Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age : Power, Ambition, and the Ultimate Weapon

A "second nuclear age" has begun in the post-Cold War world. Created by the expansion of nuclear arsenals and new proliferation in Asia, it has changed the familiar nuclear geometry of the Cold War. Increasing potency of nuclear arsenals in China, India, and Pakistan, the nuclear breakout in North Korea, and the potential for more states to cross the nuclear-weapons threshold from Iran to Japan suggest that the second nuclear age of many competing nuclear powers has the potential to be even less stable than the first.

Toshi Yoshihara is the John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the US Naval War College. James R. Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College and the author of Theodore Roosevelt and World Order. Yoshihara and Holmes are also coauthors of Red Star over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to US Maritime Strategy.