ABSTRACT
Security assurances have long been a feature of international efforts to prevent the horizontal spread of nuclear-weapon capabilities to additional countries of control. Jeffrey Knopf describes assurances as promises given through “declarations or signals meant to convey a commitment to take or refrain from taking certain actions in the future.” 1 Specifically, he defines them as “attempts by one state or set of states to convince another state or set of states that the senders either will not cause or will not allow the recipients’ security to be harmed.” 2 In the nuclear context, then, security assurances entail commitments made by one or more states to take, or to refrain from, particular actions with the aim of influencing the strategic calculus of another state, or states, in order to keep them off the nuclear-weapon path.
