商品詳細

This "Adelphi Paper" will examine the current administration's modifications to US nuclear strategy, which represents the latest manifestation of a long-standing American trend towards nuclear revisionism. The New Triad strategy, which was unveiled by the Bush administration in the "2002 Nuclear Posture Review", strongly emphasizes the need to bolster the credibility of the nuclear deterrent and, perhaps more importantly, to prepare for nuclear use in the event of its failure. This represents a move towards attaining that elusive ability to control and dominate the escalatory process of conflict, and has been a long-standing goal of nuclear revisionists, many of whom witnessed the arrival of mutual deterrence during the Cold War with varying degrees of apprehension. The way out of this situation was a redefinition of deterrence that entailed a form of nuclear primacy over prospective adversaries - unilateral assured destruction would replace mutual assured destruction. However, the strategic implications of the current American search for nuclear primacy may be as far-reaching as the strategy is ambitious.