Nuclear Issues

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."

No U.S. president put more on the line than Barack Obama to ensure the election of his chosen successor. Now, Hillary Clinton’s failure may serve as a repudiation of much of his two-term legacy.

The Right Honourable Douglas Alexander offered his views on European security in a discussion moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

Putin and his government seek respect, stability from next U.S. administration, panel says.

Leading up to and during the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, Belfer Center experts released reports, published commentary, and provided insight and analysis into global nuclear security. In advance of the Summit, the Project on Managing the Atom set the stage for discussion with the report Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?

An in-progress compilation of the expert commentary and analysis is available here.

Andrew Weber, head of global partnerships for Metabiota and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs, has been named a Senior Fellow (non resident) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Weber is a renowned expert on countering global threats who helped lead the U.S. government’s response to the Ebola outbreak and played a key role in the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. At the Belfer Center, he will develop a biosecurity project in conjunction with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in Washington.

In this January 19 New Atlanticist blog post, Atlantic Council staff writer, by Ashish Kumar Sen, interviews Harvard Kennedy School professor and former US diplomat, R. Nicholas Burns. Burns says that Iran nuclear agreement is positive for the United States, but Iran will continue to be a problem in a violent Middle East.

The Iran nuclear deal was officially implemented on Saturday, as Iran successfully fulfilled its initial key nuclear commitments and the international community relieved major sanctions, including unfreezing about $100 billion of Iranian money. Implementation Day was met with applause from deal supporters in the U.S. and Iran, while critics have raised questions about whether Iran will adhere to its requirements and how it will flex its newfound economic power. Also in recent days, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a prisoner swap that led to the freedom of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and others, and negotiated the release of American sailors detained in Iran. What does the arrival of Implementation Day mean for Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear nonproliferation, and how does it bode for the future of U.S.-Iran relations? We asked Belfer Center experts to weigh in on these and related questions.

North Korea’s report that it tested a hydrogen bomb this week set off alarm bells around the world. Though analysts are casting doubt on the nature of the detonation, Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test is a reminder of the regime's unpredictability. How serious is this action and how should foreign powers respond? Belfer Center experts Graham Allison, Jieun Baek, Matthew Bunn, Nicholas Burns, Olli Heinonen, John Park, Gary Samore, and William Tobey weigh in on the significance and implications of North Korea’s latest nuclear test.

Mark S. Bell's summer 2015 International Security article, "Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy," is one of two co-winners of the 2016 Patricia Weitsman Award for Outstanding International Security Studies Section Graduate Paper. The paper proffers a new a typology that innovatively delineates the ways in which the acquisition of nuclear weapons can alter the foreign policy behavior of current and future nuclear states.