The collection opens with a contribution by Howe, who assesses the moral arguments surrounding the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Drawing on realist, communitarian, and just war perspectives, Howe searches for an overlapping normative consensus on universal human wrongs—acts that, in his framing, shock the conscience of humankind—beyond the framework of the responsibility to protect. His conclusion is nuanced: although the possession of nuclear weapons is not universally prohibited, there is broad agreement across the major theoretical traditions of international relations on the desirability of their elimination and the rejection of their use.

That consensus, however, sits uneasily beside a persistent belief that the only historical use of nuclear weapons shortened the war and saved lives. Howe’s analysis therefore exposes a central puzzle: how can mainstream normative theories reject nuclear use as morally unacceptable while simultaneously accepting that the single instance of nuclear use was beneficial? Resolving that tension is the intellectual engine of the entire Research Topic, and it is Kivimäki’s own contribution that attempts the demolition work.

Kivimäki interrogates the premises underlying the mainstream view that the U.S. nuclear attacks shortened the war. Using a game-theoretical reconstruction of the bargaining dynamics at the end of the U.S.–Japanese war, and drawing on documentary evidence of decision-making on both sides, he argues that the conventional interpretation is logically flawed. The flaw, in his account, is one of perspective: the mainstream narrative adopts an agent-centric view—focusing on how the bombings influenced Japan—yet draws relational conclusions about the termination of a war, which necessarily involves both parties.

The technical core of the argument is worth unpacking. Simplified, the traditional account assumes that the bombings pushed Japan toward accepting U.S. terms of peace, treating those terms as fixed and natural. In reality, the peace bargain involved shifting positions on both sides. American possession of nuclear weapons strengthened U.S. bargaining leverage, and that leverage encouraged Washington to harden its demands. It is historically unusual for a warring party to insist on permanently disarming its opponent, rewriting its constitution, and establishing enduring military bases on its territory. Thus, while nuclear weapons may have increased Japanese willingness to concede, they simultaneously incentivized the United States to escalate its demands. The net effect on the duration of the war may therefore have been neutral. The assumption that nuclear destruction shortened the conflict, Kivimäki concludes, is far less robust than commonly believed.

The second pillar of the nuclear narrative—the claim that the precedent of nuclear terror created by the U.S. attacks has sustained great-power peace since 1945—is challenged by Kmentt. His policy-oriented critique interrogates not only the strategic logic of nuclear deterrence but also its political, legal, and moral legitimacy in light of new evidence on humanitarian harm, environmental devastation, food insecurity, health-system collapse, transboundary effects, and systemic global risks. Deterrence theory, he argues, has ignored these collective harms and relies instead on an idealized model of bargaining leverage through threats of nuclear punishment.

The technical weaknesses Kmentt identifies are substantial. When nuclear weapons generate global harm, leverage depends not on the power of the coercer but on its willingness to tolerate catastrophic consequences—a fragile foundation for security. Moreover, deterrence theory overlooks scientific insights into bounded rationality, imperfect information, misperception, and accidents, factors that fundamentally undermine the reliability of nuclear coercion. Kmentt also critiques the conceptual foundations of the theory itself, which largely reflect the perspectives of nuclear-armed states, especially the United States, thereby marginalizing the security concerns of non-nuclear states and other affected actors. His article concludes by examining alternatives to nuclear-based global security, particularly those advanced in debates surrounding the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, offering a case for rejecting nuclear weapons as the backbone of international order.

The final article in the collection turns to one of the collective harms Kmentt identifies as neglected by idealized deterrence theory: the humanitarian consequences of nuclear testing, which remains essential for maintaining credible deterrence. Vaha focuses on Pacific Island nations, which have borne the brunt of this overlooked dimension of nuclear security. She links the humanitarian harm of testing to the civilian suffering caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, challenging the state-centric conception of security embedded in deterrence theory and foregrounding human security as the ultimate criterion instead.

Her analysis also exposes the racial and colonial biases that render some humanitarian costs acceptable while others are deemed intolerable and worth defending through nuclear threats. In doing so, Vaha’s argument resonates with Achille Mbembe’s necropolitical critique, which highlights racialized distinctions between populations considered worthy of protection and those treated as expendable. It is a reminder that the ethics of nuclear weapons cannot be separated from the politics of whose lives count.

Taken together, the contributions to this Research Topic offer a rigorous, evidence-based challenge to the longstanding consensus on the supposed merits of nuclear weapons in producing global security. Confronting both the historical logic of nuclear use and the contemporary logic of nuclear deterrence, the articles collectively suggest that nuclear weapons are better understood as instruments of mass harm—and potentially as war crimes—rather than as tools of peace. Eighty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the scholarly case for rethinking the atomic narrative has rarely been sharper.

