Between 2000 and 2010, the United States continued to reduce the number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and consolidated them at fewer bases. The views expressed are her own.What is published in NATO Review does not necessarily represent the official position or policy of member governments, or of NATO. The argument says that if a nation has capability to inflict unacceptable damage on another, then the latter will refrain from attacking the former—it will be deterred from doing so. Or they could be missiles launched from nuclear submarines which can stay submerged for long periods of time and are therefore difficult to locate and destroy. As part of its overall military transformation, Russia has modernised about 80 per cent of its strategic nuclear forces since the early 2000s. Nuclear deterrence can serve as a pillar of international security only in conjunction with negotiations and agreements on the limitation, reduction, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Hypersonic weapons fly at super-high speeds, at low altitudes and have the capability to manoeuver during flight – a combination of capabilities that make hypersonic missiles difficult to track and nearly impossible to defend against.

Planning for the use of nuclear weapons requires planning for mass murder. A nation which attacks another nation or enemy with nuclear weapons before it has been attacked with nuclear weapons is executing a nuclear first-strike. These weapons, along with nuclear warheads from air defence missiles, were to be put into central storage and a portion would be destroyed.

Russia’s territorial aggression in Ukraine illustrates the inability of the vast arsenals of NATO members to prevent non-nuclear conflicts. Where the latter statement pertains to deterrence (and deterrent threats that …

For over 70 years, both the national arsenals of the NATO nuclear weapons states – the United States, the United Kingdom and France – and the US nuclear weapons forward deployed in Europe have provided deterrence for the Alliance and reassurance for Allies. In the age of increasingly capable conventional munitions, cyber warfare and autonomous robots, are nuclear weapons not just a relic of the Cold War that have now ceased to be relevant? By 2010, Russia had consolidated its tactical nuclear weapons at “central storage facilities” in Russia; removed tactical nuclear weapons from its ground forces; and dramatically cut the tactical nuclear arsenal of the air force, missile defense troops and navy, reducing the number of non-strategic nuclear weapons by around 75 per cent.The combined reductions of the United States and Russia were the most transformative change to the nuclear posture in Europe, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of nuclear weapons deployed and the easing of military tensions.Unfortunately, the gains made in the mid-1990s did not translate into sustained and verifiable progress in dismantling stockpiles of non-strategic nuclear weapons. That limited posture remains the same to this day.Presidents George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev shake hands at the end of a press conference after signing the START I agreement for the mutual elimination of the two countries’ strategic nuclear weapons – Moscow, 31 July 1991. But NATO will also remain a nuclear alliance as long as nuclear weapons exist. A second strike capability means that the nation should have enough weapons and have them deployed in a manner that enough of them survive the initial attack and can be used for a retaliatory attack. Thus the weapons that make up the second strike capability could be missiles that are launched from mobile launchers that are constantly on the move.