“Until recently having or not having nuclear weapons appeared to be and was treated as a question of yes or no”, wrote Thomas Schelling in a piece called ‘Who Will have The Bomb’, written in 1976 following India’s first use of a ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosive (PNE). “From now on it will make more sense to describe a country’s nuclear-weapons status not with a yes or a no but with a time schedule”. When this was written, India’s first PNE was viewed by the international community as a lesson learned; it was clearly an example of sensitive technology and nuclear material for peaceful purposes being diverted towards military use. It was alleged that the Indian test had been carried out using plutonium from the CIRUS …

My Oxford colleague Blake Ewing makes an engaging case in favour of the UK pursuing unilateral nuclear disarmament — that is, scrapping the planned replacement programme for the Royal Navy’s Vanguard-class submarines, which currently carry the Trident D5 missile —  as a solution to the country’s fiscal travails. Blake and I agree on many things. The folly of cutting the BBC World Service, one of the UK’s unique sources of global influence, is one. The wisdom — or lack thereof — of pursuing or retaining nuclear weapons as a status symbol is another. The merits of avoiding doctoral dissertation work by engaging in procrastinatory blogging would appear to be a third. However, on the question of unilateral disarmament, our advice to …

In the last few weeks, there has been a flood of articles asking and seeking to answer,  ‘What is Iran thinking?’. It is an important question and I certainly don’t have an answer. But to try and understand Iran’s motives, we need to put its actions in the social and political context of the norms of the current non-proliferation ‘regime’ and the nuclear reality of today’s world. The media discourse on Iran and nukes should bring to the forefront an old but significant question about the relevance (or rather the irrelevance) of nuclear weapons and the failings of the non-prolifeation regime. This are not new queries. But as much as it sounds like old wine in a new bottle, we …