James Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A physicist by training, Acton is currently writing a book on the nuclear escalation risks of advanced nonnuclear weapons and how to mitigate them. His work on this subject includes the International Security article “Escalation through Entanglement” and the Carnegie report, Is It a Nuke?.
An expert on hypersonic weapons and the author of the Carnegie report, Silver Bullet?, Acton has testified on this subject to the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee and the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He has also testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on nuclear modernization.
Acton’s publications span the field of nuclear policy. They include the Carnegie report, Reimagining Nuclear Arms Control (with TD MacDonald and Pranay Vaddi), and two Adelphi books, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (with George Perkovich) and Deterrence During Disarmament. With Mark Hibbs, he co-wrote Why Fukushima Was Preventable, a groundbreaking study into the root causes of the accident.
Acton is a member of the International Advisory Council for the Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe. He has published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Dædalus, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Science & Global Security, and Survival. He has appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and PBS NewsHour.
Podcast host Alex Gabuev is joined by James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine, the strike on Dnipro using the experimental Oreshnik missile, and the possibility of new strategic arms agreements between Russia and the US.
Under Xi, China has shifted toward a much more aggressive nuclear expansion. What factors are actually motivating China’s policy and perspectives? What are the implications for U.S.-China nuclear relations and international security?
The danger of these weapons isn’t just that Moscow might actually use them. It’s that Washington knows Moscow might actually use them.
If Israel or the United States tries to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, that would likely harden Iranian resolve to acquire nuclear weapons without eliminating Iran’s capability to do so.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration revised its nuclear strategy, the nuclear employment guidance, which is updated approximately every four years. This time, however, the administration seems to have made some significant changes, placing greater emphasis on China given its growing nuclear capabilities, as well as directing the United States military to prepare for coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China, and North Korea.
Even if averting a new arms race will be extremely difficult, the next U.S. president still should try to do that by forcing the bureaucracy to consider its costs seriously.
A conversation about the dangers of what is being called the new nuclear age.
Moscow and Washington trapped themselves in a cycle of fear over Iran.
To reduce the danger of Israel starting a war that it needs the United States to finish, U.S. officials should make it very clear—ideally in public as well as in private—that the U.S. commitment to Israeli security is conditional.
