Nuclear Issues

New sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council on September 11 in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test are “not significant enough,” according to R. Nicholas Burns, an Atlantic Council board member who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the George W. Bush administration.

Sanctions must be part of a “patient long-term strategy” that includes deterrence, working closely with allies, and negotiations, said Burns, laying out the United States’ options for dealing with the North Korean crisis.  

What can we expect from Rouhani’s second term? The large majority with which he won does not change the basic fact that the number one decision-maker in Iran remains Supreme Leader Khamenei. Ephraim Kam writes to Iran Matters that it is doubtful that Rouhani’s large majority will translate into greater power vis-à-vis Khamenei and the regime’s radical wing, as the president will likely continue to depend on them.

Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, visiting scholar at the Belfer Center's Iran Project, sheds light on some of the most important economic topics relevant to the 2017 Iranian presidential election. 

With the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) now over, policymakers are thinking about next steps to address nuclear security. The NSS process has progressed since its first installment in 2010; yet, the Middle East, a key region where nuclear security is of tremendous importance, remains underrepresented.

Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age assembles a group of distinguished scholars to grapple with the matter of how the United States, its allies, and its friends must size up the strategies, doctrines, and force structures currently taking shape if they are to design responses that reinforce deterrence amid vastly more complex strategic circumstances.

Despite continuing efforts to convince North Korea to relinquish its nuclear capability, it appears increasingly unlikely that it will ever do so. Pyongyang might be willing to curtail or freeze certain parts of the program but the likelihood of North Korean denuclearization is quickly fading. With Pyongyang likely to retain some level of nuclear-weapons capability, analysis turns to an assessment of how these weapons might be integrated into its defense posture. Using deterrence theory as the analytical framework, this chapter examines possible avenues for North Korea's nuclear weapons strategy and doctrine.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many observers feared that terrorists and rogue states would obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or knowledge about how to build them from the vast Soviet nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons complex. The United States launched a major effort to prevent former Soviet WMD experts, suddenly without salaries, from peddling their secrets. In Our Own Worst Enemy, Sharon Weiner chronicles the design, implementation, and evolution of four U.S. programs that were central to this nonproliferation policy and assesses their successes and failures.

Winner of the 2012 Louis Brownlow Book Award

Matthew Kroenig's book, Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, was published by Cornell University Press. Kroenig argues that nearly every country with a nuclear weapons arsenal received substantial help at some point from a more advanced nuclear state. Understanding why states provide sensitive nuclear assistance not only adds to our knowledge of international politics but also aids in international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.

Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East...and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest.