introduzione:
The Search for Strategic Stability
in a New Nuclear Era
Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
T he world has entered a new nuclear era whose characteristics and chal-
lenges differ markedly from those of the Cold War. No longer dominat-
ed by only two nuclear superpowers (even if Russia and the United States
still possess the lion’s share of nuclear weapons), its dangers are at least as great
as those during the Cold War, and made more so by a general unawareness of the
multiplying ways a nuclear war could begin. Five nuclear-armed states–China,
India, and Pakistan, in addition to Russia and the United States with its allies Brit-
ain and France–now set the contours of a multisided matrix, determine whether
and when nuclear weapons will be used, and bear the responsibility for deciding
whether and by what means the risk of nuclear war can be averted. Other states
with nuclear weapons, such as North Korea, further complicate the picture by cre-
ating additional pathways to nuclear conflict and generating U.S. responses that
stir Russian and Chinese opposition and counteractions. Israel’s nuclear arsenal
remains recessed and opaque. Beyond this changing geostrategic topography, ad-
vances in weapons technology and the opening of new frontiers, such as cyber
capabilities and artificial intelligence, make a shifting environment still more
complex.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, the fading fear of nuclear war led
to a general disregard of nuclear issues in key relationships, with the exception of
the security of nuclear holdings in former Soviet Republics, including Russia. Nu-
clear states and their defense planners continued to tend to their nuclear forces
while adjusting their role to a reality no longer centered on the prospect of a war
between two nuclear hegemons. Aided by the arms control agreements between
the superpowers in the last years of the Cold War and the first years after, E
by the positive hopes for a new and constructive relationship between the Unit-
ed States and Russia, the world’s nuclear states welcomed this less tense reality.
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© 2020 dall'Accademia Americana delle Arti & Sciences https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_e_01786
Attention in the United States shifted to threats associated with the nuclear ambi-
tions of countries like Iran and North Korea, and to the possibility of nuclear ter-
rorism. True, by the turn of the century, Russia and China had begun to empha-
size what each saw as elements of an ongoing U.S. nuclear threat, and the United
States now included both in the scenarios guiding its efforts to refine its extend-
ed deterrence commitments in Europe and Asia. But this recrudescence of con-
cern over nuclear trends largely flowed along channels of familiar thought rath-
er than turning national attention to the formidable new challenges of a multipo-
lar nuclear world.
T he evolution from what was fundamentally a two-sided order into to-
day’s more multifarious setting adds complexity and gives a new dimen-
sion to familiar challenges and dangers. We highlight five. Some chang-
es are a matter of multiplication. Originally limited to the United States and
the Soviet Union, competitive and potentially adversarial nuclear relationships
have expanded to include India and Pakistan, the United States and China, In-
dia and China, and in the likely future, the United States and North Korea. In
the twentieth century, the United States and Soviet Union developed elaborate
triads of nuclear weapons on land, at sea, and in the air. Now, while the United
States and Russia are modernizing and enhancing all three legs of their triads,
three new countries–China, India, and Pakistan–are fashioning triads of their
own. In several of these state pairings, the interactions are not simply bilateral,
but are affected by actions directed at third parties. For instance, Pakistan inter-
prets India’s nuclear posture toward China as a message meant for itself. China’s
positioning toward the United States evokes India’s apprehensions. When the
United States deploys missile defense systems to offset a North Korean nuclear
threat, China and Russia react to it as the camel’s nose under a tent eventually de-
signed for them. And the competition between offensive and defensive systems
reopened between the United States and Russia by the resumption of efforts to
develop ballistic missile defense systems is now mirrored by Chinese and Indian
moves in the same direction.
