Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

ut their power imposes restraint upon the actions of
princes by holding out the prospect of Armageddon:
They are an effective means of preventing large-scale
wars <strong>and</strong> mass destruction of people—something that
humanity has engaged in throughout its history with
surprising perseverance, destroying peoples, countries,
<strong>and</strong> cultures. 36
Humanity has not yet created any other means to
prevent such general wars, <strong>and</strong> so Karaganov sees
nuclear weapons as the only existing check on such
destruction: “The world has survived only thanks to
the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over it.” 37
Karaganov makes two related points regarding strategic
stability <strong>and</strong> nuclear weapons that are particularly
relevant to our discussion of TNWs. First, strategic nuclear
weapons can have useful secondary impacts for
other powers. He asserts that China’s relative freedom
of action in the post-Cold War world was conditioned
by the existence of the Russian strategic nuclear arsenal,
which served to inhibit actions by other powers
against China, making its economic transformation
<strong>and</strong> political recognition as a major global power possible:
One can hardly conceive China’s skyrocketing economic
upturn, if there had been no Russian-U.S. nuclear
parity in the world,which makes any full-blown
war inadmissible due to the possibility of its escalation.
I will remind [the reader] that big-time players
have been suppressing China’s development militarily
for about 150 years. At present, this kind of policy
appears unthinkable. 38
Karaganov’s interpretation of the international
system during the Cold War identifies nuclear deter-
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