Existing and Emerging Threats to International Security?

Be like Nutella

Some people might find this interesting or informative.

Submissions from various respected experts from various countries who attended a conference in May this year about 'Existing and Emerging Threats to International Security' concerning all types of weapons systems, nuclear, bio, cyber etc
Very informative and up to date....and from many different perspectives...like Pakistan, India, Japan, Britain, Russia

http://www.nuclearsecurityproject.org/publications/deterrence-its-past-and-future-panel-one








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most interesting quote for me was the Russian expert -

Igor Ivanov, former Foreign Minister of Russian Federation

who said,

" ......This confirms once again that the threats no longer come from within the “nuclear club”: I mean five nuclear powers; instead the threats are generated by rogue states, terrorists, different radical groups and movements. Since neither of them can be considered rational actors that are likely to act responsibly, classical deterrence is not an ideal means to cope with this new situation.

This new reality calls for new approaches to deterrence. Let me get back to the initial question: does traditional deterrence have a future? In other words, is it subject to reforms or not? In my view, the answer to this question is negative. For twenty years academics and politicians tried to find a new approach to deterrence ranging from “stable deterrence” to “minimal deterrence” to “multilateral deterrence”. However, this quest for a renewed deterrence has not resulted in any profound change of our nuclear postures or in the proliferation problem. This inertia can hardly be explained as a mere lack of imagination or political will to embrace change. The logical conclusion is that we need to replace deterrence with an entirely new approach to global and regional security that would be more adequate to new threats and challenges that we all encounter.

If the most probable threats come from outside of the “nuclear club”, the relations within the club should not longer be based on the principles of traditional deterrence. If we fear each other no more, we can consider our nuclear arsenals to be our common assets with the main mission – to deter third parties, outsiders capable of destabilizing the global or regional nuclear stability. Such a change in our approaches (even without immediate changes in the structure of our respective nuclear forces) would mean a revolutionary shift in the global nuclear balance. In fact, we would start moving away from the mutual assured destruction to a new system of relations – the system of mutual assured stability. As in case with the traditional deterrence this new strategy might have an extended option – i.e. it could provide security guarantees not only to members of the nuclear club, but to other countries as well.

This transition is likely to be a bumpy road. I find it hard to believe that we can sign a new multilateral agreement between main nuclear powers that would shift our respective strategic postures to that of mutual assured security. It is much easier to imagine a net of much more modest arrangements – bilateral and multilateral – that will gradually bring us to a new level of cooperation.