Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age

Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear Age sought to articulate a new framework for governing relations among the nine existing nuclear weapons states. The work began with the recognition that the foundations and principles that came to define the nuclear order after World War II and throughout the Cold War had eroded dramatically, bringing the world closer to a possible use of nuclear weapons in the near future. Several factors are responsible for this dangerous situation:

• The rise of new nuclear weapons states, the weakening of multilateral institutions, the development of non-nuclear strategic weapons, and the awakening of an era of great power competition are certainly the most important.
• New security challenges like the ones posed by non-state actors demand innovative solutions.
• The consensus around the norms and values that have traditionally underpinned relations among nuclear weapons states and between nuclear weapons states and the rest of the international community continues to deteriorate.

These multifaceted challenges demand a multilateral and interdisciplinary approach that takes into account technological developments in the nuclear field and related areas such as in the cyber, artificial intelligence, and space domains, together with the changing geopolitical landscape.

To highlight the increasing risks of nuclear use in the twenty-first century and to propose steps for reducing that likelihood, cochairs Christopher Chyba and Robert Legvold guest edited the Spring 2020 issue of Dædalus, Meeting the Challenges of a New Nuclear Age. The volume features fourteen essays authored by a diverse group of security scholars, physicists, statesmen, and political scientists, writing sharing about the dangerous multipolar nuclear order that emerged from the end of the Cold War.

The overall initiative and the Dædalus volume were intended to capture the essential features 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. 

Scott Sagan and Vipin Narang, cochaired the subsequent phase of work, to investigate deterrence and defense implications facing small nuclear force-countries and potential proliferators, with an emphasis on potentially-destabilizing regional and sub-regional nuclear dynamics.