(Survival: Global Politics and Strategy) Editor's note: In the last issue of Survival, Matthew Kroenig proposed a number of alterations to NATO policy and posture, including forward deployment of conventional forces in Eastern Europe, pausing NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, and upgrading the Alliance's nuclear forces.
In the nuclear realm, Kroenig argued that NATO should develop a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons, and that the Alliance should consider deploying ‘any tactical system that could prove useful on the battlefield’, including ‘warheads with adjustable yields, nuclear armed sea and air-launched cruise missiles, and the possible redeployment of gravity bombs with dual-key arrangements to Eastern European states’ (p. 64).
Emphasising recent Russian assertiveness in nuclear matters, as well as US allegations that Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, he concluded: ‘An arms race is already under way; NATO is just sitting it out.’
We invited American, European and Russian experts to react to these recommendations. Their responses are printed here, along with a reply from the author.
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Recommended: Response by Mikhail Troitskiy, "Nuclear escalation and the ‘Russian world," pp. 135-139.
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Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
Volume 57, Issue 2, 2015
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