Deterrence and Proliferation
The issues of nuclear deterrence and weapons proliferation are back in the balance of power between states. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea: arsenals are growing and modernizing.
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Through multiple international initiatives, including the creation of the Arctic Council at the end of the Cold War in 1996, the Arctic appears to be one of the last areas of peaceful cooperation in the world. This “Arctic exception” is also devoid of any serious territorial dispute between the neighboring countries, some of which are nevertheless great powers: Russia, the United States, Canada, but also Sweden, Norway, Denmark (via Greenland), Iceland and Finland.
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What will the economic order in the Indo-Pacific region look like twenty years from now? What are the major trends shaping it, and how are they likely to evolve in the near future?
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Ever since nuclear weapons were developed by the United States and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, Europe has lived under the nuclear shadow. A major direct confrontation between “the West” and “the East” could have very likely resulted in the detonation of nuclear weapons on the continent. As the Cold War ended, massive reductions in the US and Soviet arsenals (from 70,300 in 1986 to 13,890 in 2019) and a new security architecture radically transformed the European security environment.
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France to spell out nuclear plan
A researcher said that ‘the balance is shifting, including in countries such as Germany’ on the role of nuclear weapons in Europe’s strategic ambitions.
France, the EU’s sole nuclear power since Britain’s exit from the bloc, was to unveil how it intends to use its atomic arsenal as a deterrent. French President Emmanuel Macron, in an address to military officers graduating in Paris yesterday, was expected to recommit to upgrading France’s capacity, at a time when NATO allies, who would ordinarily look to the US in a nuclear standoff, worry about Washington’s retreat from the multilateral stage.
France to spell out post-Brexit nuclear weapons strategy
France, the European Union's sole nuclear power since Britain's exit from the bloc, will unveil Friday how it intends to use its atomic arsenal as a deterrent in an increasingly unstable world.

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The instruments of cooperative security created during and since the Cold War to foster mutual confidence and reduce the risks of war, inadvertent escalation, and arms races, in and around Europe, have come under increasing strain.
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The instruments of cooperative security created during and since the Cold War to foster mutual confidence and reduce the risks of war, inadvertent escalation, and arms races, in and around Europe, have come under increasing strain.
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