Nuclear Issues

If you think like a realist, many confusing aspects of world politics become easier to understand, writes Stephen Walt.

Belfer Center Director and former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter talks about pulling out of the Iran Deal, North Korea, and more on CNN New Day with Chris Cuomo.

The authors lay out their case for the United States maintaining a coherent nonproliferation policy in the Middle East and beyond to limit the damage to nuclear nonproliferation efforts and offer three steps for strengthening nonproliferation after withdrawal from the JCPOA.

Mahsa Rouhi compares and contrasts the situations with Iran and North Korea and warns of the consequences.

Stephen M. Walt asks the following question: Is the real problem that Washington can't trust others, or rather that other states can't trust it? 

Ronald Reagan invoked the Russian proverb “trust, but verify” when negotiating nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union, but in recent negotiations with Iran and upcoming talks with North Korea, our North Star was and must be “don’t trust, and verify, verify, verify.”

John R. Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, has never met a war he didn’t want.

Fmr. Amb. Nicholas Burns joins Morning Joe to discuss the naming of John Bolton as the new national security adviser. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., also joins the conversation.

As George Orwell once observed, some ideas are so absurd that only the intelligentsia could hold them; ordinary people would not be so foolish. A case in point is a reported proposal to allow the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium and reprocess spent reactor fuel—two activities that could bring it within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons—under a developing civil nuclear cooperation agreement.

If the Trump administration is really thinking about trying to give North Korea a “bloody nose” with a limited military attack, it should look carefully at Israel’s experience — which shows the possible benefits of a quick strike but also the difficulty of keeping a lid on a conflict once it starts.