Subject of Research: Historical and ethical reassessment of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the logic of nuclear deterrence

Article Title: Editorial: Weapons of peace or war crimes? Revisiting the historical narrative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Article References: Kivimäki, T. (2026). Editorial: Weapons of peace or war crimes? Revisiting the historical narrative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Frontiers in Political Science, 8, Article 2016546. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.2016546

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2026.2016546

Keywords: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nuclear weapons, atomic bomb, nuclear deterrence, war ethics, Pacific War, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, human security, game theory, necropolitics, Frontiers in Political Science

The study’s methodology is what sets it apart from much of the existing literature on the region. Rather than offering a country-by-country descriptive tour, the authors apply a narrative review of government and institutional documents, treaty texts and peer-reviewed publications, and then compare the strategic engagement of twelve major and middle powers alongside four small and island states on a consistent set of variables. This comparative table, the authors argue, allows claims about the regional order to rest on evidence rather than assertion. They also embed a human security and small-state agency perspective within the comparative analysis itself, rather than treating it as an afterthought, and they evaluate how economic exposure translates into chokepoint vulnerability and threats to human security.

The analytical stakes are enormous because of geography. The Indian Ocean links the world’s principal energy producers in the Persian Gulf to the largest consumers in East and South Asia, and it hosts several of the busiest maritime chokepoints on Earth, including the Strait of Hormuz and the sea lanes approaching the Strait of Malacca. According to data cited in the study from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and United Nations trade bodies, disruptions at these narrow passages ripple directly into global inflation and supply chains, as recent disturbances around Hormuz have demonstrated. Whoever secures, or threatens, these arteries holds leverage over the economic life of billions of people, which explains why navies from Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, Paris, London and beyond now patrol waters that were once considered distant from their core interests.

The historical sweep of the paper reminds readers that this attention is not new. From the rise of Islam through 1750, as the economic historian K.N. Chaudhuri documented, the Indian Ocean sustained a vast commercial civilisation of monsoon-driven trade long before European arrival. The age of empire then turned the ocean into a British lake, a dominance examined by scholars such as Ashley Jackson and John Darwin. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 1890 dictum on the influence of sea power upon history, and K.M. Panikkar’s 1946 warning that Indian history had been shaped by neglect of the sea, framed the strategic anxieties that resurfaced after the Cold War, when superpower rivalry in the region, chronicled as early as the 1970s and 1980s, gave way to today’s multipolar contest.

What has changed is the number and variety of players. The study catalogues an extraordinary range of strategic engagements: the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy and the AUKUS partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom; China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its so-called string of pearls of ports and facilities, a concept first analysed by Gurpreet Khurana in 2008; India’s maritime security strategy and its expanding web of agreements, from a comprehensive strategic partnership with Australia to coast guard harbour development in the Maldives and a maritime rescue centre with Sri Lanka; France’s self-declared resident power role in the southwest Indian Ocean; Japan’s economic cooperation in the Middle East and Africa; and the growing naval ambitions of middle powers such as Türkiye, which is preparing its first aircraft carrier. Even Russia and Saudi Arabia have sought footholds, from a proposed Red Sea naval base deal to aid diplomacy across the region’s least developed countries.

Against this crowded field, the paper’s central mechanism comes into focus. Infrastructure loans, port construction, coast guard vessels, hydrographic surveys and security assistance all arrive with strategic strings attached, and the states that accept them, small island developing states such as the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, gain real capabilities they could not otherwise afford. Yet the same dependence concentrates exposure. When external powers compete, the littoral states become arenas for base negotiations, debt leverage and diplomatic pressure, as the abandoned Chinese-linked project in the United Arab Emirates after American intervention illustrated. The authors’ testable proposition is that this competition does not distribute risk evenly: it accrues precisely where fiscal buffers, maritime domain awareness and regulatory control are thinnest.

The human security dimension sharpens the argument further. The study draws on research into coastal hazard vulnerability in India, post-disaster mobilities in small island developing states, and disaster risk reduction two decades after the Indian Ocean tsunami, to show that maritime insecurity is not only about warships. Non-traditional threats, including piracy, trafficking, illegal fishing, climate-driven displacement and the fragility of undersea communication cables, which Observer Research Foundation analyses have flagged as an underappreciated security domain, bear directly on livelihoods. For island states whose economies and very territories are exposed to rising seas, as adaptation studies from Mauritius demonstrate, the line between strategic competition and human survival is thin indeed.

The paper also engages with contested sovereignty questions that continue to shape the region’s legal geography. The International Court of Justice’s 2019 advisory opinion on the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, and subsequent negotiations over the archipelago’s future, show how decolonisation, base politics and great-power strategy remain entangled. Regional institutions such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association offer a forum for cooperation, but the authors suggest that minilateral groupings and middle-power diplomacy, examined in recent work on the region’s security architecture, are increasingly where the real bargaining happens.

