Secretary Mattis says deterrence is dynamic, changing "from year to year, from decade to decade".
Russia would not have launched its aggression against Ukraine if Kyiv had not renounced nuclear weapons in 1994, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said at the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, an UNIAN correspondent reports.
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) Oleksandr Turchynov says that Russia is ready to escalate tensions with the West up to launching a full-scale war, as evidenced by massive nuclear strike tests within the Russian-Belarusian Zapad (West) 2017 war games, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
A new study in Environment Magazine has concluded that even a “small” nuclear war involving fewer than five A-bombs (arguably the most likely scenario in 21st-century warfare) could spark a “nuclear Autumn” that causes widespread damage to land-based and aquatic ecosystems, IFL Science reports.
A new report by SIPRI says the pace of nuclear arms reduction has slowed, in part due to efforts to modernize delivery systems, such as missiles. The data shows states aren't prepared to "give up their nuclear arsenals," according to Deutsche Welle.
The Pentagon on Thursday declined to comment on an NBC report about possible pre-emptive action against North Korea, saying, as a policy, it does not discuss future operations "nor publicly speculate on possible scenarios."