Science, Technology, and Public Policy

As presidential candidates hit the campaign trail this year, voters should ask them: “What’s your plan for keeping nuclear weapons and the materials to make them out of terrorist hands?” Every candidate who is serious about national security should have an answer to that question; every president for more than two decades, including Donald Trump, has described nuclear terrorism as one of the gravest dangers the United States faces. There should be no disagreement between Republicans and Democrats — or between the United States and other countries — when it comes to measures to prevent terrorists from ever getting and using a nuclear bomb or sabotaging a major nuclear facility.

Following the news that the Trump administration plans to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, ten Belfer Center nuclear and U.S.-Russia relations experts offered their thoughts on the significance and consequences of this action.
 

The July 16 summit in Helsinki between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin presents a unique opportunity to reverse the dangerous nuclear competition between the United States and Russia and should be welcomed, despite its inherent risks. The opportunity to stabilize U.S.-Russian nuclear relations by extending New START, a key nuclear treaty that is set to expire in 2021, is paramount and worth the issues that come with any meeting between Trump and Putin.