Secondo, technological advancement, a constant driver of change since the
dawn of the nuclear age, plays an increasingly diverse and mixed role in today’s
nuclear setting. Technologies that, as advocates argue, offer more effective deter-
rence by increasing the usability and therefore the credibility of nuclear weapons,
and increase the flexibility and confidence of those with their finger on the nuclear
trigger also present novel complications. They raise concern over the survivabili-
ty of nuclear forces, blur the line between conventional and nuclear war-fighting,
risk transforming space warfare into an integral part of nuclear warfare, E, in un
crisis, potentially decrease decision-making time. For instance, new convention-
ally armed hypersonic boost-glide and cruise missiles provide decision-makers
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149 (2) Spring 2020Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
with options for executing extended-range strategic strike missions short of nu-
clear use, but if they obscure from an opponent whether they are, Infatti, nuclear-
armed, they also threaten crisis stability. Smaller, lower-yield, and more-accurate
nuclear warheads make the threat of their use more credible, but that is because
they are also more usable, creating tension between effective deterrence and the
risk of lowering the threshold to nuclear war. A variety of remote sensing technol-
ogies promise improved information for decision-making in a nuclear crisis and,
perhaps, more effective defenses, but simultaneously may render even hard-to-
locate mobile missile systems vulnerable to attack. And while emerging cyber-
space surveillance capabilities may provide unparalleled real-time information
about others’ nuclear forces and activities, they may also accentuate others’ sense
of vulnerability to nuclear-, conventional-, or cyberattack.
Third, concepts key to understanding the original Cold War nuclear era are ei-
ther under stress or undergoing unpredictable change. Strategic deterrence and
its nuclear component take on more complex colorations when nuclear and non-
nuclear deterrence are integrated and the task–as has been acknowledged by both
NOI. and Russian planners–is to transform nuclear and conventional weapons
along with cyber and other hybrid tools into a “comprehensive deterrence” mosaic.
Internal to the concept of nuclear deterrence, some countries are again focusing
on “limited nuclear options” and thinking through their calibration, while oth-
ers are struggling with whether their minimum deterrence postures need to be
altered: either by developing counterforce options–that is, a capability and strat-
egy for disarming the other side of its nuclear weapons–or by considering a
“launch under attack” retaliatory option. Taken together, this whole array of chal-
lenges raises the question of whether there can be crisis stability in a cluttered, het-
erogenous nuclear environment and, if so, on what basis. Even the standard that
came to underpin the notion of crisis stability in the U.S.-Soviet relationship–mu-
tual assured destruction (MAD) based on each side’s ability to retaliate massively
after a nuclear first strike–seems to some either too narrow or too imperiled.
Fourth, the already-contested realm of nuclear norms–shared principles that
shape or have potential in the future to shape the behavior of nuclear actors–
is growing increasingly murky and unsettled. The “nuclear taboo”–that is, IL
questioned ethics of nuclear use–seems further weakened by the attention giv-
en to the development of weapons for limited, and therefore more plausible, nu-
clear use. Flatly rejected by the United States and Russia, the formal “no-first-use”
nuclear doctrines of China and India waver as India identifies exceptions to its
application and China weighs its feasibility in the face of threats it sees from the
stati Uniti. Nel frattempo, an international movement for a treaty banning nucle-
ar weapons has gathered momentum among the majority of countries that do not
have nuclear weapons, and its long-term effects in the parallel universe of public
opinion is unclear.
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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era
Finalmente, the dangers of the earlier nuclear era remain: some familiar, some
in altered form, and to them are added new ones. The risk of inadvertent nucle-
ar war remains, but now the pathways to it have multiplied across more regions
and relationships. The Cold War potential for misreading the other side’s nuclear
thinking and plans swells when it extends to a larger and diverse set of nuclear ac-
tori. The accumulated conceptual refinement and residual understanding on nu-
clear issues built between the United States and the Soviet Union were the result
of fifty years of strategic nuclear arms negotiations and dialogue; this shared un-
derstanding has no modern counterpart in any other bilateral or trilateral nucle-
ar relationship. Further, the risk of nuclear conflagration during the Cold War–
serious at key crisis moments–arose principally in a single relationship. It is now
present in several.
