News & Announcements

Heather Williams, a nuclear expert at King’s College London and visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was “totally ambiguous” but in keeping with a leader who has a history of being a “nuclear bully”. “It is classic Putin, creating ambiguity and uncertainty,” Williams said. “Putin is so good at that because he knows that it keeps people on edge.”

A letter signed by leading scientists—including the Belfer Center's Aditi Verma—and Catholic leaders urges the Biden administration to adopt several nuclear policies, including a declaration that the US will never use nuclear weapons first, work with Russia and then with other nations to verifiably reduce nuclear arsenals, and to affirm the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as complementary to existing agreements, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

More than 70 nuclear nonproliferation specialists, including Matthew Bunn, signed a statement in support of U.S. reentry into the Iran Nuclear Deal.

As the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) approaches, the world’s oldest and most successful military alliance of democratic nations faces serious and complex challenges to its purpose, effectiveness, and unity in 2019. In a new report to be launched at the Munich Security Conference February 15, 2019, former U.S. Permanent Representatives to NATO Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns highlight ten major challenges to NATO in a new report, NATO at Seventy: An Alliance in Crisis, and offer recommendations to bolster this critically important alliance.

Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center enthusiastically welcomes back Ambassador Laura Holgate, who began her career at the Center in 1990. Holgate, who joins the Belfer Center as a Senior Fellow, was until January Ambassador and U.S. Representative to United Nations-Vienna and International Atomic Energy Agency. Previously, she served in the Obama administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Threat Reduction where she also played a major role in planning all four Nuclear Security Summits.