Nuclear Issues

34 Items

Gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment recovered en route to Libya in 2003.

U.S. Department of Energy

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Nonproliferation Emperor Has No Clothes: The Gas Centrifuge, Supply-Side Controls, and the Future of Nuclear Proliferation

| Spring 2014

Policymakers have long focused on preventing nuclear weapons proliferation by controlling technology. Even developing countries, however, may now possess the technical ability to create nuclear weapons. The history of gas centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective. To reduce the demand for nuclear weapons, policymakers will have look toward the cultural, normative, and political organization of the world.

teaser image

Magazine Article - GlobalPost

Iran nuclear deal: 3 Questions with Ambassador Nick Burns

| November 24, 2013

Iran and six world powers clinched a deal on Sunday curbing the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for initial sanctions relief. Sounds pretty good, but of course nothing is that simple and already Israel has called it a "historic mistake." Which is it? And what's going to happen next? Harvard Kennedy School professor and GlobalPost senior foreign affairs columnist, Nicholas Burns, weighs in.

President Barack Obama signs the New START Treaty in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Feb. 2, 2011.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Nuclear Weapons 2011: Momentum Slows, Reality Returns

| January/February 2012

In the Doomsday Clock issue of the Bulletin, the author takes a look at five events that unfolded in 2011 and that seem certain to cast a powerful shadow in months and years to come. No new breakthroughs occurred, the author writes, adding that 2012 could be a much more difficult year.

A supporter of Pakistan Muslim League-N party arranges an oil lamp at the model of Chaghi Mountain, the site of Pakistan’s nuclear test, in connection with the celebrations of its 10th anniversary, May 27, 2008 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Daedalus

The Minimum Deterrent & Beyond

| Fall 2009

"...[A] primary goal in the next decades must be to remove this risk of near global self-destruction by drastically reducing nuclear forces to a level where this outcome is not possible, but where a deterrent value is preserved — in other words, to a level of minimum deterrence. This conception was widely discussed in the early years of the nuclear era, but it drowned in the Cold War flood of weaponry. No matter how remote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now — despite its being so vivid only a few decades ago — the elimination of this risk, for this century and centuries to come, must be a primary driver for radical reductions in nuclear weapons."

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, right sitting, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, left sitting, sign a nuclear cooperation agreement at a ceremony in Rome's Villa Madama residence, Feb. 24, 2009.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements

| Summer 2009

Matthew Fuhrmann's article "Spreading Temptation: Proliferation and Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreements," was published by in the Summer 2009 issue of International Security. In his article, Dr. Fuhrmann argues "Peaceful nuclear cooperation—the transfer of nuclear technology, materials, or know-how from one state to another for peaceful purposes—leads to the spread of nuclear weapons. With a renaissance in nuclear power on the horizon, major suppliers, including the United States, should reconsider their willingness to assist other countries in developing peaceful nuclear programs."

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay

    Authors:
  • William C. Potter
  • Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova
| Summer 2008

Although projections of nuclear proliferation abound, they rarely are founded on empirical research or guided by theory. Even fewer studies are informed by a comparative perspective. The two books under review—The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy, by Jacques Hymans, and Nuclear Logics: Alternative Paths in East Asia and the Middle East, by Etel Solingen, are welcome exceptions to this general state of affairs, and represent the cutting edge of nonproliferation research. Both works challenge conventional conceptions of the sources of nuclear weapons decisions and offer new insights into why past predictions of rapid proliferation failed to materialize and why current prognoses about rampant proliferation are similarly flawed. While sharing a number of common features, including a focus on subsystemic determinants of national behavior, the books differ in their methodology, level of analysis, receptivity to multicausal explanations, and assumptions about decisionmaker rationality and the revolutionary nature of the decision. Where one author emphasizes the importance of the individual leader’s national identity conception in determining a state’s nuclear path, the other explains nuclear decisions primarily with regard to the political-economic orientation of the ruling coalition. Notwithstanding a tendency to overinterpret evidence, the books represent the best of contemporary social science research and provide compelling interpretations of nuclear proliferation dynamics of great relevance to scholars and policymakers alike.

Journal Article - Brown Journal of World Affairs

Offshore Balancing or International Institutions? The Way Forward for U.S. Foreign Policy

| Fall/Winter 2007

G. John Ikenberry, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, participated in a debate at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University on May 8, 2007. Christopher Lydon hosted the debate.

Magazine Article

Six Years After 9/11

| Sep. 11, 2007

BEIRUT -- This week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States sees the top American military and diplomatic officials in Iraq speaking to the US Congress about American strategy in Iraq. The juxtaposition is noteworthy: Six years ago, a small band of Al-Qaeda militants attacked the United States and killed some 3000 people. Today, an army of over 160,000 American troops wages a war in Iraq that has seen tens of thousands of people killed since 2003. Neither policy makes much sense to anyone in the world, other than to those fanatics on both sides who decided to pursue these actions.