Nuclear Issues

Nuclear energy powerhouse Westinghouse Electric Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 29 March, with its parent company Toshiba writing off more than $6 billion in losses connected to its US businesses. Westinghouse was engaged in negotiations to build six AP1000 nuclear reactors in India as part of the landmark US-India civilian nuclear agreement. The bankruptcy filing raises fresh questions, not just about the fate of the reactors, but also about the future of the nuclear deal.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

Christopher Clary and Gaurav Kampani respond to Jaganath Sankaran's winter 2015/16 article, "Pakistan's Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat."

In this installment of “Conversations in Diplomacy," the Future of Diplomacy Project's Executive Director, Cathryn Clüver, speaks with Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin,India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Last weekend’s deadly attack on an international hospital in Afghanistan was a reminder of the terrible war that grinds on there, with Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire.

Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter India from executing its Cold Start war doctrine. India, however, has disavowed that doctrine. Further, the use of such weapons against Indian troops inside Pakistan would kill and injure countless civilians, while risking massive nuclear retaliation by India. In this International Security article, Jaganath Sankaran argues Pakistan should reconsider the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

David Sanger, senior fellow at the Belfer Center and adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, was interviewed on NPR’s “On Point” about his new book on President Obama’s foreign policy efforts, including a cybercampaign against Iran’s nuclear program. Sanger’s book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, was published this week.

After decades of flirting with nuclear weapons, India finally emerged as a nuclear power in the 1990s. New evidence suggests that India was able to hold off in part because it was able to secure protection through an alternate method: implicit “umbrellas” from superpowers. In the late 1970s, however, U.S. support for India waned as it began to improve its relations with Pakistan, and India lost its other major backer with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. By the late 1980s, India could no longer protect itself through diplomatic means, and acquisition of the bomb became an inevitable response to its security needs.