news documents. We present the techniques that supported model instantiation. A key feature of this model and these techniques is enabling rapid model re-use through the ability to instantiate at two levels: generically and for specific cases. We demonstrate these generic and specific cases using a scenario regarding North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons and the resulting impact on the Pacific Rim circa 2014, that is, prior to the fourth and fifth nuclear weapons tests by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. A key feature of this model is that it uses two levels of network interaction, the country level and the stakeholder level, thus supporting the inclusion of non-state actors and the assessment of complex scenarios. Using this model, we conducted virtual experiments in which we assessed the impact of alternative courses of action on the overall force posture and desire to develop and use nuclear weapons.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
FG Rocha ◽  
RF Sabino ◽  
Alejandro Frery

© 2020, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary. This work deals with the journals in the area of Education classified in the last available Brazilian Qualis database, period 2013–2016, seeking to analyze the alignment of the strata to international bibliometric criteria. The impact of a journal implies its internationalization, which is a standard adopted worldwide. This subject has been gaining prominence in higher education and research institutions, which began to consider the production of their researchers in indexed journals.Considering the national and international relevance and the fact that they aggregate publications from various fields, we used data from the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The results show that belonging to the most relevant international bases is not among the Capes requirements for the classification of journals, and also that there is a relatively low number of journals with a real impact for scientific dissemination in the field of Education. The conclusions indicate that, in the current scenario, researchers in this field will continue to publish their work in journals with little or no impact, making the output of Brazilian research remain without prominence at an international level. To ensure that the Qualis stratification in the field of Education does not distance itself from the international context, it is necessary to adopt criteria that privilege factors such as adherence to WoS and Scopus, especially for the A1 and A2 journals, considered of highest quality.


Author(s):  
Tauqeer Hussain Sargana ◽  
Mujahid Hussain

The ‘Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation’ has casted negative shadows over Pakistan’s security with that of strategic stability in South Asia. This paper makes the point that the emergence of strategic partnership between Indian and US has served bilateral objectives while impacting deeply on the geo-political landscape of Pakistan’s strategic interests. The fundamental strategic objective of Pakistan has been to resist Indian hegemonic role in the region. To achieve such a balance the country has not only joined security alliances in the past but had to detonate its nuclear weapons in reaction to Indian attempt to outburst the ‘balance of power’. Due to Indo-US nuclear cooperation, suddenly Pakistan came under stress as it allowed India to feed its civilian reactors by importing fuel from international market with that of using domestic fuel in its military reactors. This not only allowed India to fix energy shortfall but also sustain its nuclear weapons program. Pakistan contrary to that was set-aside and denied the similar treatment as of India. Therefore, this paper has made an attempt to objectively analyze the premises of Indo-US nuclear cooperation and highlight security implications for Pakistan. The study is deductive in nature and has used mixed method approach with qualitative research methodology.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
Andrés Escobar-Espinoza ◽  
Nicolas López-Verhelst

One important aspect in editorial management nowadays is the surge of scientific metrics and bibliometrics to measure the impact of scientific activity in certain fields of knowledge by countries, institutions, research groups and individuals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 1113-1133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tino Berger ◽  
Sibylle Grabert

We identify international output and inflation uncertainty and analyze their impact on individual countries' macroeconomic performance. Output and inflation uncertainty on an international level is measured through the conditional variances of common factors in inflation and output growth, estimated from a bivariate dynamic factor model with GARCH errors. The impact of international and country-specific uncertainty is analyzed by including the conditional variances as regressors. We find increases in uncertainty during the first and second oil crisis, the 1980s and 1990s recessions as well as the recent Great Recession to be confined to the international level. The effect of international uncertainty results to be highly significant and unambiguously negative on countries' output growth and inflation rates whereas the impact of country-specific uncertainty is very mixed.


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