Nuclear Threats

Two specific types of conflicts – the narrow one between India and Pakistan and the broader one involving America’s efforts to prevent WMD proliferation – were responsible for a much, much larger proportion of all nuclear threats between 1991 and 2010 than any other pair of conflicts in the previous two decades. If nuclear threats are less dispersed across countries and conflicts now than they were before, but the overall number is up, the crises or wars that do involve nuclear threats will involve more of them per crisis or war. I would argue that when a crisis involves multiple threats to use nuclear weapons, this is a symptom and/or cause of increased escalatory potential. Thus, those with a stake in preventing the future use of nuclear weapons would do well to pay attention to these particularly dangerous political conflicts.