During the Cold War, views on nuclear deterrence maintained that a “presumed automatic balance” of power would make nuclear war highly unlikely, on the prerequisite that states were more responsible about avoiding falling into deliberate or accidental nuclear war. However, the world is on the cusp of a new nuclear age as we face the reality of increased uncertainty and increasing complexity. The basic assumptions of the Cold War era no longer hold, and a fresh look is urgently needed—The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age provides just that.

Nuclear states are undergoing modernization programs and a renewed arms race. Since the Cold War more states have acquired nuclear weapons and have added onto the nuclear landscape a motley of alarming new variables to look out for. Crises and escalations between nuclear states instill fear in the masses as conflicts turn hot and actors become more reckless. Furthermore, over the years, the aspirations of states to acquire nuclear weapons have resulted in many crises.

Could the current lack of a nuclear war breakout be a matter of pure luck? According to the authors, even if this were the case, our luck may just be running out. In The Fragile Balance of Terror, Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan argue that the classical deterrence theory seems to be losing its validity.

What are the risks of “nuclear contagion”? Focusing on the second generation of nuclear states, prominent experts on strategy and nuclear policy—namely Giles David Arceneaux, Mark S. Bell, Christopher Clary, Peter D. Feaver, Jeffrey Lewis, Rose McDermott, Nicholas L. Miller, Vipin Narang, Ankit Panda, Scott D. Sagan, Caitlin Talmadge, Heather Williams, and Amy Zegart—collaborate to explain the expanding array of forces and issues, and incorporate new thinking and analysis to the current nuclear era.

This eye-opening collection shows how deterrence may not be a reliable strategy in the future by visiting old challenges such as nuclear reliability, preventative war, survivability, and nuclear learning revamped with a twist to examining the brand-new challenges currently unfolding such as multipolarity, psychology and leaders, and new technologies complicating communication, command, and control.

The Fragile Balance of Terror highlights important topics at the forefront in the 21^st century such as military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, dictatorial decision-making lacking checks and balances, and rash choices.

The nuclear threats posed by India, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are precarious. Furthermore, besides their highly hostile environments, domestic instability and few resources challenge these new and potential nuclear powers. Can deterrence hold between these new nuclear states? What are the risks of inadvertent escalation or accidental war in the new nuclear age? The findings are grim, but the book also explores mitigation steps to reduce the heightened potential risks.

The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age is an insightful read for understanding the present nuclear landscape and the fragility of the classical deterrence model in the face of new actors and sources of nuclear instability. The e-book version of the book can be downloaded for free at the Cornell University Press website.

Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age (Cornell University Press, 2023) ISBN13: 9781501767029, 270 pages

Q.What is the New START treaty and why is it important?

The New START Treaty is the last remaining arms control agreement between the United States and Russia that puts limits on their strategic nuclear weapons and provides transparency between the two countries regarding their nuclear arsenals. Under the New START Treaty, both sides are allowed to have 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, which means that the nuclear warheads are on launchers either missiles or bombers. Each side can also have 800 total launchers – missiles or the aircraft-, 700 of which can be deployed.

The reality, however, is that there are other weapons that are not deployed and not counted under this treaty. So, the warheads awaiting dismantlement are not included in this Treaty.

And also, for the transparency measures, both the U.S. and the Russian sides can conduct 18 onsite inspections per year in nuclear facilities in the other country, and there is also information about the nuclear arsenals that is exchanged every six months, which helps both sides have some kind of confidence in their knowledge of how many weapons there are, and where they are located. That is important for stability and predictability in planning and why people are so worried about this treaty going away.

Q. What should we expect if the treaty is renewed -or not-?

First of all, I assume that the New START treaty will be extended, but if it were not, it would be the first time in 50 years without such limits on the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. And it feels that we would be losing that era of working together for our mutual security.

The U.S. plan for modernization accounts for having these weapons for the next 80 years, and thus it is hard to credibly say we are going to disarm when we have this plan for 80 years. On the other hand, you have the non-nuclear-weapon states in the world that are pushing for disarmament through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was negotiated in the summer of 2017. 50 countries ratified the Treaty, and it entered into force very recently on January 22, 2021. And so, you have this trend on one side with these non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS) urging for disarmament  rather than modernization. Those two trends make this whole nuclear order very challenging right now.

Q. Are there any sign of a rather multi-lateral nuclear treaty that could replace the New START? Are there any official talk with other nuclear-weapon countries such as India, Israel, Iran, North Korea, etc.?

I think a lot of people would say, we hope eventually we get to a multilateral limit. But again, there is that pressure that the U.S. and Russia still have to come down in their arsenal numbers. In the absence of a formal treaty, there is still a lot of opportunities for countries to talk in  multilateral fora  about their nuclear doctrine and ways to reduce the risk of a potential detonation, whether accidental or on purpose.

I do think it would be good for P5 countries, China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. to work on that. They already have P5 meetings within the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970, and it is still the cornerstone of the whole non-proliferation order.

But some of the other states you mentioned are not in the NPT; India, Pakistan and Israel for example never joined, and North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003. It is also true that South Sudan is not in the treaty, but I assume that at some point in the future, they will join.

Still, it is a very long long-term vision to think all of these nuclear weapons states, whether they are in the NPT or not, coming together and thinking about how to pursue nuclear reductions or how to improve their security relationships. That is very difficult to imagine, but even having talks would be useful.

Q. What about the Biden era? Which developments do you expect under the Biden administration?

This past year, President Biden wrote a piece in Foreign Policy, saying that he would consider a sole-use doctrine, which is based on the idea that nuclear weapons are only useful for deterring other nuclear weapons, and so that they are not used for any other kind of military contingency. We can say that Biden is trying to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and limit the scope of where nuclear weapons are appropriately employed.

I assume the Biden administration will quickly try to extend New START. There are a lot of people in the arms control and disarmament non-proliferation community that hope that the administration will extend for the full five years, which is allowed under the treaty. But there is also the pressure to develop the next treaty. There have also been some talks about whether to extend it, but for just one or two years. Five years is a long time, but it takes a lot of time to negotiate, so an extension of two years would put a lot of pressure to start negotiating the next Treaty.

Q. What would be different in this new Treaty that shall come to the table, an updated version of the New START?

I think the U.S. would like to see a treaty that is broader in terms of the types of nuclear weapons that it includes. The New START puts a limitation on deployed strategic weapons, but there is another category of nuclear weapons, called either “non-strategic” or “tactical weapons”, and these are not included in any treaties and have not ever been.

And so, the U.S. would like to capture these, because the Russians have more of these so-called “tactical weapons” than the U.S. does. And I think that at this point, many of us presume that any use of nuclear weapons is going to have a strategic effect. Even if it were a non-strategic weapon, it would still have huge consequences. Therefore this division between strategic and tactical is less meaningful.

The big security challenge in this realm from now on is going to be figuring out whether it is possible to bring different military technologies and capabilities to bear into one agreement because arms control is not just to limit weapons, it is to increase everyone’s security.