Good morning,
“Nuclear deterrence is not working,” Rose Gottemoeller declared in our latest issue. It was once a common belief that possessing nuclear weapons could protect a country from direct attacks, but state and nonstate actors have grown “increasingly willing and able to hit nuclear powers with conventional weapons.” What makes Gottemoeller’s essay especially valuable is its discussion of how this development will transform nuclear strategy. The world’s nuclear powers have been looking to upgrade their arsenals—just this week, China tested a long-range missile launch from a submarine—and some nonnuclear states are thinking about getting the bomb. But the new deterrence logic “should give pause” to them all, Gottemoeller writes. “Rather than bringing the certainty of security, the bomb may simply invite new and disconcerting forms of peril.”
Until next week, |
