Nuclear Issues

In this new report, Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?, Matthew Bunn, Martin Malin, Nickolas Roth, and William Tobey provide a global reality check on nuclear security. They note that effective and sustainable nuclear security capable of addressing plausible threats is the single most effective chokepoint preventing terrorists from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

An audio recording of a public talk by Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.

The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”—the nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran—will enter the implementation phase within months. US policy makers must now consider how best to strengthen the accord as implementation approaches, and in how best engage Iran as implementation proceeds. In this discussion, nonproliferation experts William H. Tobey and Matthew Bunn discuss how to strike an effective balance between cooperation and confrontation in dealing with Iran on the nuclear agreement and beyond. The discussion was moderated by Martin B. Malin and followed by Q&A with the audience.

After Professor Nikos Passas (Northeastern University) led an MTA Seminar on February 25, titled "Illicit Flows: What They Hide and How to Counter Them", MTA Associate Aaron Arnold interviewed Pasass on Iran's Verification Regime.

In a Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE session titled "Challenges to US Global Leadership," Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, David Gergen, David Ignatius, and Meghan O’Sullivan discussed challenges as well as opportunities facing the United States. Burns moderated the session.

Challenges include the rise of China and the future of the U.S.-China relationship, the crises taking place around the world, and the reputation of the U.S. worldwide. An unexpected opportunity is the increase in available energy sources in the United States.

This seminar examined the prospects for further nuclear arms reductions between the United States and Russia, including the possibility that negotiations might be expanded to weapons not limited by the New START Treaty. The seminar covered U.S. and Russian differences over missile defense and how those might be resolved to allow a cooperative NATO-Russia missile defense arrangement for Europe.

India is doing its part to put pressure on Iran to end that country's nuclear program, according to Nirupama Rao, the Indian Ambassador to the United States. She sat down with the Future of Diplomacy Project on February 17th, 2012, to discuss India's foreign policy record and vision.

Ambassador Pickering, in a February 2012 interview with the Future of Diplomacy Project, argued that diplomacy can succeed in Iran, but will need time to be able to do so.

Independence, peace, and cooperation -  according to Zhang Yesui, Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations, these three concepts are the cornerstones of Chinese foreign policy in the 21^st century.

The United States and China need to move beyond a Cold War mindset and reframe their relationship as “a community of interests” in which they work together as partners, the Chinese ambassador to the United States said in a policy address at Harvard Kennedy School. Ambassador Zhang Yesui spoke to an overflow audience in the Wiener Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 12, in an event hosted by the Future of Diplomacy Project in the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Zhang also took questions from the audience after his speech in an off-the-record discussion moderated by R. Nicholas Burns, professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics and director of the Future of Diplomacy Project.