Legal Challenges for Nuclear Security and Deterrence

Abstract

Nuclear security and nuclear deterrence face continuing challenges; nuclear security and safety requires tremendous efforts that under extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances have proven to have been largely in vain. Reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is widely considered as ‘increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective’, yet all nuclear-armed States are engaged in modernizing their respective nuclear arsenals. The contributions to this volume examine global and regional approaches to fully understand this situation and to explore viable solutions to this ever-growing problem. Contributors try to develop realistic pathways to nuclear disarmament at a time of an obvious and seemingly widening schism. One part of the international community of States is propagating an unconditioned prohibition of developing, acquiring, hosting, global using nuclear weapons, while the other part is unwilling to accept such prohibition, as long as nuclear weapons exist.

Jonathan L. Black-Branch, Dean of Law, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba; Bencher of the Law Society of Manitoba; Ph.D. (Toronto); MA, D.Phil. (Oxford); PLDA (Harvard); YGELP (Yale); JP and Barrister (England and Wales); Barrister and Solicitor (Manitoba); Chair of the ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation and Contemporary International Law; President and CEO of ISLAND (International Society of Law and Nuclear Disarmament).

Dieter Fleck, Dr. iur. (Cologne), Former Director International Agreements & Policy, Federal Ministry of Defence, Germany; Member of the Advisory Board of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL); Rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation and Contemporary International Law; Honorary President, International Society for Military Law and the Law of War.