Perhaps the study’s most policy-relevant conclusion is its reframing of stability itself. The authors argue that regional stability depends as much on maritime governance and economic cooperation as on the balance between great powers. In other words, more carrier groups and more basing agreements will not, by themselves, make the Indian Ocean safer. What is needed, on their account, is investment in the governance capacity of littoral states, so that the countries sitting on the world’s most valuable sea lanes are not also the ones least equipped to manage the risks that competition generates. That includes coordinated approaches to chokepoint security, debt transparency in port financing, and human-centred frameworks that treat fishermen, coastal communities and island populations as stakeholders rather than bystanders.

For a region that carries the bulk of intercontinental trade and the energy lifelines of Asia, the message of this analysis is a sobering one. The Indian Ocean’s geopolitical moment has arrived, celebrated in strategy documents from Delhi to Washington to Beijing, but the costs of that moment are being quietly externalised onto its smallest and most vulnerable members. Whether the coming decade produces a governed, cooperative ocean or a fragmented arena of competing spheres will depend, the study suggests, not on who wins the rivalry, but on whether the states that host it are finally given the tools to shape it.

Subject of Research: Geopolitical competition, maritime security and human security in the Indian Ocean region

Article Title: The Indian Ocean at the forefront of contemporary world geopolitics: a conceptual and policy analysis

Article References: Prabhu, S. S., & Mohapatra, N. (2026). The Indian Ocean at the forefront of contemporary world geopolitics: a conceptual and policy analysis. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 487. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01771-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01771-4

Keywords: Indian Ocean, geopolitics, maritime security, chokepoints, human security, small island states, Indo-Pacific, China-India rivalry, maritime governance, sea lines of communication, Belt and Road Initiative, strategic competition

The scientific rationale behind the study begins with a fundamental measurement problem. Climate change adaptation, as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate effects in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. Yet adaptation outcomes are inherently context dependent, varying with local priorities, values, and environmental conditions, which makes them notoriously difficult to define, measure, and compare across countries and sectors. No universal set of indicators has emerged to evaluate adaptation consistently. International climate governance has responded by pushing for measurable indicators through the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Goal on Adaptation under the Paris Agreement, but these global frameworks provide broad directions rather than detailed, sector-specific metrics that can be directly applied within national institutional contexts. The new study tackles precisely this operationalization gap, using Thailand as its testing ground.

Thailand provides a particularly instructive case. The country faces a wide array of climate-related hazards, including flooding, heat stress, drought, and sea-level rise, risks that have been formally recognized in its National Adaptation Plan. The plan identifies impacts on water resources, urban systems, infrastructure, ecosystems, and vulnerable communities as key adaptation challenges requiring coordinated responses across sectors and administrative levels. Many Thai cities, especially those in low-lying river basins and coastal zones, are highly exposed to these hazards, while governance and planning systems have historically struggled to coordinate adaptation across different levels of administration. Vulnerability is also unevenly distributed: metropolitan areas, medium-sized cities, and smaller communities differ substantially in infrastructure capacity, governance arrangements, and socioeconomic conditions, meaning that climate risk does not fall equally across the settlement hierarchy.

Despite these policy commitments, the study identifies a critical weakness in Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan: it provides only broad strategic directions and does not specify systematic, sector-specific indicators for assessing adaptation outcomes at the community and household levels. Previous research has likewise noted that Thailand continues to lack operational indicators capable of translating adaptation policies into measurable outcomes. Existing monitoring frameworks, both in Thailand and internationally, tend to emphasize administrative outputs, such as plans and projects implemented, rather than whether those interventions actually reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience within communities and households. This is the methodological gap the new framework is engineered to close.

The methodology is as notable as the framework itself. The study adopts a qualitative and conceptual research approach built on four iterative steps that move from global evidence to context-specific indicators. First, a comprehensive literature review drew on the Global Goal on Adaptation indicator framework, UNFCCC guidance, IPCC reports, and peer-reviewed studies on climate adaptation, urban resilience, disaster risk reduction, and adaptive social protection. Two GGA indicators anchored the work: increasing the resilience of infrastructure and human settlements to climate impacts to ensure continuous essential services, and reducing adverse effects of climate change on poverty eradication and livelihoods, particularly through adaptive social protection. The review also incorporated Sustainable Development Goal 11, which targets inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities, and Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan, which served as the primary national policy reference.

