Nuclear Responsibility

Defining Responsible Nuclear Statecraft in an Era of Great Power Competition

Todd C. Robinson, Stephanie A. Stapleton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978765214
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What does it mean to be a responsible nuclear power in 2025? As strategic competition, and indeed great power competition, reemerged in the late 2010s and early 2020s, competing nuclear states increasingly employ the language of nuclear responsibility to label a strategic competitor as an irresponsible actor on the international stage. However, there remains a lack of consensus on what responsibilities nuclear-weapon states are assigned while other states and scholars argue that the possession of nuclear weapons can never be responsible. In Nuclear Responsibility: Defining Responsible Nuclear Statecraft in an Era of Great Power Competition, the editors Todd C. Robinson and Stephanie A. Stapleton have asked a broad range of nuclear scholars and policy practitioners to answer the question, "What is nuclear responsibility?"

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Reconceptualizing Nuclear Responsibility
• 2 From One Cold War to the Next: Hedging as an Enduring Imperative
• 3 Nuclear Responsibility and the Shift in US Disarmament Rhetoric
• 4 The Emerging American Consensus on the Responsibility to Modernize, Compete, and Win
• 5 Nuclear Responsibility in an Age of Integrated Deterrence: Does “Doing More” Lead to Better Responsibility?
• 6 Sharing Is Caring?: The (Ir)responsibility of NATO’s Nuclear-Sharing Policy
• 7 China’s Views on Its Responsibilities as a Nuclear Weapon State
• 8 Shifting Responsibilities: North Korea’s Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons as a Security Imperative
• 9 Gender, Feminism, and Constructions of Nuclear Responsibility
• 10 Beyond Blame: Fostering Inclusive Dialogue on Nuclear Responsibilities
• 11 Justification and Critique in the Global Nuclear Order: Nuclear (Ir)responsibility as Practice
• Conclusion
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Imprint