Europe's Nuclear Umbrella

Abstract: Since the mid-2010s, the collapse of key arms control treaties between great powers has unraveled the post–Cold War security architecture in Europe, heightening nuclear risks to Europe. At the same time, a fresh movement emerged, calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons, due to their catastrophic humanitarian consequences. European policy-makers found themselves between a rock and a hard place – between the global strategic conundrum calling for growing attention to nuclear deterrence, and domestic audiences demanding just the opposite. Europe's Nuclear Umbrella is about how they navigated this balance. Building on combined insights from public administration, comparative politics, foreign policy analysis, and international relations, Michal Onderco offers a novel theory which reflects the complexity of democratic foreign policy-making in the twenty-first century.

Michal Onderco is Professor of International Relations at Erasmus University Rotterdam and affiliate at Peace Research Center Prague. His research is focused on international security, with particular focus on politics of nuclear weapons.

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