Nuclear Issues

Why do we think Vladimir Putin will not use “the bomb” when there is so much evidence that he will?

To begin to appreciate what President Biden, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, CIA Director Bill Burns, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan understand that most of the press and talking heads who have been discounting nuclear risks posed by the war in Ukraine don’t, it is useful to consider answers to seven questions.

Kennedy’s statecraft in the missile crisis provides a rich source of clues that can help illuminate the challenge the United States now faces, and the choices President Joe Biden is making.

As the best documented major crisis in history, in substantial part because Kennedy secretly taped the deliberations in which he and his closest advisers were weighing choices they knew could lead to a catastrophic war, the Cuban missile crisis has become the canonical case study in nuclear statecraft. Over the decades since, key lessons from the crisis have been adapted and applied by the successors of Kennedy and Khrushchev to inform fateful choices.

Simon Saradzhyan was invited to publicly brief the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee addressing the adequacy of strategies to prevent, counter, and respond to nuclear terrorism, and identify technical, policy, and resource gaps. The consensus study is a congressionally mandated analysis included in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (Section 1299I) sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy).  Nearly 60 stakeholders concerned about this topic from the Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, State Department, National Security Council, US Congress, the National Labs, and many non-governmental organizations were in attendance. The briefings are available at the NAS event website. Video of the presentation can be found here.

• U.S.-Russia Elbe Group Maintains Focus on Threat of Nuclear Terrorism.
• Former Chernobyl Plant Manager Bryukhanov Dies.
• Matthew Bunn on Threat to Nuclear and Radiological Transports.
• On 9/11 Anniversary Russian Officials Call for Resumption of U.S.-Russian CT Cooperation.
• Experts Weigh in on 9/11 Anniversary.
• U.S. and Norway Agree to Eliminate All of Norway’s HEU.
• Two Soviet Nuclear Submarine Reactors Located.
• Russian Security Council: Terrorists Remain Interested in NBC.
• IAEA Adopts Resolutions on Nuclear Security, NS Center Planned.
• Allison on Risk of Mega-terrorist Attack After U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan.
• Arbatov Warns of Enduring Threat of Nuclear Terrorism to Russia in His New Volume.
• Russia’s New Security Strategy Drops References to CT Partnership With U.S.
• NNSA’s Non-Proliferation Budget to Decrease in ’22, Provides for US and Russian Visits.
• Should U.S.-Russian Interaction in Cyberspace Involve CT? 
• Russia’s NPP Operator Conducts Emergency Preparedness Exercise.
• Putin and Biden Discuss Terrorist Threat Emanating from Afghanistan, but No Deal.
• U.S. Experts on Ensuring Access to Neutrons While Reducing Nuclear Terrorism Risks.
• Beebe Weighs in on U.S.-Russian CT Interaction.
• Duo Detained for Alleged Attempt to Sell Americium-241.
• 12th GUMO Guard’s Sentence Upheld.
• NDAA-Mandated Group to Identify Nuclear Terrorism Risks.
• Belfer’s MTA Hosts Conference on Lessons of Fukushima and Chernobyl.
• Russia Withdraws from Uranium Hexafluoride Transportation Deal with U.S.
• Bell: U.S. Needs to Convince Russia on Contending With Nuclear Terrorism Threat.
• U.S. and Canada Complete Repatriation of HEU Material.
• Siegfried Hecker Outlines his Vision of Future for Nuclear Security Cooperation.
• Hackers Breach U.S. Nuclear Agency.
• Tobey on Assassinations of Nuclear Scientists and Terrorists.
• Rosatom Has Checked Nuclear Sites, Following a Tip on Terrorism from U.S.

Jayita Sarkar explains why the Biden administration needs to re-conceptualize nuclear terrorism and act quickly.

President Trump’s trip Sunday to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and his historic decision to cross briefly into North Korea was a made-for-TV diplomatic spectacular. But it was also a test of whether personal diplomacy can trump (so to speak) longstanding definitions of a country’s national interests by persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to end his nuclear weapons program.

The following is a selection of military-political lessons gleaned mostly from the recollections of Soviet strategists who were involved in making and executing the fateful decision to send troops to Afghanistan, as well as from writings by some of post-Soviet Russia’s prominent military analysts. Where possible, the author made an effort to relay these strategists’ analysis of the failures and successes of the intervention because he felt that such assessments, based on first-hand experience, are not always given their due in English-language literature on the subject.