Newell Highsmith served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State for thirty years prior to his retirement in 2017. He was responsible for legal issues related to nuclear nonproliferation for twenty-eight years as a staff attorney, assistant legal adviser, and deputy legal adviser. He worked directly on numerous sanctions cases, including the sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in 1998. This article expresses his views and not those of the United States government.
Almost all of the non-nuclear-weapon states that are friends of the United States participate fully in the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, which entails rigorous multilateral legal obligations.
The legality of nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and nuclear deterrence have been much debated over the years. What if the ICJ were to take up the issue again after their 1996 Advisory Opinion? Would the result be any different, especially in light of the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? Please join us for a discussion of these issues.
