Nuclear Weapons

Definitions and Conceptual FrameworksNuclear weapons refer to devices that use a nuclear reaction to create an explosion.Both atomic weapons-which use fission-and thermonuclear weapons-which use both fusion and fission-fall into this category.Nuclear weapons are often categorized as "weapons of mass destruction," a category referring to weapons that can have particularly large-scale impacts and that includes chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and some explosive weapons modalities.In International Relations, scholarship on nuclear weapons addresses the political, technical, social, and normative elements of the policies needed to prevent, regulate, build, sustain, spread, threaten, and use nuclear weapons.Nuclear weapons are intrinsically linked to nuclear deterrence, extended deterrence arrangements, nuclear taboos, strategic stability, and broader concepts of state power and prestige (Bollfrass & Herzog, 2023;Drezner , 2019;Futter & Zala, 2021).Much scholarship focuses on "nuclear force structure," which broadly encompasses "the quality, quantity, and type of nuclea r weapons and delivery platforms deployed by a state" (Gartzke et al., 2014, p. 502).This broader conceptualization includes delivery capabilities such as aircraft, missiles, and submarines, as well as the command-and-control infrastructures and institutional arrangements needed to use these capabilities (Ritchie, 2019, p. 428).Normative scholarship on nuclear weapons policy offers contes ting frameworks.Hanson (2018) identifies competing approaches in the literature to nuclear weapons, comparing traditional nuclearism that constructs nuclear weapons as "normal," "rational," and "necessary" (p.470) security instruments against an emerging humanitarian approac h that frames them as fundamentally "inhumane" and "morally unacceptable" (p.465).Feminist scholars go further still, with Cohn (2014) arguing that technostrategic discourse systematically displaces human vulnerability onto weapons and states, embedding gendered assumptions into what counts as rational security thinking.This tension across normative framewo rks is further reflected in research examining public attitudes toward nuclear use.For example, Sagan and Valentino (2017) demonstrate significant public support for nuclear weapons use, challenging assumptions about the nuclear taboo.