Nuclear Security Matters

85 Items

Manila Conference: SEATO nations leaders group portrait

Public Domain/Frank Wolfe, White House Photographer

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

The Biden Administration Is Addicted to Partnerships

| Oct. 03, 2023

Stephen Walt analyzes the costs and benefits of forming alliances. When powerful and stable states face the same threats that the United States does, forming an alliance with them makes good sense. Adding weak and vulnerable members to an alliance may not strengthen it, and long-standing partnerships become less effective if some members let their own military capabilities languish. Another problem with the overzealous pursuit of new partners is the possibility that their agendas will be incompatible with those of the United States. 

traffic in Hanoi, Vietnam

AP/Hau Dinh, File

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

Not Destined for War

| Oct. 02, 2023

Joseph Nye writes that if the United States maintains its alliances, invests in itself, and avoids unnecessary provocations, it can reduce the probability of falling into either a cold war or a hot war with China. But to formulate an effective strategy, it will have to eschew familiar but misleading historical analogies.

Dr. Henry Kissinger, foreground, at a White House strategy session. Pictured from the left are: Secretary of State William P. Rogers. U.S. President Richard Nixon, and Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird.

AP/Bob Daugherty

Journal Article - H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum

Miller on Trachtenberg and Jervis on SALT

| Sep. 27, 2023

At a moment when arms control is deeply troubled and may be dying, two eminent scholars, Marc Trachtenberg and the late Robert Jervis, have taken a fresh look at the beginnings of strategic arms control fifty years after the signing in Moscow of the SALT I agreements in May of 1972. They do so from different vantage points, writes Steven E. Miller.

On January 22, 2021, Foreign Minister of Austria Alexander Schallenberg gave a press conference on the entry into force of the TPNW at the Foreign Ministry in Vienna.

Austrian Foreign Ministry via Wikimedia Commons

Magazine Article - Arms Control Today

The First TPNW Meeting and the Future of the Nuclear Ban Treaty

| September 2022

As diplomats, activists, and researchers converged on Vienna in June for the first meeting of states-parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), recent tragic world events highlighted how critical it was to convene this multilateral forum on nuclear disarmament.

Since February, Russia’s war against Ukraine has epitomized the grave dangers of a world where nine states possess approximately 12,700 nuclear weapons.1 That Russia could invade a sovereign state and indiscriminately target its civilian population, while using nuclear threats to deter NATO from intervening, has stunned the world. It offers a stark reminder that possessing nuclear arms can enable abhorrent violations of international law

Rose Gottemoeller Talks To Anatoly Antonov

Wikimedia Commons/ US Mission Geneva

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

How to Avoid the Dark Ages of Arms Control

| Apr. 01, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is upending one long-standing geopolitical norm after the other, with nuclear arms control potentially one of the next to go. In 2021, the United States and Russia extended the 2010 New START pact—the only remaining major nuclear agreement between the two countries—through 2026. Russia is now threatening to halt U.S. military inspections required under the agreement, but there are challenges for the future of arms control that go beyond the fate of New START.

There are two possible pathways for arms control after Russia’s war in Ukraine. The first, less likely scenario is an arms control renaissance. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis, for example, was a wake-up call for the United States and Soviet Union to the dangers of nuclear escalation. The decade after the crisis saw a suite of arms control efforts, including the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and a series of risk-reduction measures, such as the Incidents at Sea Agreement. The Ukraine crisis may prove another impetus for post-conflict cooperation, albeit a costly one.