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?
The first public examination of open-source data shows that the U.S. spent at least $52.4 billion on nuclear weapons and programs in 2008; yet despite growing concern about the prospect of a nuclear 9/11 only 10 percent of that went toward proliferation prevention. The U.S. must devote less funding to upgrading its arsenal and more to securing and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
The United States spent over $52 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs in fiscal year 2008, but only 10 percent of that went toward preventing a nuclear attack through slowing and reversing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology.
The vision of a world without nuclear weapons has taken shape outside of governments, but is increasingly creeping inside governments.
In this paper commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, George Perkovich and Patricia Lewis identify possible nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation steps that could take the world in the mid-term to a position from which the latter steps toward abolition of nuclear weapons could be charted.
Women's leadership in international security is moving from the sidelines to center court, but the bench is not deep enough, and too many women are taking themselves out of the game. President-elect Obama’s administration should draw on the pool of talented women to bring fresh perspective to his international security team.
"Global Zero" has become a well-known slogan to revive the decades-old idea of eliminating all nuclear weapons. Interest in abolition has been renewed by the concern that the use of nuclear weapons could become ever more likely. With nuclear deterrence we bought time, but it would be a tremendous mistake to believe that deterrence will always work.
The 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA) sought to tighten the criteria for nuclear cooperation and reshape the nuclear fuel cycle. Many of its provisions have been forgotten, but the NNPA regained notoriety this year with the approval of the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement. The objectives of the NNPA are timeless and in no danger of being achieved soon.
For the better part of three decades, U.S. policy toward Iran has largely focused on punitive measures aimed at weakening the Iranian regime and limiting its regional influence. It is high time to concede such an approach has failed to achieve its bottom line: Iran’s regional influence is greater today than ever, and hard-liners have a virtual monopoly over power in Tehran.
Nuclear disarmament is not an end in itself. Rather, it should be a means to global security. Some argue that nuclear deterrence provides the best form of security. But the fact that we worry so much about proliferation suggests awareness that deterrence in a complex multi-polar order is not fail-safe. The only long-term answer is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons to zero.
Efforts to re-invigorate a movement to abolish nuclear weapons are rising on the international agenda. The next U.S. president should emphasize the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons in an effort to: prevent proliferation, prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce the threat of nuclear annihilation, and foster new optimism for U.S. global leadership.