Particularly significant, the original Cold War nuclear competition was grad-
ually moderated by progress in bilateral strategic nuclear arms control arrange-
ments reached from 1969 A 2010. The new era has slowly dismantled this bilateral
arms control framework, with no clear prospect that it will be revived and extend-
ed. Even more remote is the possibility that a framework or frameworks encom-
passing other, let alone all, nuclear powers can be achieved.
The authors in this issue of Dædalus–a mix of security scholars, physicists,
statesmen, and political scientists–address these and other dimensions of this
new multipolar nuclear era. Their analyses are sensitive to the challenges and po-
tential dangers posed by a world with nine nuclear players, but also consider de-
velopments and measures within their respective spheres that could alter or miti-
gate these challenges and dangers. The result is not a comprehensive exploration
of all facets of a changing nuclear environment. Not all nuclear relationships or
the dynamics in all regions are addressed. Piuttosto, the focus is on salient aspects of
the change underway among the major nuclear powers, with a primary emphasis
on the United States, Russia, and China. The intent is to capture the essential fea-
tures of the nuclear world we have entered, and to stimulate among policy-makers
and the engaged public a recognition of the challenges that it poses. Other dimen-
sions, such as the effects of domestic politics on the choices countries are making,
receive limited treatment.
Integral to the creation of this issue of Dædalus has been the collaboration
among its authors. First in a planning session and then in an authors’ review con-
ference, they have been generous in responding to one another’s work, raising
questions, offering suggestions, and wrestling with areas of disagreement. Noi
are confident they would agree that, as a result, the analyses and arguments the
reader will encounter are sharper and more refined than when the exercise be-
gan. And the exercise broadly is one, we believe the authors would also agree, Quello
policy-makers in the major nuclear powers, their expert communities, and en-
gaged publics need to replicate.
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149 (2) Spring 2020Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
T he analysis is divided into three parts. The essays in part one explore how
an evolving world of multiple nuclear powers interacts within a larger in-
ternational setting that, pure, is in motion. A fractured and convulsive in-
ternational environment now includes multiple tension-laden nuclear pairings,
several of which are complicated by nuclear third parties. Steven Miller, in his es-
say “A Nuclear World Transformed: The Rise of Multilateral Disorder,” consid-
ers this altered landscape and assesses its larger implications. He notes that the
former overarching bilateral nuclear relationship now coexists with a series of re-
gional nuclear subsystems in South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, and pon-
ders the consequences. He assesses what it means that this new, multidimensional
nuclear order is “functionally unregulated,” that the gap between the core and
lesser nuclear powers has effectively shrunk, and that the kaleidoscope has not
stopped turning. It is a world, he argues, in which the key players must direct their
nuclear thinking no longer to one but several nuclear adversaries; in which the ac-
tion flows no longer between two actors, but in a daisy chain among three, even
four players; in which the sources of instability are no longer confined to the core
U.S.-Russian relationship, but have spread into the new regional nuclear subsys-
tems; and in which the former and now endangered bilateral arms control frame-
work from the earlier era no longer suffices, and an appropriate alternative re-
mains remote.
A topic this complex, freighted with consequences this great, unsurprisingly
stimulates controversy and dissonant perspectives both among experts and be-
tween countries. That is true of the essays in this collection, with none more so
than the three essays assessing the Russian, Chinese, and U.S. approaches to the
nuclear challenges these countries face. The authors note, Tuttavia, where per-
sonal judgments differ and make an effort to engage one another.
Anya Loukianova Fink and Olga Oliker, in their essay “Russia’s Nuclear Weap-
ons in a Multipolar World: Guarantors of Sovereignty, Great Power Status &
More,” focus on Russia as still one of the two key actors in this more complicated
nuclear setting. Starting from an overview of Russia’s assessment of the changing
geopolitical context and its implications for national security, they turn their at-
tention to the role Russian defense planners assign to nuclear weapons; their per-
spectives on how nuclear weapons fit into a broader framework of strategic de-
terrence; their views on Russia’s evolving nuclear doctrine, the first use of nucle-
ar weapons, and limited nuclear options; the feasibility of escalation control; E
the danger of inadvertent nuclear war. From this base, they shift to Russian per-
spectives on the nuclear programs and postures of the other key players, at the
center of which is the United States. How Russian analysts judge the 2018 NOI. Nu-
clear Posture Review, the nature of the threat they see to Russia’s nuclear deter-
rent, and the U.S. technological advances that most worry them are discussed and
evaluated. They conclude with thoughts about Russian perspectives on the factors
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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era
favoring or obstructing “global nuclear (dis)order” and Russian views on non-
proliferation and arms control.
