ABSTRACT Common knowledge has it that the end of the Cold War allowed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to push the nuclear genie back into the bottle. But whilst NATO members have reduced the alliance’s practical, military reliance on nuclear arms, their commitment to nuclear defence as a shared, symbolic enterprise has in fact grown increasingly explicit over time, with NATO declaring itself a ‘nuclear alliance’ in 2010. The following analysis develops two arguments. First, political responsibility for nuclear defence has shifted from individual member-states to the alliance as such; and, second, this development has been fuelled by member-states’ recurrent need to deflect criticism and adapt to the strengthening of humanitarian and anti-nuclear norms. The pulverisation of responsibility for nuclear defence in NATO has enabled pro-nuclear actors to justify costly nuclear modernisation programmes as acts of ‘alliance solidarity’ whilst exercising rhetorical coercion over advocates of denuclearisation.

中文翻译：

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分散负担：北约如何成为“核”联盟

摘要 众所周知，冷战结束后，北大西洋公约组织 (NATO) 将核精灵推回了瓶子里。但是，尽管北约成员国减少了该联盟对核武器的实际军事依赖，但随着时间的推移，他们对核防御作为一项共同的、象征性的事业的承诺实际上变得越来越明确，北约在 2010 年宣布自己为“核联盟”。 以下内容分析得出两个论点。首先，核防御的政治责任已经从单个成员国转移到了联盟本身；其次，成员国经常需要转移批评并适应人道主义和反核规范的加强，这推动了这一发展。