Science, Technology, and Public Policy

The deep divide within the NPT community over disarmament will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make progress on U.S. non-proliferation goals in the near term and eventually may cause the treaty to lose relevance as non-nuclear states reconsider the treaty’s value.

Not only would sanctioning SWIFT be a major escalation in U.S. sanctions policy, but an entirely reckless decision. Realistically, enforcing sanctions against SWIFT would have significant consequences for both the U.S. and global financial system—upending decades of international norms.

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.
 

Despite one of the most extensive sanctions regimes in history, including an embargo on missile technologies, North Korea has taken huge steps forward in its ballistic missile programme. Daniel Salisbury explores the limitations of, and challenges of implementing, supply-side approaches to missile nonproliferation. Considering North Korea’s recent progress and efforts to evade sanctions, the article highlights the continuing need to strengthen efforts to counter illicit trade in missile-related technologies.

"Just as U.S. nuclear strategy and arsenal expansions affect those of China, China's nuclear shifts affect India's threat perceptions. Pakistan, in turn, pays close attention to any growth in Indian nuclear forces. To avoid a nuclear chain reaction in Asia, Congress should take a stand against proliferation and refuse to fund these new weapons programs."

In July, North Korea test fired a ballistic missile said to be capable of reaching the United States. Not surprisingly, Kim Jong-un’s provocations have been met with increased calls by congressional leadership and policymakers to ratchet up the pressure on China — North Korea’s lifeline to the international financial system, according to a recent UN report. A difficult question for policymakers now is how far should the United States go to increase pressure against China?

"While it remains to be seen how the Moon administration's nuclear energy and security policies will materialize, it is too early to conclude that Seoul is renouncing the option of nuclear hedging. Uncertainty over the US commitment to security alliances under President Trump, combined with the election of a South Korean president who is promoting more independent national security, makes it unlikely that South Korea is abandoning the hedging option altogether."

During the latter part of the Cold War, many strategists thought of nuclear deterrence and arms control as two of the most essential stabilizing elements of the same strategy in managing an adversarial relationship. The renewed crisis between the West (the United States and NATO member states) and Russia demonstrates how critical these elements are to the strategic nuclear relationship. As a result of recent setbacks between Washington and Moscow in the past few years, arms control has taken a back seat, and the risk of conflict due to miscalculation is the highest it has been since the 1980s.

In this Project on Managing the Atom Discussion Paper, Philipp C. Bleek chronicles nuclear weapons proliferation choices throughout the nuclear age. Since the late 1930s and early 1940s, some thirty-one countries are known to have at least explored the possibility of establishing a nuclear weapons program. Seventeen of those countries launched weapons programs, and ten acquired deliverable nuclear weapons.

The last couple of years have seen mixed progress in non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament. On the positive side, we can applaud the Ministerial-level Nuclear Security conference in December 2016 and actions emanating from that.