Nuclear Issues

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Washington last week, making his fourth trip to the United States since taking office just two years ago. India and South Asia Program Fellow, Ronak Desai examines the strategic approach to India's relations with the United States.

"Nuclear proliferation is a crime that pays well. Those involved in the Khan network were made very wealthy for their efforts, and the inability of the international community to effectively punish them has resulted in a missed opportunity to provide a deterrent against future black-market salesmen."

Failure to develop a comprehensive contingency plan, such as the one proposed here, and inform the American public, where appropriate, about its particulars will only serve to amplify the devastating impact of any nuclear attack on a U.S. city

Article in The Nonproliferation Review

Article by Dr. Ashton B. Carter in Daedalus

"To speak of the community of science and the search for peace at this moment of history may seem anachronistic, if not actually pretentious. To many people, external suspicions and internal doubts seem to have robbed science of the self-confidence and sense of purpose that have given it the coherence of a community. To all who have for years striven to end the Vietnam War, the suggestion that peace requires only a search may seem empty and superficial," writes Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center, a biological scientist and proponent of international peace and security, "To contest these points and give substance to this title requires our stepping back into a larger frame of time and freeing ourselves from some of these moods of the moment"

Policymakers and scholars agree that North Korea’s nuclear program heightens the risk of nuclear transfer to the global black market. Althuogh the North Koreans engage in illicit activity primarily to acquire hard currency, broader economic and ideological factors may also contribute to a decision to export nuclear materials. North Korea also risks losing control over its smuggling networks as it relies more and more on nonstate criminal actors. The United States, then, must seek to develop and employ new strategies to pursue and dismantle these networks as well as offer economic incentives to the regime. In the case of North Korea, countersmuggling and counterproliferation could go hand in hand.