scholarly journals Proliferation and the Logic of the Nuclear Market

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 88-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliza Gheorghe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Market Share ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Global Distribution ◽  
Nuclear Technology ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Distribution Of Power

The evolution of the nuclear market explains why there are only nine members of the nuclear club, not twenty-five or more, as some analysts predicted. In the absence of a supplier cartel that can regulate nuclear transfers, the more suppliers there are, the more intense their competition will be, as they vie for market share. This commercial rivalry makes it easier for nuclear technology to spread, because buyers can play suppliers off against each other. The ensuing transfers help countries either acquire nuclear weapons or become hedgers. The great powers (China, Russia, and the United States) seek to thwart proliferation by limiting transfers and putting safeguards on potentially dangerous nuclear technologies. Their success depends on two structural factors: the global distribution of power and the intensity of the security rivalry among them. Thwarters are most likely to stem proliferation when the system is unipolar and least likely when it is multipolar. In bipolarity, their prospects fall somewhere in between. In addition, the more intense the rivalry among the great powers in bipolarity and multipolarity, the less effective they will be at curbing proliferation. Given the potential for intense security rivalry among today's great powers, the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity does not portend well for checking proliferation.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Modernization

There are no laws in history. Realists, liberals, and others are both right and wrong. Although no one can be certain that military incidents may not happen, for the foreseeable future China and the United States are unlikely to favor major war. They have cooperated well for almost four decades now. China is likely to continue to focus on its economic modernization. It has far to go to measure up to the West. The American-Chinese economies are still complementary. A conflict with the United States or even with China’s neighbors would have damaging repercussions for China’s economic goals. The United States is so strong that it would make little sense for China to take it on militarily. There are also other deterrents against war, from nuclear weapons to emerging norms about international relations. It is anybody’s guess what will happen after the next few decades. History indicates anything is possible.

The Era of Distrust

2021 ◽  
pp. 217-248
Author(s):  
Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Developing World ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Nuclear Technology ◽  
Government Interests

By the mid-1980s, the state-sponsored positive framing of the peaceful atom served a range of government interests. It enabled the United States and European states to use nuclear power as leverage against developing countries in a time when petroleum seemed to swing the pendulum of global resource dominance toward several so-called backward countries. It was useful to countries trying to prop up the legitimacy of their nuclear weapons programs, while secretly working on bombs, and it provided environmental arguments to those whose priority was actually energy security. The peaceful atom’s promise of plenty helped to maintain a veneer of credibility for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, at a time when the IAEA seemed to have become the treaty’s policing instrument. The more the United States relied on the IAEA, the more it recommitted to making promises of peaceful nuclear technology, especially to the developing world.

scholarly journals North Korea’s Evolving Cyber Strategies: Continuity and Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Michael Raska
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Core ◽  
The North

AbstractPyongyang sees the Korean Peninsula as entrenched in a geopolitical deadlock among great powers, with the United States continuing to employ what the North Korean regime sees as a “hostile policy” detrimental to its survival, its ability to shape relevant events, and the country’s political and economic development. While the core security concerns of South Korea and the United States are North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities, the alliance must increasingly also prioritize the continuous development of North Korea’s cyber capabilities, both offensive and defensive. North Korea aims to gain strategic advantage by pursuing cost-effective, asymmetric military capabilities, including cyber strategies, to gather intelligence, coerce its rivals, financially extort others, and otherwise exert influence in ways that are resistant to traditional deterrence and defense countermeasures. Seoul and Washington need a full-spectrum military readiness posture against the full range of potential North Korean provocations, while European democracies need to strengthen their cyber readiness posture to effectively track and counter North Korea’s evolving global cyber operations.

The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Layne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
New Distribution

The conventional wisdom among U.S. grand strategists is that U.S. hegemony is exceptional—that the United States need not worry about other states engaging in counterhegemonic balancing against it. The case for U.S. hegemonic exceptionalism, however, is weak. Contrary to the predictions of Waltzian balance of power theorists, no new great powers have emerged since the end of the Cold War to restore equilibrium to the balance of power by engaging in hard balancing against the United States—that is, at least, not yet. This has led primacists to conclude that there has been no balancing against the United States. Here, however, they conflate the absence of a new distribution of power in the international political system with the absence of balancing behavior by the major second-tier powers. Moreover, the primacists' focus on the failure of new great powers to emerge, and the absence of traditional “hard” (i.e., military) counterbalancing, distracts attention from other forms of counterbalancing—notably “leash-slipping”—by major second-tier states that ultimately could lead to the same result: the end of unipolarity. Because unipolarity is the foundation of U.S. hegemony, if it ends, so too will U.S. primacy.

