Beyond ‘hangovers’: The new parameters of post–Cold War nuclear strategy

We are now more than a quarter-century into the post–Cold War period. Yet vestiges of a ‘Cold War mentality’ are said to remain, limiting our understanding of nuclear strategy today. For some, concepts and capabilities specifically developed with US and Soviet nuclear strategy in mind, such as mutual assured destruction (MAD) as an optimal strategic condition or a Second Strike Force, have become conceptual ‘hangovers’ that strategists have struggled to improve upon, leaving little room for innovation in the nuclear domain.1 This chapter seeks to push back at this ‘hangover’ narrative by drawing out global developments that have shaped thinking about nuclear strategy since 1990. It will also be argued that the global conditions under which nuclear strategies have been formulated are fundamentally different post-1990. This might seem a rather uncontroversial statement. Most would agree that, compared to the Cold War period, the prospects of nuclear war are thankfully much reduced today. However, there are relatively few academic accounts of how nuclear strategies have developed since 1990.2