Nuclear Issues

The summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended Thursday without any deal. The two sides failed to reach an agreement due to a standoff over U.S. sanctions on the reclusive nation.

The world has crossed over to a new nuclear era, where a fateful error -- rather than intentional aggression -- is the most likely catalyst to nuclear catastrophe.

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a Senior Fellow, the Center announced today. Sherwood-Randall, who has served in the White House and Departments of Energy and Defense, is returning to the Center where she worked in the 1990s to help establish two pioneering projects – the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project with Graham Allison, who this month stepped down as the Center’s director, and the Preventive Defense Project with Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense who is the new Belfer Center director.

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."

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

Jens Stoltenberg,NATO Secretary General, discussed the future of the NATO alliance during this speech, given at the Harvard Kennedy School on September 23, 2016. He described the alliance as a responsive organization, capable of adapting to changes in the international security landscape but committed to the continuity of its founding values. In particular, he emphasized the necessity of maintaining a policy of absolute solidarity among member states, especially  in light of the exacerbating civil war in Syria and Russia’s aggressive stance toward countries to the East of NATO member state borders.

In prisons as in nuclear facilities, employees are tasked with guarding something highly dangerous in high-stress environments. Both face high costs in the event of failure, and both are especially vulnerable to complacency and insider threats. Given these parallels, two inmates’ dramatic break-out from a New York prison in early June offers nuclear security practitioners valuable insights into how to avert an equally dramatic (and potentially much more consequential) breech.

Ukraine-based journalist Maxim Tucker has just published two articles to claim that pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine are plotting to manufacture a dirty bomb with the help of Russian scientists, using radioactive waste from a storage facility at the Donetsk Chemical Factory.

In The Hague, leaders have agreed on a new initiative to secure dangerous radiological sources that might be used in a so-called “dirty bomb” – to prevent incidents like the December 2013 theft of a truck carrying a deadly source in Mexico.