Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has eroded the nuclear taboo
This war is unlikely to go nuclear. But it is increasing the risk that future conflicts will
In 1999 nina tannenwald, a political scientist at Brown University, wrote a paper analysing something she had observed among generals, politicians and strategists: the “nuclear taboo”. This was not, she argued, simply a matter of general queasiness or personal moral qualms; it had important consequences. The lack of nuclear wars in the years since America’s destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she argued, was not simply a matter of deterrence. It had also relied on a growing sense of the innate wrongness of nuclear weapons putting their use beyond the pale.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Thinking the unthinkable”
From the June 4th 2022 edition
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