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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 04/03
Nuclear Conflicts of the Twenty-First Century
A. A. Kokoshin
February 2003
International Security Program
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA)
Harvard University
Abstract
The author proceeds from the definition, that nuclear conflict is a situation involving one or more possessors of nuclear weapons, and in the course of which escalation reaches a level at which the practical possibility of using nuclear weapons begins to be considered. The higher phase of nuclear conflict means the use of nuclear weapons at various scales—from single nuclear explosions to the mass use of nuclear weapons.
Due to the special nature of this weapon, questions of the use of nuclear weapons and questions of “nuclear strategy” and “nuclear politics” essentially differ from questions of military strategy with the use of conventional, non-nuclear means of armed combat. In particular the relation between offense and defense, otherwise a cornerstone of military strategy (as well as of operational art and tactics), appears fundamentally different.
