Nuclear Issues

The first 100 days are key to understanding where any presidency is going. Now more than a third of the way into that timeframe, how is President Joe Biden doing in the international policy arena? The World’s host Marco Werman speaks with Nicholas Burns, a former US under secretary of state for political affairs and a former ambassador to NATO.

Putin is rumored to prefer focusing on foreign policy, where the Kremlin has proved itself to be a skilled player, while finding structural problems at home too boring to focus on. However, unless these are solved, he or his successor will continue to confront the reality that Russia remains too far behind the United States and China economically and demographically to be a true peer to these countries in the changing global order.

As we are all well aware, the original Cold War, which officially ended 40 years ago this month, featured a number of close calls that almost turned it into a hot war. Thankfully, neither the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nor the Able Archer exercise of 1983 (nor any other perilous incidents), led to a war between Washington and Moscow. More recently, however, respected statesmen have again begun to sound alarms. “Not since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has the risk of a U.S.-Russian confrontation involving the use of nuclear weapons been as high as it is today,” former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn warned in a recent article in Foreign Affairs. I have expressed some doubts about this proposition, but it is nevertheless worth asking what it is—other than the fear of mutually assured destruction—that keeps the U.S. and Russia from stumbling into a war today or tomorrow. Part of the answer lies in the bilateral and multilateral agreements specifically designed to prevent incidents that could escalate into a war. 

Former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn argue in a new Foreign Affairs article that the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. is higher now than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

With the historic INF Treaty more than likely to terminate, and the future of New START in doubt, what guiding principles for interstate nuclear arms control can we hope for? Of eight U.S., Russian, European and Chinese experts surveyed by Russia Matters, most agree that bilateral agreements between the world’s two nuclear superpowers still have a role to play in any new arms control regime, but they differed considerably on the nature of that role.

By turning established diplomatic practice on its head and making an unscheduled stop to shake hands with Kim Jong Un in the DMZ, President Trump demonstrated his readiness to go the extra mile and beyond to meet the challenge his predecessor, Barack Obama, told him would define his presidency.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns discusses President Trump's use of the Logan Act as a diversion tactic and the state of U.S.-Iranian relations.