Abstract
Russia’s offensive war against Ukraine, led by explicit and implicit nuclear threats, exposed many core international challenges in the nuclear realm. A powerful yet dangerous message is out: security assurances failed, international security instruments failed, while nuclear deterrence works. Russia’s coercive applications of nuclear threats, continued reliance on nuclear weapons by the whole P5 against the spirit and obligations according to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), as well as solid opposition to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as a legally binding disarmament mechanism incentivize proliferation and create additional risks. To avoid the complete erosion of the nonproliferation norm, expansion of the number of nuclear weapons possessors, and repeated invasive wars under nuclear threats, the international community should recognize the TPNW’s complementarity to the NPT and come to realistic and pragmatic gradual nuclear arms reductions.
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Notes
- 1.
There is also an option that its mandate reduces solely to minimally questionable humanitarian functions.
- 2.
Compellence is a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor to change his behavior through threats to use force or the actual use of limited force.
- 3.
For example, how Ukraine was pressured and incentivized to disarm both from the East and from the West.
- 4.
For example, India–Pakistan and India–China clashes demonstrate that it is possible indeed.
- 5.
A “broken arrow” is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that results in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the weapon (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, n.d.). For examples, please consult https://www.kas.de/en/web/multilateraler-dialog-wien/to-the-third-nuclear-age-a-timeline.
- 6.
In this context, deterrence means to prevent challenging the status quo, while compellence means to challenge the status quo.
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Hesse, V. (2023). U-Factor: Russia’s War on Ukraine and the Deterrence vs. Disarmament Discussion. Pragmatic Internationalism. In: Vicente, A., Sinovets, P., Theron, J. (eds) Russia’s War on Ukraine. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32221-1_12
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