Nuclear Issues

Following the breakdown of February’s Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi, Belfer Center experts discussed the impact of the shortened summit. 

Ambassador and Belfer Center Senior Fellow Wendy R. Sherman, the former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, will lead HKS’s Center for Public Leadership and become a professor of the practice of public leadership in January. Sherman, who negotiated with the North Koreans and the Iranians on nuclear issues, is the author of Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence.

In April, a Belfer Center delegation met with former Pakistani nuclear officials in Istanbul, marking the start of a track 1.5 dialogue. 

Verification is a crucial part of all arms control agreements, from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in the 1980s to the recent Iran nuclear deal, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz explained during a recent appearance at Harvard. And it is on verification where scientists can be decisive.

In the months and weeks before the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., Belfer experts promoted a series of ideas to strengthen measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or the essential ingre­dients to make them.

The Project on Managing the Atom joined the Netherlands government, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in convening a research symposium on the sidelines of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) 2015 review conference. The symposium, Fresh Ideas for the Future, took place on April 28 in the UN headquarters in New York City.

For two days in October, Russian and American experts met at the Belfer Center to discuss the state of U.S.-Russia relations and look for glimmers of hope.

Unfortunately, few were seen. The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is only the most urgent manifestation of a deeply troubled relationship between Russia and the West—in particular the United States. As one Russian participant stated, “We should deal first with the problems that existed even before Ukraine.”

Matthew Bunn is a professor of practice at Harvard Kennedy School and co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. Bunn’s research focus is on nuclear theft terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and innovation in energy technology. During the Clinton administration, Bunn served as an advisor to the White House Office of Science Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union. We asked Bunn about the current crisis in U.S.-Russian relations and its impact on nuclear security.

The Summer 2014 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s longtime efforts to improve nuclear security and the Center's critical role in the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit to prevent nuclear terrorism. This issue also features a timeline and analysis of significant events in Ukraine during the past 20 years. We also note a bright spot in U.S.-Russian relations – a statement by the Elbe Group of retired Russian and U.S. generals cautioning the two governments not to let Ukraine and Crimea interrupt the joint efforts of the two countries to protect “our shared strategic interests.”

And much more...