Nuclear Issues

The authors offer three insights from Ukraine's path to denuclearization that may help deal with today’s proliferation challenges.

This evolving compilation of observations and policy ideas about Russia by Graham Allison is part of Russia Matters’ “Competing Views” rubric, where we share prominent American thinkers’ alternative takes on U.S.-Russian relations, Russia itself and America’s policies toward this country.

The major global nuclear powers are building up their arsenals once again, sparking fears of a new nuclear arms race. How serious is the danger? We ask Matthew Bunn, former White House adviser on Science and Technology Policy and co-principal investigator from the Belfer Centre on Managing the Atom.

Reversing a trend toward cutting nuclear stockpiles that dates to the early ’90s, a recent Pentagon report called for ramping up U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons in order to keep pace with an aggressive arms buildup by Russia. Complicating matters, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted today of having new weapons that could evade U.S. defense systems, taunting that their sophistication would force America to “listen to us now.”

As George Orwell once observed, some ideas are so absurd that only the intelligentsia could hold them; ordinary people would not be so foolish. A case in point is a reported proposal to allow the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium and reprocess spent reactor fuel—two activities that could bring it within weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons—under a developing civil nuclear cooperation agreement.

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.

A new study from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) examines the challenges to strategic stability between the United States and Russia and proposes a series of recommendations for navigating the dangers ahead.

CSIS hosted Ernest J. Moniz, the co-chair and CEO of NTI and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, for a discussion in which he addressed the increased risk of nuclear miscalculation against the backdrop of today’s rapidly evolving global security threats, the need to rethink outdated nuclear deterrence postures, and the imperative to prevent nuclear proliferations and develop new fuel-cycle policy solutions. Moniz also discussed the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and the current crisis with North Korea. His remarks were followed by a discussion with John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un trading threats with words like “fire and fury”; Pakistan deploying tactical nuclear weapons to counter Indian conventional threats; Russia enunciating an Orwellian doctrine of “escalate-to-de-escalate” that calls for early use of battlefield nuclear weapons; and major nuclear-weapons states modernizing their arsenals — nukes are back. The cruel irony: This is happening after eight years of a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize largely for his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Air Vice Marshall (Ret.) of the Indian Air Force and Fellow at Harvard's Asia Institute, Dr. Arjun Subramaniam spoke at the Future of Diplomacy Project with its Faculty Director, Nicholas Burns about the intricacies of the India-China relationship.