Li Bin offers his take in “The Revival of Nuclear Competition in an Altered Geo-
political Context: A Chinese Perspective.” He shares his views first on how U.S. E
Russian positioning in the larger international setting has realigned the two coun-
tries (to a U.S. advantage and a Russian disadvantage), the power gap between the
United States and China that will remain, the obstacles to major powers pursuing
spheres of influence, and the fracturing of the nuclear universe as a growing number
of states enter the nuclear club. What this means for China constitutes his second
theme. He portrays a China whose economic and military power is growing rapid-
ly along with the global reach of its economic and security interests, but that none-
theless has neither the hope nor intent to match either Russia or the United States
as a nuclear superpower, and that is struggling to fashion a nuclear deterrent that it
trusts measures up to the challenge posed by the United States. In this context, he
explores those aspects of U.S. nuclear plans, potential new technologies, and strat-
egy that most concern defense planners in his country. He then returns to the ques-
tions he raised at the outset: What aspects of major nuclear actors’ approaches to
nuclear weapons are driven by security interests? What aspects are driven by a de-
sire to augment a country’s political influence? And where between the two pur-
poses can there be cooperation among states to enhance nuclear security, reduce
the risks of inadvertent nuclear war, and contain the spread of nuclear weapons?
The reader will doubtless be struck by how fundamentally different the Chinese
perspective conveyed by Li Bin is from, in particular, that of the United States, In-
cluding official U.S. assessments of the emerging challenge posed by China.
American responses to a changing nuclear security environment are described
by Brad Roberts in his essay “On Adapting Nuclear Deterrence to Reduce Nu-
clear Risk.” He begins with a review of the ways in which U.S. presidential ad-
ministrations since the end of the Cold War have sought to adapt deterrence to
new challenges and reduce nuclear dangers and risks. The net result over more
than two decades has been a decreased reliance on nuclear weapons in U.S. Di-
fense strategy, an increased reliance on non-nuclear means, including missile de-
fense and non-nuclear strike, and a tailoring of U.S. deterrence strategies to re-
flect a more multipolar world and the emergence of new technologies of strategic
consequence. The core of Roberts’s argument focuses on whether, in the current
security environment, the United States can continue altering its approach to de-
terrence in ways intended to further reduce nuclear risk. He argues against steps
favored by many, such as stepping down all U.S. and Russian intercontinental bal-
listic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) from
high-alert status, contending that the net effect would actually be to increase nu-
clear risk. He cautions against other changes that, in his view, would make nucle-
ar deterrence unreliable in dealing with problems for which it remains relevant,
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149 (2) Spring 2020Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
especially the problems of extended deterrence and assurance of U.S. allies. His
analysis of these problems helps bring into focus the stark differences of opinion
a Washington, Moscow, and Beijing over the actions and perceived intentions of
one or both of the other two in the nuclear realm.
