

President Obama should assess whether any other leaders of major countries are seriously prepared to pursue a nuclear-weapon-free world. If some are, he should invite them to join him in detailing a ten-year action plan to minimize the dangers posed by fissile materials and maximize the potential of peaceful nuclear energy.

World government need not be invoked in considerations of abolishing nuclear weapons. Instead, nuclear abolition can be a realistic organizing principle of states seeking to balance and order their relations in ways that remove the threats of mass destruction.

More than ever, preventing nuclear weapons proliferation requires cooperation among the United States, Russia, and China, plus emerging powers. To achieve this cooperation, measures must be crafted to uphold the bargain between disarmament and nonproliferation.

Recent arguments against a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany are based on anachronistic perceptions regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons capacity, but bring up important points concerning broader implications for nuclear disarmament.

Although the atomic bomb poses profound challenges to American constitutional governance, the post-Cold War environment should allow alternative ways to balance nuclear deterrence with a deliberative decision-making process that does not put nuclear weapons solely in the hands of the executive branch.

By exempting India from nonproliferation rules, all 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group are complicit in the U.S.-India nuclear deal, and they should all feel compelled to cooperate to ensure that the India deal does not turn into a dangerous precedent.

Iran's domestic political turmoil has seemingly caused it to back out of an agreement with the P5+1 to send its processed uranium out of the country. The United States and its allies must now redouble efforts to make sure that Iran does not try to make nuclear weapons

Rules are the key to maintaining necessary pressure on Iran and framing a mutually-acceptable, face-saving outcome. Iran must take steps to build and maintain international confidence that all its nuclear activities are peaceful, and that none have military dimensions.

The reported agreement to refuel the Tehran research reactor by shipping Iranian-made low enriched uranium to other states for further enrichment and fuel fabrication could be a good precedent for meeting Iran's future and potentially larger nuclear fuel needs.

The UN Security Council should better define what constitutes peaceful nuclear activities to ensure that Iran cannot cross the line and covertly pursue nuclear weapons projects.