As I survey today’s nuclear security landscape—with its disintegrating arms control arrangements and intensifying interstate competition—I can’t help but return to the convictions that inform my thinking. They are the following: that the security dilemma is both deeply relevant but not intractable; that competitive geopolitical conditions and mechanisms of restraint can—and must—coexist; and, ultimately, that for diplomacy to be productive and successful in managing nuclear challenges, states with divergent interests must treat each other as sovereign equals.
My interests span the field of nuclear policy, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific and South Asia. I’m interested in nuclear strategy, arms control, missile defense, nonproliferation, emerging technologies, and U.S. extended deterrence. I also believe in sweating the technical details and helping policymakers understand the precise capabilities of certain technologies and weapons systems.
As a journalist, I covered many issues in nuclear policy, including authoring the first report on an undeclared North Korean covert uranium enrichment site, new background to the alleged Russian violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the first flight tests of China’s DF-17 hypersonic boost-glide missile.
Unsatisfied with reporting and commentary alone, I published research into arms control proposals for North Korea, strategic stability in South Asia, and inadvertent escalation risks in East Asia. I traveled across Asia and Europe, speaking to policymakers and participating in official and unofficial dialogues on nuclear and international security matters.
In the years to come, today’s proliferation challenges will persist and new ones will appear. My new book, Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea, lays out a case for why Northeast Asia is likely to face the reality of a nuclear-armed Pyongyang for years to come. What was once a nonproliferation problem, I argue, is now a risk reduction and arms control problem in the near term. The world is only beginning to grapple with the consequences of North Korea’s successful breakout.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—the global think tank—feels like a natural home: after all, before I found myself working on these issues in New York City, I lived and worked across Europe, the Middle East, and South, Southeast, and East Asia. As an internationalist to the bones, I could not be more pleased to be joining Carnegie’s global network of distinguished scholars as the inaugural Stanton senior fellow as I continue my work on nuclear weapons and global security.
I’m especially grateful to the Stanton Foundation for their generous gift establishing this position within the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. The foundation’s support for deep research and expanding the pool of talented scholars in the nuclear policy field at large have been tremendously impactful in furthering understanding of twenty-first century nuclear challenges.