The Law of Armed Conflict and Nuclear Responses to Limited Attacks

• In Event: Rethinking the Strategy, Law, and Ethics of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

The contemporary security landscape poses threats of attacks that, while devastating, are more limited to the scenarios of all-out nuclear exchanges that dominated Cold War strategic thinking. This calls for reconsideration of how key law of armed conflict principles would apply to a potential nuclear response to such attacks. Although the principles of jus in bello proportionality and belligerent reprisal would permit defensive nuclear strikes in limited circumstances, those circumstances are highly circumscribed.

Authors

• Scott D. Sagan, Stanford University

• Allen S. Weiner, Stanford Law School