#viii Beyond Citations | Non-nuclear weapons in the Third Nuclear Age
Are nuclear weapons still salient?
From 17 to 19 March 2025, senior government and private sector functionaries from more than a hundred countries descended in New Delhi for the 10th edition of the Raisina Dialogue hosted jointly by Observer Research Foundation and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Naturally, in such high-profile gatherings involving star-studded panels, some statements stood-out amid the usual generic discussions on global geopolitics. For example, Norway's foreign minister remarked that for Europeans it was easy to criticise Russia but it took courage to criticise Israel's actions in Gaza (notwithstanding Israel's right to defend itself). Or, a speaker made a very interesting characterization of countries (possibly drawing from this): for Japan, North Korea is like a tornado, Russia is like a hurricane while China is like climate change. The speaker also remarked that a new climate change is emerging across the Atlantic — the US (Trump 2.0). Finally, Tharoor suggested Indian peacekeepers could be sent if Russia and Ukraine were to agree to a deal. Unlike the 2003 Iraq case, he believed that the Indian parliament would not be a hindrance this time. Maybe this was a signal for the Modi government.
Perhaps more significant for the Indian government (as compared to above) was the presence of the newly appointed Director of National Intelligence in the US, Tulsi Gabbard, at Raisina. On 18 March, she delivered a speech conveying the position of the Trump administration on various global issues, including the Russia-Ukraine war. She raised concerns around the possibility of nuclear catastrophe and WWIII. Here’s the relevant excerpt of her speech:
We live in a time where war and conflict is waging on many fronts. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, has declared the Doomsday Clock to be 89 seconds to midnight—closer to the brink of nuclear catastrophe than ever before.
Your focus on peace, people, and planet is timely. Now is the time for leaders to stand up for these interests that affect us all. Unfortunately, what we have experienced time and again is that simply calling for peace is cause for smears and attacks. One of the pillars of President Trump’s campaign for the presidency was centered around his commitment to peace and bringing about an end to the Russia-Ukraine war—to stop the killing, and to prevent the risk of World War III and nuclear war. For this, he was attacked relentlessly not only by political opponents and legacy media in our own country, but also by leaders abroad. Despite these attacks and smear campaigns, the American people voted overwhelmingly for him to return to the White House, delivering a clear mandate for peace, which he is carrying out as we gather here today.
But are nuclear weapons as salient as they were in the Cold War? Are nuclear weapons driving us to nuclear catastrophe or are there other factors at play? What makes the Third Nuclear Age more dangerous? Futter and Zala in their following 2021 paper provide some answers:
Futter, A., & Zala, B. (2021). Strategic non-nuclear weapons and the onset of a Third Nuclear Age. European Journal of International Security, 6(3), 257-277. https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2021.2 (open access)
The First Nuclear Age began with the explosion of atomic weapons by the United States in 1945. It got magnified during the height of the Cold War and ended with the unravelling of the Soviet Union in late 1980s and early 1990s. The First Nuclear Age was defined by nuclear deterrence based on mutually assured destruction (MAD), and arms control treaties. A select group of P-5 countries ruled the nuclear club in that era and was engaged in intense vertical proliferation.
The Second Nuclear Age began after the end of the Cold War and saw the horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons. New nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan and North Korea came into existence and concerns around non-proliferation took centre stage. Multipolar nuclear dynamics involving regional nuclear competitions defined the Second Nuclear Age. But this era also had one feature that was distinct from the first one — while the first age was fixated on deterrence by punishment (think MAD), the second one was also giving importance to deterrence by denial (think preemptive military action to stop nuclear threats from emerging).
The authors argue that we are now entering the Third Nuclear Age driven by the technological advances in strategic non-nuclear weaponry (SNNW). There are four key components of the Third Nuclear Age. First, the normalisation of missile defense for protecting strategic assets and population centers. Second, the spread of SNNW that could potentially degrade adversary’s nuclear strike capability. Third, computer network operations that provide an unconventional way of attacking (or defending from) an nuclear adversary. Fourth, emerging technologies such as AI making SNNW more potent.
They project four possible future scenarios in the Third Nuclear Age: SNNWs drive vertical nuclear proliferation; SNNWs helps one state in acquiring strategic advantage; there is restraint in development and deployment of SNNWs; and lastly, SNNWs undermine MAD and the salience of nuclear weapons. For the authors, the first two scenarios would be most likely and costly/dangerous. The third scenario is most desirable but would be difficult to attain. The fourth scenario would be ‘potentially transformative in how we conceptualise the nuclear condition.’
Set against the current state of international politics (think Russia-Ukraine war, US-China rivalry, aspirations of rising powers such as India) it is difficult to say which of these scenarios would play out (and with what consequences). The way we understand nuclear weapons and their salience is currently in flux. The next few years can either lead to the unravelling of any nuclear age (think nuclear weapons losing their salience) or to the strengthening of the nuclear dominance in political calculus. Either ways, interesting times ahead for nuclear geeks!