Nuclear Issues

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

 Stephen Walt decided to look back to see if 2022 had gone according to his expectations. In his last column of 2021, he had described "Biden’s 2022 Foreign-Policy To-Do List." What did he get right, what did he get wrong, and how well did the Biden administration perform?

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

Stephen Walt asks whether the United States is a good model for other liberal states and whether its policy judgments are ones that others should trust and follow, especially with respect to foreign policy.  He argues that—on balance—the answer to both questions is "no."

South Korea's conventional counterforce and countervalue strategy is meant to hold North Korea’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, as well as its leadership, at risk independently from the United States. This strategy is often overlooked by policymakers and analysts, who are more focused on discussing Kim Jong Un’s pledges to develop new missile and nuclear capabilities and how the new administration of President Joe Biden should approach the nuclear issue. However, as we highlight in a new article in International Security, South Korea’s strategy increasingly has a determining impact on strategic stability on the Korean Peninsula and on prospects for denuclearization.

South Korea’s conventional counterforce and countervalue strategy is a manifestation of its uncertainties over the reliability of the U.S. alliance. This strategy has significant implications for strategic stability and the potential for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.    

The historian Fredrik Logevall has written a grand fresh take on the life of John F. Kennedy, as if to reignite an old flame. He's given us a chance to remember politics as the sport of great minds and hearts, high language, serious stuff.

Stephan Walt writes that Trump's foreign-policy instincts might be more sound—but he has forfeited the chance to lead.

Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino, and Charli Carpenter and Alexander Montgomery continue the debate on the power of noncombatant immunity norms, discuss how scholars should approach the study of these norms, and emphasize their shared objective to determine how security norms can be bolstered rather than undermined.

Stephen M. Walt advises presidential candidate Joe Biden to embrace nationalism while reaffirming liberal values: They are an election-winning combination.