Talk:International Relations/International System and Strategic Weapons

Thank you for you great job ! I only have a question about the naming of this page : I don't understand why its title includes the concept of "international system"... It seems it's going to include some information about "strategic" weapons (Means of delivery, types of warheads, targeting plans, assets, etc.) but that's just "Strategic Weapons", wouldn't it be confusing to add some comments about the interaction between weapons and the international system ? Moreover, the mere term of "strategic weapons" has been criticized by authors like Colin S. Gray or Edward N. Luttwak, since what makes a weapon truly tactical or strategic is the way it is used and its target, not its technical specifications. But this is another kind of problem...--CorentinB 18:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your useful comments and observations, the page is not yet finished though....im still working on it...its going to include some info about types of warheads, means of delivery etc but also about the way in which strategic weapons are used in order to change/shift the balance of power between states-actors in the international system......im aware of this critique about the term "strategic weapons that" you mentioned and i am going include it in this page later on but "strategic weapons" is quite widely accepted as a term so i had to use it in order to categorize these types of weapons....Again, thank you very much.........--Aspiliotop 15:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You're welcome, thank you for these details. Please, so as to be as precise as possible, could you insert the (future) table of contents for this page ? Even a rough draft could be useful, so as to know what's going to be right there. Thanks in advance ! -- CorentinB 15:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

this is a good idea, i will work on a future table of contents, i hope in a few days it will be ready..........when ready it will be posted here, discussion page.......--Aspiliotop 14:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a first draft, any comments would be useful

International System and Strategic Weapons

1 Introduction

2 Nuclear Weapons

3 Offensive Ballistic Missiles 3.1 Types of Offensive Ballistic Missiles 3.2 Missile Strategic Advantages 4 Antimissile Systems 4.1 Nuclear Antimissile Systems (examples) 4.2 Antiradar Systems 5 Nuclear Balance and Deterrence 5.1 Deterrence 5.2 Mutual Deterrence 5.3 Mutual Nuclear Deterrence Epilogue- role in the International System

--Aspiliotop 20:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Well I think I'm going back to my first post here: In order to write homogenous and clear articles we should separate the weapons (ballistic missiles, BMDs, warheads, etc.) and the theoretical constructions like deterrence. By the way, I've already found an article entitled "Nuclear strategy" included in the School of Strategic Studies curriculum. Why not editing this page Nuclear Strategy, since it's already part of a greater project ? --CorentinB 21:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

yes, further separation is needed, this is only a first draft and clearly has to be improoved.......please dont be afraid to edit it too......i agree that the "Nuclear Strategy" page may need editing too but should also be maintained this page....the reason is that we may be talking about similar issues but the approach is different......The term International System suggests an International Relations point of view which may be quite different from the one that can be found in Strategic Studies....Terms like hegemonic state/war, balance of power etc which belong more in an International Relations context are not common in Strategic Studies or are used in a different way....also strategic weapons consist a wider category than nuclear weapons and we cant really add strategic weapons under the headline "nuclear strategy" so serious editing should be done in that case.......but i think this issue should be discussed in the Nuclear Strategy discussion page.......waiting for your important suggestions.......--Aspiliotop 22:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)