Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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It is precisely because of, and not in spite of, the fact that Moscow and Pyongyang have repeatedly held their nuclear arsenals over Western heads that leaders should take these threats seriously.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s tenth review has been delayed yet again by the coronavirus pandemic. For the postponed review to have the best chance of success, here’s what all the treaty’s parties need to do in the meantime.
The AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK, and the United States will create precedents that could be used by other countries to pursue nuclear weapons. Here’s how the partners could reduce this risk.
The State Department recently sought to clarify U.S. nuclear posture. It, perhaps inadvertently, makes a strong case for negotiating deep reductions in U.S. and Russian high-yield strategic weapons.
U.S. officials think scrapping the arms control agreement will help check Chinese power. But without allied support, leaving the treaty will only weaken U.S. relationships and play into Beijing’s hands.
Rather than use Cold War principles, nuclear states should shift their nuclear doctrines and capabilities to strategic deterrence as needed by the twenty-first century.
Before the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2017, the G20 countries’ reactions to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty were based on their own interests and loyalties.
Policymakers should adopt a more realistic focus on deterring Pyongyang from using its nuclear weapons rather than pursuing low-probability attempts to denuclearize the peninsula in short order.
A world without nuclear weapons would be, in the long term, a better world than today’s. But, with treaty negotiations about to start at the UN, it is time to be blunt about the practical implications of a ban, as opposed to its principled ambitions.
The Reykjavik summit from thirty years ago shows what can be done when two leaders, whose states are supposedly implacable enemies, take responsibility and act to enhance the world’s strategic stability and safety.