Are nuclear weapons a good bet?

Abstract

This article looks at the evidence of two recent cases of war involving nuclear powers: Russia-Ukraine and Iran-Israel. It arrives at three conclusions. First, nuclear weapons, even when they are reinforced by second-strike capability, do not prevent limited attacks on homeland territory below the threshold of invasion. Second, nuclear powers did not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons after these retaliatory attacks. Third, the strategic balance was not directly relevant to leaders’ calculations in any of these cases. The empirical evidence suggests that theories of deterrence, developed in the historical and cultural context of the Cold War, do not translate well into other contexts and need revision. It may well be that nuclear weapons deter some kinds of behaviour, but not others, and that the use of one set of instruments to deter one kind of threat makes the prevention of another more difficult.