Nuclear security

Nuclear deterrence and the Alliance in the 21st century

Even if Russia tends to lower the nuclear threshold and seems to envisage the possibility of an early use of nuclear weapons in a crisis or a conflict, the Alliance does not have to match this policy and to follow this dangerous path. Quite the contrary, NATO and nuclear allies can emphasise that they are responsible nuclear players that envisage nuclear weapons as weapons of ultimate resort under extreme circumstances.

NATO nevertheless ought to signal to Russia, or any other potential nuclear adversary, that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons involving the Alliance would immediately transform the nature of the crisis. As the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference in February: “No one should think that nuclear weapons can be used as part of a conventional conflict. It would change the nature of any conflict fundamentally.”