Focus Archive

In September, UN member states adopted an important, wide-ranging document designed to reaffirm the UN Charter, reinvigorate multilateralism, boost implementation of existing commitments, and advance concrete solutions to global challenges, including the existential threats posed by nuclear weapons.

Nearly 80 years have passed since the atomic bomb created by J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project was detonated secretly in central New Mexico. The Trinity explosion not only ushered in the nuclear age and triggered the Cold War arms race, it also spread deadly radioactive fallout across dozens of states and led to increased rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses for millions of American downwinders.

Most American voters may not realize it, but nuclear weapons testing may be on the ballot in November.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale, illegal, and brutal assault on Ukraine in early 2022, he has issued occasional threats of nuclear weapons use against anyone who might interfere. The result is a heightened risk of nuclear war between Russia and NATO in ways not seen in the post-Cold War era.

The success of the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament system has always relied on effective cooperation and dialogue between the two largest nuclear-weapon states. 

A special UN Security Council meeting on nuclear disarmament issues convened by Japan in March underscored agreement among all 15 members that the risk of nuclear war and arms racing is higher than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

Fifty-seven years ago, through the Outer Space Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to codify a fundamental nuclear taboo: nuclear weapons shall not be stationed in orbit or elsewhere in outer space.

As the new year begins, the existential risks posed by nuclear weapons continue to grow.

On Sunday, Nov. 20, 1983, I left my college dorm to visit my parents’ home in the suburbs of Oxford, Ohio. That evening, along with some 100 million other Americans, we witnessed two hours of stunning television that would mobilize the nation, as well as some of its leaders, to take meaningful steps to reduce the nuclear danger.

The experience of the Cold War teaches us that an unconstrained arms race has no winners, only losers. Leaders in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington need to engage in nuclear risk reduction talks, negotiate sensible and verifiable reductions of their arsenals, and refrain from building new destabilizing types of weapons rather than proceed down the dangerous path of unconstrained nuclear competition.

Curbing the spread of nuclear weapons and the uranium-enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies needed to make them has long been in U.S. security interests.

Although it has not yet formally entered into force, the CTBT is one of the most successful agreements in the long history of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. But as with other critical nuclear risk reduction, nonproliferation, and arms control agreements, the CTBT is under threat due to inattention, diplomatic sclerosis, and worsening relations between nuclear-armed adversaries.

Deteriorating relations between the major nuclear powers have stymied progress on nuclear arms control and disarmament for more than a decade. As bleak as the situation is, however, reports of the death of nuclear arms control are greatly exaggerated, and last month, the Biden administration outlined a viable path for moving back from the nuclear brink that deserves serious attention and support.

The decades-long effort to halt and reverse an arms race involving the world’s deadliest weapons may soon number among the casualties of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of independent, non-nuclear Ukraine and his increasingly reckless nuclear threats.