Nuclear, WMD & Arms Control
Ensuring US Military Readiness in the Indo-Pacific
Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem argue that the United States can sustain conventional deterrence against China into the 2030s through targeted investments in logistics and the industrial base. They join our editors to discuss why a holistic view of the military…
Conventional Options Theory in the New Nuclear Era
Tyler Bowen from the US Naval War College joins us to discuss the logic of conventional coercion in nuclear crises. As the US faces nuclear-armed adversaries like Russia and China, understanding how to "thread the needle" between defense and escalation is…
The Arsenal of Democracy: Keeping China Deterred in an Age of Hard Choices
The margin of deterrence against China is rapidly shrinking, driven not by a failure of US technological innovation, but by the American and allied defense industrial base’s inability to field and sustain cutting-edge capabilities at scale, at speed, and…
Threading the Needle: The Logic of Conventional Coercion in Nuclear Crises
Can conventional military success lead to coercive success in a nuclear crisis? Some scholars argue that achieving limited conventional success can be used to coerce nuclear adversaries. Others argue that conventional capabilities coerce by manipulating…
Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons: A Commonsense Approach to Understanding Costs and Benefits
Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML), has transformed computing, offering potential benefits in the nuclear enterprise, which encompasses weapons, delivery systems, platforms, and command and control infrastructure. While AI can…
Negotiating Primacy: Strategic Stability, Superpower Arms Control, and the End of the Cold War
The United States successfully used the concept of strategic stability to tip the nuclear balance against the Soviet Union during the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) of the 1980s and early 1990s. Both superpowers sought to employ strategic stability to…
Escalation Management in Ukraine: “Learning by Doing” in Response to the “Threat that Leaves Something to Chance”
The article analyses a process of escalation management over time between nuclear states under conditions of radical uncertainty. After Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin manipulated uncertainty to manage escalation and to deter NATO support of…
Arms Control for Artificial Intelligence
As AI continues to advance, some have voiced concerns about the dangers of AI-enabled weapons systems. This raises the question of how feasible it will be to control military use of AI. Megan Lamberth and Paul Scharre look at a number of characteristics that…
Just Like Yesterday? New Critiques of the Nuclear Revolution
Four recent books offer compelling political and strategic explanations for why states pursue expansive nuclear and foreign policies. They provide new insights on an enduring question: What are the implications of nuclear weapons for international competition…
The Role of U.S. Diplomacy in Countering Russia’s Nuclear Threats and Misbehavior
With the ongoing war in Ukraine and the recent suspension of the New START treaty, concerns about nuclear escalation have been on the rise. Rose Gottemoeller argues that, because of the existential threat that nuclear weapons pose, the United States has a…
Technology Acquisition and Arms Control: Thinking Through the Hypersonic Weapons Debate
Debates in the United States about hypersonic weapons today revolve around acquiring hypersonic missiles and pursuing arms control initiatives, but concern about a hypersonic gap is misplaced and indicates a misunderstanding about the strategic trade-offs and…
Oil for Atoms: The 1970s Energy Crisis and Nuclear Proliferation in the Persian Gulf
The 1970s energy crisis, which rocked global markets and caused oil prices to skyrocket, had a number of far-reaching and unexpected consequences, many of which have become the focus of academic study in recent years. However, one topic that has eluded…