The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) transformed the discourse about nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament away from a national security paradigm and towards a focus on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the weapons themselves.1 From the humanitarian perspective, which should be understood as a human security perspective, not only are nuclear weapons themselves illegitimate, but so also are threats to use them, otherwise known as nuclear deterrence. Given the strength of international support for the TPNW and its sweeping stigmatization of nuclear weapons, one could easily have predicted that the proponents of nuclear deterrence would push back against this challenge to their worldview. At the state level, this has happened in the two most recent US nuclear posture reviews, in NATO's 2022 strategic concept, in the UK's 2022 Ministry of Defence guidance paper on deterrence, in France's 2017 defence and national security strategic review, and in the nuclear deterrence decree signed by Russian president Putin in 2020. Not only have all nine nuclear-armed states recommitted themselves to reliance on nuclear weapons, they have also taken additional steps to integrate their nuclear and conventional forces. They are all spending vast sums of money to upgrade their warheads and delivery systems, as well as all the technology supporting their arsenals.
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