P art two of the issue grapples with the second key dimension of a new mul-
tipolar nuclear world: the fate of efforts to control nuclear weapons and
manage the historically pivotal nuclear relationship between the United
States and Russia. Linton Brooks–in “The End of Arms Control?”–weighs the
all-too-realistic prospect that the last remaining strategic nuclear arms control
treaty between the United States and Russia–New START, signed by President
Obama and President Medvedev in 2009–will not survive, and considers the po-
tential consequences. He examines these from a number of angles: the impact on
strategic stability from the loss of transparency and predictability provided by the
treaty, the reduced constraint on pressures to keep step with Russia and the arms
race tension this generates, the damage done to the nuclear nonproliferation re-
gime by the seeming bad faith of Russia and the United States in their Article VI
commitment to nuclear disarmament, E, in the United States, the erosion of po-
litical support for the current nuclear modernization program absent a concom-
itant effort to pursue arms control. He focuses particular attention on what steps
the United States and Russia could take to mitigate the effects should New START
be lost, grouped into five categories: measures to enhance transparency and pre-
dictability in the nuclear programs of the United States and Russia, secondary ar-
eas of potential security cooperation that could affect positively the nuclear rela-
tionship, joint U.S.-Russian actions to improve the context for nonproliferation
efforts, informal bilateral understandings intended to preserve some of the trea-
ty’s benefit, and unilateral U.S. actions that can have an indirect stabilizing effect,
including leadership in pursuing strategic dialogue at various levels. Under each
heading, Brooks offers specific ideas: some familiar but neglected, some rarely
applied to the nuclear context, and others freshly designed for new challenges.
In particular, he offers suggestions to prevent inadvertent escalation, an area in
which treaty-based arms control has made only limited progress.
Arms control, in contrast to disarmament, should be thought of not as an end,
but as a means to an end: a tool. Jon Wolfsthal takes this perspective in his answer
to the question “Why Arms Control?” Wolfsthal argues that arms control can re-
duce the risks of nuclear use, crisis instability, and accidental or deliberate nucle-
ar conflict; control the scope and shape of nuclear arms racing; and generate trust
opening the way to security cooperation in other spheres. To support his argu-
ment, he points to several agreements reached between the United States and the
Soviet Union during the Cold War. IL 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, he notes,
employed a mutually accepted concept serving as the base for strategic stability
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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era
and impeded a potentially dangerous and costly offensive-defensive arms race.
IL 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty eliminated an entire class of nuclear
weapons: weapons that posed the threat of a hasty resort to nuclear use because
of the short warning they allowed decision-makers. The ill-fated 1993 START II
agreement would have blocked the development of multiple independently target-
able reentry vehicles (MIRVs), thus avoiding the heightened chance that in a cri-
sis either side possessing these high-value targets would feel pressure to “use ’em
or lose ’em.” While Wolfsthal makes the case for nuclear arms control, he is real-
istic about the scant likelihood of further or even sustained U.S.-Russian nuclear
arms control treaties. On the contrary, he laments the loss of a common set of
goals in pursuit of strategic stability: the prerequisite for achieving nuclear arms
control agreements. Here, he is in accord with Roberts, though where Roberts
places most of the blame on Russia, Wolfsthal assigns blame to both sides.
In “What History Can Teach,” James Cameron concludes this portion of the
analysis by assessing the role that arms control played during the Cold War nu-
clear era. He centers his argument on the tension between the idealized goals of
arms control held by its original theorists, like Thomas Schelling, and its actu-
al subordination to the geopolitical and national security needs felt by political
decision-makers at the time. He explores why, rather than giving priority to the
goal of strategic stability based on mutually invulnerable second-strike forces, IL
arms control enterprise initially focused more on containing the emergence of
further nuclear powers and shoring up U.S. extended-deterrence commitments.
And then for largely political rather than strategic reasons, how it, in parte, did set-
tle on negotiating constraints on elements in each side’s forces that threatened
strategic stability. Cameron finishes by reflecting on the extent to which the pros-
pects for arms control and its possible future role in a multidimensional world of
rising nuclear powers will echo the complex interplay of narrow nuclear calcu-
lations, larger geostrategic considerations, and political pressures characterizing
the last century.
