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?
Nuclear and nonnuclear missile capabilities are quickly spreading the Indo-Pacific. What is driving this surge, and what are the consequences for possible nuclear escalation in future crises on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait? Join Carnegie for an event addressing this and more.
Rising nuclear dangers demand the recruitment of new and diverse voices to the nuclear policy field. This one-day, interactive event for interns, students, and young professionals will provide opportunities for networking, mentorship, and substantive nuclear policy discussions with guest speakers.
Most nuclear states are undertaking modernization campaigns to ensure their nuclear weapons are viable for decades to come. While aimed to address a changing geostrategic environment, do these plans account for a changing geophysical environment? Are nuclear weapons vulnerable to climate change?
The AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK, and the United States will create precedents that could be used by other countries to pursue nuclear weapons. Here’s how the partners could reduce this risk.
Ultimately, if the United States wishes to retain or restore its international leadership in a global nuclear order, its declaratory policy should be one that Americans and others would find relatively acceptable if other states adopted it.
In “Proportionate Deterrence: A Model Nuclear Posture Review,” George Perkovich and Pranay Vaddi provide analysis and recommendations for the Biden Administration. Please join the authors for a conversation about their recommendations with Michèle Flournoy.
Since the 1990s, every U.S. presidential administration has published a Nuclear Posture Review that explains the rationales behind its nuclear strategy, doctrine, and requested forces. The review envisioned and summarized here explicitly elucidates the dilemmas, uncertainties, and tradeoffs that come with current and possible alternative nuclear policies and forces.
A November 2020 U.S. missile defense test stands to upend strategic stability and complicate future arms control. The test marks a crossing of the Rubicon, with irreversible implications.
As long as the order can be certified as coming from the president, and as long as military officials involved in implementing the decision do not object to the order as violating the law of armed conflict, U.S. forces are expected to carry out the order.
The stage is set for a potentially disruptive period in South Korea–U.S. security relations. If tensions are allowed to build, the alliance could rupture.