Nuclear Infrastructure as a Double-Edged Sword: Implications of Strategic Hedging for the Disarmament Regime

Abstract

The maintenance of a robust nuclear infrastructure - and therefore the capability to quickly reconstitute nuclear arsenals - is often mentioned as a necessary prerequisite for the current nuclear-armed states to take the final steps on the road to ""global zero"". The aim of the present paper is to unpack the paradoxical double-edged nature of nuclear infrastructure in relation to nuclear disarmament.

On the one hand, efficient nuclear complex provides the nuclear weapon possessors with confidence in the sensitive final stages of nuclear abolition, allows them to dismantle the remaining stockpiles, and it facilitates the political decision to do so. On the other hand, the maintenance of a robust infrastructure beyond the abolition point as a latent ""virtual arsenal"" poses a serious threat to the stability of the disarmament regime, both on the military-strategic and normatively- political grounds.

Consequently, I make a case for the ""virtual irreversibility"" of nuclear disarmament based on the interplay of practical as well as normative barriers to nuclear weapons reconstitution.