I n the final section of the volume, the authors turn to three critical dimensions
of the challenge posed by the multipolar world. The continuous advance of
technology remains a critical dimension of the way the contemporary nuclear
setting is shape-shifting. Rather than catalog the specific technologies involved,
for which there is an existing literature, Christopher Chyba concentrates on devel-
oping a framework for understanding the impact of new technologies on the con-
cept of strategic stability. In his essay “New Technologies & Strategic Stability,"
he identifies several factors that determine how disruptive a new technology
might be: the pace and ease with which the technology–whether a weapons sys-
tem or an enabling technology–spreads among nuclear adversaries; the destruc-
tive capability of a technology and its implications for deterrence and defense;
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149 (2) Spring 2020Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
and its impact on decision-making time, the accuracy of information available
in the event, as well as the prospects for misjudgment and accidents. How each
factor favors or inhibits strategic stability, he notes, depends on a constellation
of more specific questions to which each factor gives rise. These need to be an-
swered in context, including whether, from a comparative perspective, a technol-
ogy’s effects qualitatively or quantitatively differ from those of existing technol-
ogy. Employing these metrics, Chyba then explores possible ways by which tech-
nological pathways destructive of strategic stability can be identified and possibly
mitigated. To illustrate, he focuses this framework on three new technologies:
hypersonic delivery vehicles, antisatellite weapons (ASAT) technologies, and ar-
tificial intelligence.
Among emerging technologies, none is more salient than the advance of
cyberattack capabilities, including the prospect of integrating cyber warfare into
the nuclear sphere. In his essay “Cyber Warfare & Inadvertent Escalation,” James
Acton makes the case that potential cyber threats to nuclear forces and their com-
mand, controllo, communication, and intelligence (C3I) systems create new escala-
tion pathways that are qualitatively different from escalation risks generated by
other sources. These pathways, he argues, result from six key differences between
sophisticated cyber capabilities and other technologies. Cyber espionage opens
a thoroughly more intrusive ability to monitor an opponent’s nuclear forces and
operations. Cyber tools offer an unprecedented means of manipulating an op-
ponent’s ability to accurately assess fast moving events. Cyber operations, how-
ever, generate what he characterizes as unanticipated collateral effects. Cyber-
attacks are easier to conceal and more difficult to trace than attacks by most oth-
er means. And in cyberspace, distinguishing between what may be offensive oper-
ations and what is simply espionage activity is particularly difficult, creating risks
of responding to cyber espionage as if it were an attack. He then draws a distinc-
tion between deliberate cyber interference and nondeliberate or inadvertent in-
terference (the result of misperception or accident), detailing the many reasons
one or the other could occur. While recognizing that cyber capabilities by their
nature are much more difficult to manage or limit through cooperative measures
than other capabilities, Acton concludes with suggestions for how states could re-
duce the unique hazards emerging from increased cyber capabilities.
One of the major trends in this new nuclear age is the growing momentum be-
hind the movement in favor of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, now extending
A 122 state signatories. Harald Müller and Carmen Wunderlich, in their contri-
bution “Nuclear Disarmament without the Nuclear-Weapon States: The Nuclear
Weapon Ban Treaty,” examine this phenomenon as a new normative dimension of
efforts to come to terms with the nuclear challenge. They cast the analysis in the
broader context of four sets of norms that have figured in the management of nu-
clear weapons: nonproliferation, disarmament, constraints on use, and political
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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era
restraint. They begin with an exploration of the fundamental nature of such norms:
their character, their potential effects, and the countervailing impulses they gen-
erate. They next trace the impact that each set of norms has had or could have on
the behavior of nuclear actors, followed by the kinds of and reasons for resistance
to them. They argue that norms do not stand alone but often form a network of in-
tended or unintended interacting effects. At the heart of the agitation surround-
ing the ban treaty, Tuttavia, is another dichotomy between ends that meet the con-
cerns of a global community, and means that often reflect the concerns of particu-
lar states. Müller and Wunderlich, after weighing the potential impact of the ban
treaty, go on to consider what might be done to find common approaches to reduce
nuclear dangers that would also soften the divide that separates nuclear-weapon-
possessing states from the majority of non-nuclear-weapon states.
