Nuclear Issues

During the Future of Diplomacy Project's 2017 'Europe Week' series, diplomats, scholars, and policymakers visited the Kennedy School to examine Europe's greatest challenges. 

Matthew Bunn, Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Principal Investigator at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom, sits down with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) to talk about everything nuclear—from the nuclear football to the best way to prevent nuclear smuggling.

Senior Fellow Will Tobey speaks with WBEZ 91.5 Chicago about the Obama administration's nuclear security accomplishments ahead of President Obama's fourth and final nuclear security summit.

What can the United States do to thwart the nuclear ambitions of its allies? Dr. Kogan analyzes past cases where the United States was able to leverage its alliance commitments to stop friendly states from going nuclear. He then asks what lessons these past nuclear negotiations hold for today.  In the coming decade, key U.S. allies in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) and East Asia (South Korea, Japan) may consider reducing their reliance on U.S. security guarantees by acquiring independent nuclear deterrents.  In conversation with Project Director Kevin Ryan, Dr. Kogan discusses Washington's options in confronting these contemporary allies with nascent nuclear appetites.

A series of high profile scandals in the US nuclear missile force have raised questions over security. In this HKS PolicyCast, MTA Research Associate Nick Roth explains the problem, what it means for nuclear security, what has been done to remedy the situation and how it might impact the Obama administration’s efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.

In 1985, researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School published a book called “Hawks, Doves, and Owls,” and gave it an ambitious subtitle: “An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War.” Those scholars gathered again at the School on Monday (May 16) for a seminar on the current challenges in avoiding nuclear war — and to marvel at just how drastically the nuclear threat has morphed in the two decades since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.