The second and third steps grounded the framework in Thailand’s administrative reality. Candidate indicators were mapped against the national policy context and assessed for institutional applicability and feasibility. To ensure institutional relevance, seven government agencies were purposively selected based on their statutory mandates under the Reorganization of Ministries, Sub Ministries, and Departments Act of 2002, spanning the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. These included the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, the Department of Community Development, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, the Department of Social Development and Welfare, the National Housing Authority, and the Department of Women’s Affairs and Family Development. Semi-structured stakeholder consultation meetings were conducted with 38 agency representatives, followed by a refinement workshop with 11 representatives, providing cross-agency dialogue on institutional responsibilities, data availability, and implementation challenges. Consultation data were analyzed using a framework analysis approach, and candidate indicators were retained only if they satisfied four criteria: alignment with the GGA and the National Adaptation Plan, fit within statutory agency responsibilities, confirmed data availability or feasible collection, and suitability for routine reporting to the Department of Climate Change and Environment, which compiles Thailand’s adaptation progress reporting to international platforms. A final expert review involving 18 participants, including executives, technical staff, and external experts from sectors ranging from agriculture to public health, refined the framework iteratively.

The resulting framework operationalizes climate adaptation through five interrelated dimensions: urban planning, infrastructure quantity and quality, disaster preparedness and risk reduction mechanisms, social protection and resilience mechanisms, and quality of life and household resilience. The indicators span different stages of the adaptation results chain. Process indicators capture institutional arrangements and policy implementation, such as the number of comprehensive urban plans initiated and evaluated each fiscal year and the number of government buildings inspected under Bangkok’s Building Control Act. Output indicators measure immediate products of adaptation actions, including infrastructure and urban landscape improvement projects funded, urban plans updated with GIS data to support climate risk mapping, the volume of aquatic weeds removed from waterways to maintain flood conveyance capacity, flood prevention and mitigation projects, and the use of hydraulic low-carbon cement for durable, lower-carbon construction. Outcome indicators capture changes in adaptive capacity and living conditions, such as the percentage of flood prevention infrastructure meeting engineering standards, the percentage of the population receiving timely disaster warnings with a target of at least 95 percent, and the percentage of provinces with completed emergency response plans for floods, storms, and landslides.

What distinguishes the framework from conventional monitoring systems is its fifth dimension, which reaches directly into household life. Indicators track the percentage of households with secure housing tenure, durable housing, adequate environmental settings, and sufficient access to clean drinking water, as well as the percentage of households with savings of at least 100,000 baht, access to formal financial services, members possessing life and occupational skills, and preparedness for disaster response. Social protection coverage is measured through the percentage of low-income households receiving State Welfare Card benefits, overall social protection coverage, and the proportions of elderly people and people with disabilities receiving care from family, community, or institutions. A final output indicator counts housing units improved for vulnerable households, including those in informal settlements. Together these metrics reflect a conceptual argument at the heart of the study: adaptation capacity is not generated exclusively through external interventions but emerges through the interaction between institutional support and the resources, capabilities, and security conditions available to households. Public policies and infrastructure investments provide enabling conditions, while household-level capacities determine whether those interventions can effectively reduce vulnerability.

The discussion within the paper situates the framework within broader debates on adaptation measurement. Existing international approaches differ in emphasis: the GGA provides a global structure for tracking progress across countries but does not prescribe how broad objectives should be operationalized in specific sectors, while SDG 11 focuses on sustainable settlements within the wider development agenda, and conventional urban resilience indicator systems tend to prioritize urban capacities and governance preparedness over household-level vulnerability. The proposed framework instead operationalizes international adaptation priorities into sector-specific indicators explicitly aligned with institutional mandates, administrative responsibilities, and national monitoring systems. This governance-sensitive approach matters especially in developing countries, where adaptation monitoring systems are still evolving and responsibilities remain fragmented across sectors and agencies. In such contexts, indicator development is shaped not only by conceptual definitions of resilience but by the practical capacity of institutions to collect, interpret, and use adaptation-related information.

The framework is candid about its limits. Because it relies primarily on existing administrative data, which vary in availability, quality, and consistency across agencies, some dimensions of household resilience, including informal coping strategies, social networks, and community-based adaptive capacities, remain difficult to capture quantitatively. Weighting, aggregation, and empirical validation were beyond the study’s scope, meaning further work is needed before the framework can function as a composite adaptation index. Impact indicators, which would require long-term monitoring and robust evidence linking interventions to changes in climate-related risks and losses, are not yet systematically incorporated and represent an important direction for future refinement. The study also acknowledges that perspectives from ecology, economics, culture, and Indigenous knowledge systems could identify additional dimensions beyond its current scope. Still, as national adaptation priorities and monitoring requirements evolve, the framework provides the structural foundation on which outcome- and impact-based assessment can later be built, and it demonstrates how sector-specific indicator systems can serve as intermediate tools linking international commitments, such as the Global Goal on Adaptation, to measurable actions by national institutions, offering a model that other developing countries facing similar institutional fragmentation may adapt to their own governance contexts.