Ethics and International Affairs 38, no.2

What is the point of a nuclear umbrella? Conventional wisdom suggests that explicit nuclear security guarantees provide junior allies with credible security, facilitating regional stability and nuclear non-proliferation. Yet this is not the only possible reason to maintain a nuclear umbrella. Reassessing the history and politics of nuclear alignment through a case study of the US–Norway alliance, I find that nuclear umbrellas have endured, and can do so, in cases where both the security patron and client believe the arrangement to lack military credibility.

Do states change when they acquire nuclear weapons? This article looks at the consequences of nuclear acquisition on democratic states. It argues that nuclear acquisition is best understood as a process of political change through which state actors adapt existing institutions to the new, and unprecedented, challenges created by nuclear weapons. One form of this process of “nuclearization” is the development of nuclear secrecy regimes, which results from actors’ desire to maintain control over information they perceive as potentially having major security implications.