This book examines actors, tools, and issues associated with the changing nature of the environment in which the United Nations operates; the ways in which it has responded and might respond to technological and political problems; and the questions and difficulties that arise for the world organization. Issues covered in the book include doctrinal questions on the use of force, the regional dynamics of nuclear proliferation, and the growing concern that nuclear order established by the NPT may collapse or simply be overtaken by events.--Publisher's description.

The contributors to this book describe, discuss, and evaluate the normative reframing brought about by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty), taking you on a journey through its genesis and negotiation history to the shape of the emerging global nuclear order. Adopted by the United Nations on 7 July 2017, the Ban Treaty came into effect on 22 January 2021. For advocates and supporters, weapons that were always immoral are now also illegal. To critics, it represents a profound threat to the stability of the existing global nuclear order with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as the normative anchor. As the most significant leap in nuclear disarmament in fifty years and a rare case study of successful state-civil society partnership in multilateral diplomacy, the Ban Treaty challenges the established order. The book’s contributors are leading experts on the Ban Treaty, including senior scholars, policymakers and civil society activists. A vital guide to the Ban Treaty for students of nuclear disarmament, arms control and diplomacy as well as for policymakers in those fields.

This book examines the importance of global nuclear order, emphasising the importance of perspective in our understanding of it, and its significance in international politics. Addressing a gap in existing literature, this book provides an introduction to nuclear weapon states and their relationship with the global nuclear order/disorder paradigm. It explores four main themes and aims to: 1. conceptualise the dichotomous paradigm of global nuclear order/disorder; 2. outline the different phases of global nuclear order/disorder from 1945 to present; 3. address the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the wider international nuclear non-proliferation regime; 4. provide an overview of every nuclear weapon state’s national nuclear doctrines throughout the years. The book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, global governance, security studies, Cold War studies, foreign policy and IR, more generally.

Nuclear Weapons under International Law is a comprehensive treatment of nuclear weapons under key international law regimes. It critically reviews international law governing nuclear weapons with regard to the inter-state use of force, international humanitarian law, human rights law, disarmament law, and environmental law, and discusses where relevant the International Court of Justice's 1996 Advisory Opinion. Unique in its approach, it draws upon contributions from expert legal scholars and international law practitioners who have worked with conventional and non-conventional arms control and disarmament issues. As a result, this book embraces academic consideration of legal questions within the context of broader political debates about the status of nuclear weapons under international law.

Selected from the papers presented at the twenty-third International Social Philosophy Conference held in July of 2006 at University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia --Preface.

The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volume--based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)--describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.

From the former UN head weapons inspector in Iraq, a plea for a renewed global disarmament movement. In 2002 Dr. Hans Blix, then chief United Nations weapons inspector, led his team on a search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Before the United States went to war with Iraq the next March, he maintained there were no WMD in Iraq. History proved him right. For more than forty years Dr. Blix has worked on global disarmament, and with this new book he renews the call for nuclear nonproliferation. His interests, though, go beyond stemming the threat of nuclear attack from rogue states and terrorists. It is not, he argues, a recipe for success for nuclear states to tell the rest of the world that it must stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable. We will never be able to convince rogue states to halt the pursuit of nuclear weapons programs unless we take the lead in a new nonproliferation and disarmament movement. Looking back at the UN post-World War II efforts against the use of nuclear weapons, Blix documents the retreat from early commitments by nuclear powers, most alarmingly from pledges against first use and toward programs to develop new types of nuclear weapons. He urges us to revive these efforts, and that the world's powers also look at issues of global disarmament and security as pieces of the same puzzle. Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters includes specific suggestions—how the UN can set the stage for a credible multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation process; what kind of treaties would be most helpful—and recommendations for regional policy, including providing the Middle East with enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power production but not allowing uranium enrichment there. From March 2000 to June 2003 Hans Blix was Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). Dr. Blix, author of Disarming Iraq, is Chair of the Swedish government's Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction.