Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The United States faces a series of critically important decisions on nuclear procurement, posture, and declaratory policy. Which policies will best ensure effective deterrence while minimizing the risks of escalation and arms racing?
Since the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are nuclear weapon states, they struggle in their attempts to convince other nations, like Iran and North Korea, not to develop a nuclear weapon program.
Having cleared the Senate, New START is now proceeding towards implementation, but the method for verifying the dismantlement of warheads remains a key challenge that must be resolved in a future agreement.
While new outcomes are not expected on Iran and Syria's nuclear programs at the IAEA's last 2010 Board of Governors meeting, a vote on a nuclear fuel bank is likely to pass despite opposition from some developing countries and members of the Non-Aligned Movement.
With the U.S.-South Korea bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement set to expire in 2014, it will be difficult for the United States to refuse Seoul's push to renegotiate without damaging the broader U.S.-South Korean relationship.
The Lisbon NATO summit is a critical event for making the Alliance between Europe and North America fit the security challenges of the twenty-first century.
As NATO grapples with the future of its deterrence posture, it faces the contentious question of whether reducing or withdrawing forward-based U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe would unacceptably reduce the security of its member states.
While the U.S.-India bilateral relationship is important, it suffers from unrealistic expectations and is affected by the largely unavoidable differences in the two countries’ short-term interests.
When NATO leaders convene in November, they will undertake a reexamination of the alliance’s policy on nuclear weapons, a review that, spurred by recent nonproliferation initiatives, could split NATO’s members if not handled carefully.
Nuclear proliferation is a political problem and the key to assessing proliferation risks is political judgment.
Conflict has escalated in the IAEA's decision-making bodies, in part due to Iran and Syria's support in the Non-Aligned Movement and because the same states have attacked Director General Yukiya Amano's hands-off approach to Israel.