T he section concludes with two authors tasked with imagining a future
without treaty-based arms control and what paths instead could manage
an increasingly complex, multidimensional nuclear world. James Timbie,
in “A Way Forward,” attacks the challenge by setting out what nuclear-weapon
states could do, short of treaties, to enhance the resilience of their societies and
military establishments, to strengthen deterrence, and to reduce the risk of unin-
tended conflict through cooperative and unilateral measures. In the first category,
he suggests increasing the resilience of space-enabled communications and sur-
veillance and navigations systems, as well as protecting nuclear forces and their
command and control systems from cyberattack. On the deterrence front, he ex-
plores areas–for example, cyber threats and threats to space assets–in which ex-
isting theory is inadequate or requires rethinking. The majority of his essay de-
velops at length a wide spectrum of cooperative measures along multiple dimen-
sions that would add safety and stability to an evolving and uncertain nuclear
mondo. These start with a variety of unilateral and bilateral commitments affect-
ing strategic and nonstrategic nuclear forces, extend to steps preserving transpar-
ency and protecting early warning, and conclude with a rich array of measures to
better manage the risks associated with missile defense, spazio, cyber, and long-
range conventional systems. He argues that cooperation on such a broad package
of measures can be negotiated given a serious effort, since it could address the full
range of concerns expressed by the United States and Russia. His final recommen-
dations are for improved mechanisms of communication between nuclear adver-
saries; a readiness to think longer and harder about the ramifications of new tech-
nologies, such as artificial intelligence, when applied to the nuclear realm; and an
emphasis on research and education to prepare policy-makers for the complex de-
cisions that they will need to make “in uncharted territory.”
In her essay “Life beyond Arms Control: Moving toward a Global Regime
of Nuclear Restraint & Responsibility,” Nina Tannenwald takes a somewhat
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149 (2) Spring 2020Robert Legvold & Christopher F. Chyba
different approach to ways and means to reduce nuclear dangers outside the
frame of treaty-based reductions. What steps–formal or informal, unilateral,
bilateral, or multilateral–might leaders consider? E, in the absence of arms
controllo, what norms might be substituted? She argues that nuclear-armed
states should move toward a global regime characterized by the norm of nuclear
“restraint and responsibility.” Its objective would be the same as that of tradi-
tional arms control: to reduce threats, provide predictability, foster transparen-
cy, avoid nuclear use, and strengthen nuclear restraint. How could this global re-
gime be pursued, other than through legally binding, treaty-based efforts? She
finds lessons in past nonbinding political agreements, informal arrangements,
and reciprocal unilateral commitments arranged between the Soviet Union and
the United States. Some were simply parallel or joint declaratory initiatives, oth-
ers coordinated unilateral actions, and still others forms of practical cooperation,
such as the 1987 Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers Agreement. Using these exam-
ples, she proposes a range of ideas along the same lines that are nonetheless adapt-
ed to a nuclear world that differs considerably from its predecessor. Key to her
analysis, she argues that in the present political environment, the pressures gener-
ated by civil society and popular movements will be essential if the more difficult
recommendations are to stand a chance.
In the conclusion, we draw from the essays’ major themes and highlight the
central points made by the authors. We also identify areas of common agreement
among them as well as points of divergence. E, in a last step, we draw from each
perspective in making our own recommendations for managing the challenges of
this complex and unfamiliar multipolar nuclear world.
about the authors
Robert Legvold, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2005, is the Marshall D.
Shulman Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. He is Cochair of the “Meet-
ing the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age” project at the American Academy, for
which he wrote the research papers “Contemplating Strategic Stability in a Multi-
polar Nuclear World” (2019) and “Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age:
Nuclear Weapons in a Changing Global Order” (with Steven E. Miller and Law-
rence Freedman, 2019). His most recent book is Return to Cold War (2016).
Christopher F. Chyba is Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International
Affairs at Princeton University. He is Cochair of the “Meeting the Challenges of the
New Nuclear Age” project at the American Academy, and has previously served on
the staffs of the National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technol-
ogy Policy, and as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
Tecnologia.
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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Search for Strategic Stability in a New Nuclear Era
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