Nuclear Issues

Nick Burns, professor at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses Trump administration dealings with geopolitical events. He speaks with Bloomberg's David Westin on 'Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas.' 

In this installation of 'Conversations in Diplomacy,' recorded during the Future of Diplomacy Project's annual Europe Week series, guests Muriel Rouyer and Boris Ruge speak with Professor Nicholas Burns about the rise of populism in Europe, the potential outcomes of upcoming elections in France and Germany, and the effect of such factors on the transatlantic relationship.

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.

The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide has been produced in the interest of contributing to informed Congressional review and public discourse on a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It provides a concise description of the agreement and the accompanying UN Security Council Resolution 2231. It also includes a balanced assessment of the agreement's strengths and weaknesses with respect to its central objective to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The last seven decades without war among the great powers – what historians describe as “the long peace” – is a remarkable achievement. “This is a rare and unusual fact if you look at the last few thousand years of history,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center and moderator of the IDEASpHERE panel “Winning the Peace.” “Furthermore, it is no accident. Wise choices by statesmen have contributed to ‘the long peace,’ which has allowed many generations to live their lives.”

The thought that what we are now witnessing in Ukraine could trigger a cascade of actions and reactions that end in war will strike most readers as fanciful. Fortunately, it is, writes Graham Allison. But we should not forget that in May 1914, the possibility that the assassination of an Archduke could produce a world war seemed almost inconceivable. History teaches that unlikely, even unimaginable events do happen.

Veteran investigative journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz addressed a seminar of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard Kennedy School on Nov. 15 on what they found during their years of research into the U.S. hunt for nuclear traffickers. Here are links to two podcast recordings from that event -- their remarks to the seminar, and the question-and-answer session with the audience, which included fellows from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School.

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, top international security reporters for the New York Times, spoke at a public seminar at the Harvard Kennedy School on Oct. 24 about their reporting on the secret campaign to pursue Al Qaeda since 9/11.

The event was jointly hosted by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The co-moderators were Stephen M. Walt, faculty chair of the International Security Program, and Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center (and a former New York Times reporter), who introduced them.

Less than a month before talks between the United States, Iran and other world powers begin, three distinguished experts met on September 16, 2009 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to discuss how the western world should handle such a controversial regime.