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This chapter lays out the volume's main arguments in brief. Contrary to the usual focus on superpowers and Cold War nuclear competition, the chapter proposes a different dynamic. It asks what strategies and choices certain states will make about their nuclear weapons and how those decisions about nuclear strategy can affect international relations and conflict. Examining the decisions that regional nuclear powers—such as China, India, Pakistan, Israel, France, and South Africa—have made about their arsenals thus far, and their resulting behavior, helps address these questions. Regional nuclear powers, for systematic and predictable reasons, choose clearly identifiable nuclear postures and these postures matter to a regional power's ability to deter conflict. These countries' nuclear choices, therefore, provide valuable insight into the crucial challenges of contemporary nuclear proliferation and international stability.

This chapter describes the process whereby the Federal Republic of Germany formally gained its sovereignty and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance. This provides a framework of debate about nuclear weapons policy. This chapter also gives a discussion of early history of NATO nuclear strategy, the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (including West Germany), and Britain's search for an independent nuclear deterrent. These years were the influential years of the NATO Alliance. Moreover, Britain exerted a lot of effort to include United States and Canada in a Western defence pact and the United States only signed the treaty establishing NATO on 4 April 1949.

This chapter assesses whether academic social science had any influence on nuclear strategy. Social science did have important effects on strategy. At times this was direct. More often it was indirect, working not through the formulation of doctrine or the drafting of operational plans, but rather by providing the intellectual frameworks and mental road maps that shaped senior policymakers' and presidents' thinking about the utility of nuclear weapons during confrontations with other nuclear states. Academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling reputedly exercised such influence that the period between 1945 and 1961 is regarded as the “golden age” of academic national security studies. However, scientific strategists reached a dead end by privileging internal disciplinary concerns like logical rigor and the use of sophisticated methods over addressing concrete policy problems.

All other things being equal, a CO2 price thus tends to decrease the cost of nuclear power compared to fossil fuel energy. Would the widespread introduction of carbon pricing then justify the use of nuclear power, in the name of the transition to a low-carbon energy system? The authors argue that the externalities of nuclear power also need to be priced in: though a non-CO2-emitting primary energy source, it nonetheless gives rise to many other questions, as is shown by the French example. 

This chapter identifies several of the major dynamics in India's nuclear policy and politics that emerged during the Shastri-Gandhi years. It discusses the growing strength of the nuclear debate within the government, and studies the changes that affected the orientation and context of the country's atomic and disarmament policies. It then demonstrates the structure of India's nuclear posture and domestic nuclear constituencies during the period, along with an overview of its nuclear activities. The next section discusses the regional and international aspects of the changes in Indian nuclear dynamics. The final part of the chapter takes a look at the events involving the creation of a new nuclear strategy and the development of India's attitude towards the US-USSR efforts to form a non-proliferation regime.

This chapter examines the evolution of nuclear strategy, with an emphasis on multiple options and civilian control of the execution of war plans. Truman and Eisenhower held different beliefs on the role of atomic weapons in national security. Still, Truman's NSC-20 and NSC-68 left comfortable niches for air-atomic strategy, while Eisenhower's NSC-162/2 created an environment in which it flourished. Each administration entered office with distinct views on the role of nuclear weapons and gave the Air Force support ranging from tepid to overwhelming. In 1961, this situation changed. The Kennedy administration brought new personalities to power whose ideas about nuclear warfare threatened air-atomic strategy. The final stage of evolution, Assured Destruction, transformed the goal of nuclear strategy from victory to stalemate, and superiority to sufficiency.

This chapter addresses possible innovations India could undertake in nuclear doctrine and capabilities to complement an army-centric strategy, a precision-strike strategy, or a covert operations strategy in order to manage the risk of Pakistani counter-escalation through nuclear threats. This chapter assesses arguments for and against revising India’s adherence to no first use, its rejection of battlefield nuclear weapons, and its reliance on massive retaliation. Beyond these theoretical questions, the chapter considers the capabilities that India will need to operationalize any changes in its nuclear doctrine, particularly regarding counter-force nuclear operations.

This chapter develops a new theory of nuclear deterrence, the superiority-brinkmanship synthesis theory. The theory brings together traditional arguments in the nuclear strategy literature about the advantages of nuclear superiority and combines them with nuclear brinkmanship theory to provide the first coherent theoretical explanation for why nuclear superiority provides states with geopolitical advantages. It argues that military nuclear advantages reduce a state’s expected cost of nuclear war, increasing its effective resolve, and enhancing its bargaining position. On the other hand, states in an inferior strategic position face a relatively higher cost of nuclear war, are less willing to run risks in a crisis, and are more likely to back down early in a dispute. This chapter serves, therefore, as the theoretical and conceptual core for the first half of the book

This chapter describes the evolution of the superpowers’ civil defense programs from the mid-1970s until the end of the Cold War. In the mid-1970s, the contrast between the USSR’s extensive civil defense effort and its moribund U.S. counterpart led to considerable anxiety that the Kremlin might see civil defense as a usable source of strategic advantage. Rebuffed in their efforts to convince the USSR to negotiate limits on its civil defense program, the Carter administration decided to revive U.S. civil defense on the basis of a strategic evacuation concept dubbed “Crisis Relocation Planning,” which the Reagan administration also pursued. Simultaneously, civil defense for nuclear war and peacetime emergency management were combined into a single agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Ironically, not only did Soviet leaders not perceive their civil defense program as a useable source of advantage, they grew increasingly sceptical of its utility throughout this period. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster accelerated this process and led to the reinvention of Soviet civil defense as a peacetime emergency management organization.

Chapter 3 examines China’s engagement with global nuclear order during the period of opening up and reform, between 1976 and 1989. In particular, it explores China’s decision to join the Conference on Disarmament in 1980 and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1984, as well as Beijing’s reaction to superpower arms control treaties like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987. In this period, China engaged with global nuclear order on two fronts: by developing its first nuclear strategy; then by reversing positions on arms control and non-proliferation, leading to its engagement with major nuclear institutions. This was a dramatic departure from past behaviour under Mao Zedong, during which China had challenged the superpowers’ ideas for global nuclear order.

This chapter presents a brief summary of Schelling's career with tributes, taking him from NATO, to Washington and then the beginning of his academic career at Yale. From Yale he headed to the RAND Corporation, where he became involved with military strategy and game theory. In 1960 he moved to Harvard and completed The Strategy of Conflict, developed the strategy of MAD, advised President Kennedy during the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and developed war games to train government officials in crisis management, including Henry Kissinger and Bobby Kennedy. When he began teaching he created a course based on his experiences with bargaining and strategy, calling it “Conflict, Cooperation, and Strategy.” The course involved mixing strategic analysis with game theory and rational choice, and forms the basis of this book. Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics writes about his memories as a student on this course, years ago, as a supplement.