From Cuba to Ukraine: Strategic Signaling and Nuclear Deterrence
Strategic signaling—the range of signs and maneuvers intended, in peace time, to lend credibility to any threat to use nuclear weapons—is back.
The war in Ukraine has taken it in a new direction for both Russia and the West. It can involve both nuclear and conventional forces. Attention must also be given to technological developments that may affect access to information and its interpretation.
Héloïse Fayet is Research Fellow and head of the Deterrence and Proliferation program at Ifri's Security Studies Center.
Article published in French only in Politique étrangère, Vol. 89, No. 4, Winter 2024.
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Héloïse FAYET
Research Fellow and Head of the Deterrence and Proliferation program, Security Studies Center, Ifri
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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