Nuclear Terrorism and the Obama Administration’s Nuclear Strategy

　　Abstract: With changes in the international nuclear security environment and increased recognition of the threat presented by nuclear terrorism, in order to enhance America’s nuclear arms control institutions and its strategic need for discursive hegemony in this area, to intervene in the domestic politics of other states and to better serve the global and regional strategic needs of the US, the Obama Administration has given antinuclear terrorism policy a higher place visàvis America’s nuclear strategy. However, given the narrow nature of how this policy serves America’s arms control policy and its discursive hegemony, the following shortcoming are inevitable: the cause and effect relationship is reversed in the Obama administration’s antinuclear terrorism policy; the objectives of the Obama Administration’s antinuclear terrorism policy are misguided to an extent; there are internal inconsistencies in the American nuclear policy. Precisely because of these shortcomings, the anti-nuclear terrorism policy of the Obama Administration inevitably impacts international anti-nuclear terrorism efforts in more than one way.

　　Author: Jiang Zhenfei is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Management of Zhejiang University