Looming decisions on arms control and strategic weapon procurements in a range of nuclear-armed states are set to shape the international security environment for decades to come. In this context, it is crucial to understand the concepts, theories, and debates that condition nuclear policymaking. This review essay dissects the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the authoritative intellectual history of its subject. Using this widely acclaimed work as a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies, we interrogate the field's underlying assumptions and question the correspondence between theory and practice in the realm of nuclear policy. The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence. While this approach is useful for analysing the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, it risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping nuclear discourse. In the conclusion, we lay out avenues for future scholarship.

This article argues that, despite an ongoing global revolution in urban demography, most Western military research into urbanization is narrowly focused and remains disengaged from the interdisciplinary expertise of urban studies. Because so many cities are sui generis in terms of their governance, architectural design and demographic composition, the art of war must seek closer interaction with the science of cities. In the coming years, in order to control armed violence and reduce casualties across an urbanizing world, military analysts must seek greater cooperation with urban specialists. The common aim must be to develop an urban-oriented strand of strategic studies that is firmly based on a sophisticated understanding of the ecology of cities. Such a cooperative approach will assist in the development of military methods of operating in cities using appropriate rules of engagement that embrace international humanitarian law.