scholarly journals Russia's Nuclear Weapons in a Multipolar World: Guarantors of Sovereignty, Great Power Status & More

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Anya Loukianova Fink ◽  
Olga Oliker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
International Security ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Strategic Stability

At a time of technological and political change in the international security environment, Russia continues to view nuclear weapons as guarantors of peace and security among great powers. Nuclear weapons also assure Russia's own great-power status and mitigate uncertainty in an emerging multipolar order. In a world where the United States pursues improved missile defense capabilities and appears to reject mutual vulnerability as a stabilizing factor, Moscow views its modernized nuclear arsenal as essential to deter Washington from a possible attack on Russia or coercive threats against it. Some elites in Russia would like to preserve existing arms control arrangements or negotiate new ones to mitigate a weakening infrastructure of strategic stability. At the same time, however, they seem skeptical that the United States is willing to compromise or deal with Russia as an equal. Meanwhile, multilateral arms control appears to be too complex a proposition for the time being.

Nuclear Escalation Strategies and Perceptions: The United States, the Russian Federation, and China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Wilfred
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Risk Scenarios ◽  
The Russian Federation

This study is the first in a series that profiles different “friction points” among nuclear-armed and nuclear-allied States, examining issues of contention in their relations that can spark potential conflict and nuclear escalation. It considers the multipolar dynamics between the United States, the Russian Federation, and China, and examines how fundamental mistrust among the three filters into their readings of each other’s nuclear strategies, with the potential to have an impact on escalatory risk scenarios. It then outlines a series of recommendations for the ‘great powers’ to bridge strategic perception gaps and reduce relevant risks. Part of UNIDIR’s ongoing research on nuclear risk reduction, this study is intended to feed into the dialogue on taking forward risk reduction – and on the development of practical and feasible baskets of measures that can close pathways to use of nuclear weapons.

Great Powers and Atomic Bombs are “Paper Tigers”

1965 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 55-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph L. Powell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Explosion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Air Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist China

In terms of Western political science or military doctrine it seems somewhat irrational that the leaders of Communist China should refer to great powers as “paper tigers.” It appears even more illogical that they should call atomic bombs “paper tigers,” especially when they themselves place the highest priority on the development of a nuclear capability. Yet, since the first Chinese nuclear explosion on October 16, 1964, the official Communist Press has again referred to the United States, Great Britain and the “revisionists” (both Khrushchev and the present leaders of the Soviet Union) as “paper tigers.” This same metaphor has also been applied to “imperialism” and “all reactionaries,” as well as to nuclear weapons, air-power and sea-power.

The Unquiet Frontier

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub J. Grygiel ◽  
A. Wess Mitchell ◽  
Jakub J. Grygiel ◽  
A. Wess Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Global Order ◽  
American Power ◽  
Alliance Networks ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Critical Regions

From the Baltic to the South China Sea, newly assertive authoritarian states sense an opportunity to resurrect old empires or build new ones at America's expense. Hoping that U.S. decline is real, nations such as Russia, Iran, and China are testing Washington's resolve by targeting vulnerable allies at the frontiers of American power. This book explains why the United States needs a new grand strategy that uses strong frontier alliance networks to raise the costs of military aggression in the new century. The book describes the aggressive methods which rival nations are using to test American power in strategically critical regions throughout the world. It shows how rising and revisionist powers are putting pressure on our frontier allies—countries like Poland, Israel, and Taiwan—to gauge our leaders' commitment to upholding the American-led global order. To cope with these dangerous dynamics, nervous U.S. allies are diversifying their national-security “menu cards” by beefing up their militaries or even aligning with their aggressors. The book reveals how numerous would-be great powers use an arsenal of asymmetric techniques to probe and sift American strength across several regions simultaneously, and how rivals and allies alike are learning from America's management of increasingly interlinked global crises to hone effective strategies of their own. The book demonstrates why the United States must strengthen the international order that has provided greater benefits to the world than any in history.

Iraq's Chemical Weapons Legacy: What Others Might Learn from Saddam

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Richard L. Russell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Weapon ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Nation States

Iraq's experience with chemical weapons provides ample lessons for nation-states looking to redress their conventional military shortcomings. Nation-states are likely to learn from Saddam that chemical weapons are useful for waging war against nation-states ill-prepared to fight on a chemical battlefield as well as against internal insurgents and rebellious civilians. Most significantly, nation-states studying Iraq's experience are likely to conclude that chemical weapons are not a “poor man's nuclear weapon” and that only nuclear weapons can deter potential adversaries including the United States.

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