In 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama came into office, nuclear weapons looked increasingly superfluous. As the Cold War faded into history, Moscow and Washington, the world’s two nuclear superpowers, had long been working together to reduce their arsenals. At the same time, after years of protracted conventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the broader “war on terror,” the U.S. defense establishment was far more preoccupied with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency than with nuclear strategy and great-power rivalry.
How to Survive the New Nuclear Age: National Security in a World of Proliferating Risks and Eroding Constraints (Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi)
Written by Berhanu Anteneh