Over the course of the 21st century, the international environment is likely to evolve in ways that present unprecedented challenges to the national security of the United States. One of the greatest of these challenges will be the need to protect U.S. interests amid the proliferation of nuclear weapons to a rising number of regional powers. This trend, which some scholars and security analysts have described as the Second Nuclear Age, is characterized by a greater diversity of nuclear-armed states, the emergence of regional nuclear rivalries, and dramatic asymmetries in capability and interest between regional nuclear powers and other states inside and outside their regions.1 The United States has important interests in the regions in which this process is underway. Consequently, risks are increasing that U.S. leaders will find it necessary to confront emergent nuclear-armed regional adversaries states with a handful of nuclear weapons and strong antipathies toward the United States or its regional friends and allies.2
展开▼
