The Sheathed Sword

From Nuclear Brink to No First Use

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• Publisher: Bloomsbury India
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9789354356988
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After a brief interlude following the Cold War, nuclear weapons have regained their prominent place in world affairs. Yet our current nuclear age will not be a replay of the Cold War. New technologies, changing political contexts and the death of old arms-control agreements mean that today's nuclear strategists have to navigate unchartered waters filled with fresh perils. Unfortunately, the consequences of failure in the nuclear world can be catastrophic. The immediate imperative today is to lower the possibility of nuclear weapons use during a crisis or conflict involving nuclear powers. While deliberate or pre-emptive nuclear use is less likely, the rising danger of our time is that nuclear weapons will be employed due to some combination of miscommunication, misjudgment, misperception and sheer accident.
The Sheathed Sword: From Nuclear Brink to No First Use is a collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners on the role of nuclear weapons in global security. The contributors examine how individual states view nuclear weapons, the devastating effects of nuclear war on the world's climate and the issues around nuclear no first use. They also debate the feasibility and desirability of a global no-first-use (GNFU) agreement.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Ambassador Shivshankar Menonvii
• Introduction
• Part I: Understanding the Role of Nuclear Weapons in Global Security
• Chapter 1: Superpower and World Order : Colin S. Gray
• Chapter 2: The Seven Deadly Sins of Nuclear Strategy Dogmata : Lt General (Dr) Prakash Menon
• Chapter 3: Is Nuclear Deterrence a Cost-effective Policy? : Bruno Tertrais
• Chapter 4: Nuclear Weapons and the Global Security Environment : Rajesh Basrur
• Chapter 5: Nuclear Weapons, Geopolitics, Emerging Technologies and Oppositional Nationalism : Sadia Tasleem
• Part II: The Uses and Perils of Nuclear Weapons
• Chapter 6: Nuclear Coercion—Evaluating Insights from Academic Scholarship : Walter C. Ladwig III
• Chapter 7: Asia Treads the Nuclear Path, Unaware that Self-assured Destruction Would Result from Nuclear War : Owen B. Toon, Alan Robock, Michael Mills and Lili Xia
• Part III: The Dilemmas of No First Use
• Chapter 8: It’s Time for a US No-First-Use Nuclear Policy : Nina Tannenwald
• Chapter 9: The Purposes of Nuclear Weapons : Rajesh Rajagopalan
• Chapter 10: Nuclear No First Use in Theory and Practice : Keir Lieber and Daryl Press
• Part IV: States, Nuclear Weapons and the Prospects for Global No First Use
• Chapter 11: US Nuclear Strategy, No First Use and the Return of Great Power Competition : Matthew Kroenig
• Chapter 12: Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine Journey : Petr Topychkanov
• Chapter 13: Less Possible, More Necessary? : No-First-Use Policy for France and Europe : Damien Cusey and Olivier de France
• Chapter 14: China’s No First Use as a Litmus Test for Global No First Use : Lora Saalman
• Chapter 15: China’s No-First-Use Policy and the Prospect of the Global No-First-Use Treaty—A Chinese Perspective : Zhong Ai
• Chapter 16: The Desirability and Feasibility of Global No First Use—An Indian Perspective : Manpreet Sethi
• Chapter 17: Israel and a ‘No-First-Use’ Declaration : Emily B. Landau
• Chapter 18: Deterrence Unsheathed—Pakistan and the Prospects of Global No First Use : Brigadier (Retd) Feroz Hassan Khan
• Chapter 19: No-First-Use Policy of a New Nuclear Weapons State—The Case of North Korea : Jina Kim
• Chapter 20: Tokyo’s Reluctance over No First Use, for Now : Hirofumi Tosaki
• Chapter 21: On Turkey’s Stance towards Nuclear Weapons and Global No First Use: Mustafa Kibaroglu
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index