Policy Brief No.133: Mapping The Emerging Strategic Stability And Arms Control Landscape

Image: Denis_kh/Shutterstock.com

This Policy Brief considers the suggestion that we are arguably on the cusp of a new “nuclear age” where we will need to rethink the rules of the nuclear game and how we prevent nuclear use. We are living in an era of transition and uncertainty in the global nuclear order where nuclear security and nuclear risks are changing and the ways, ends and means devised to manage the nuclear condition are under pressure. This is the result of a technological, geopolitical and normative change and transformation across the nuclear ecosystem. Taken together, these developments are calling into question the way that we manage nuclear threats, and particularly how we think about strategic stability and arms control. While there have been periods of unsettling, rapid, and potentially revolutionary change in the global nuclear order in the past, today appears to be different because the phenomenon is so wide-spread, multifaceted, and because the challenges go right to the heart of how we think about and conceptualise the nuclear condition.