Digests and Blog

Today, in a solemn and moving ceremony in Hiroshima’s Peace Park, U.S. President Barack Obama along with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered wreaths at the Cenotaph Memorial, which honors the victims of the world’s first atomic bombing. With his visit, Obama became the first serving U.S. president to personally confront the painful stories, complicated history, and inspirational demands of the hibakusha never to allow the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated ever again. An estimated 240,000 people died by 1950 as a consequence of the U.S. atomic bombings of…

Within the last decade, the United States has made several important adjustments to its plans for deploying missile defenses in Europe. In light of the ongoing implementation of the Iran nuclear deal and an objective assessment of Iran’s missile program, it is high time to make another one—suspending the deployment of more advanced Aegis missile defense interceptors to Poland. Defending Europe Against Iran In September 2009, President Barack Obama announced a four-part “European Phased Adaptive Approach” (EPAA) to deploying U.S. missile defenses in Europe against the emerging ballistic…

In the four months leading up to the North Korean Workers’ Party Congress convening on May 6, the country’s young dictator, Kim Jong Un, has ordered up a dazzling display of the country’s putative prowess in nuclear weaponry. The mixed results of nuclear and missile testing may succeed in impressing Kim’s domestic audience and alarming or inciting his neighbors to the south.  But the testing also demonstrates that North Korea’s achievements fall far short of its claims and that political goals rather than technological imperatives are driving weapons development programs.  All Eyes on the…

Two young terrorist recruits are being fitted with suicide bombs in a home in the outskirts of Nairobi. High-value targets on the United States and United Kingdom kill lists share tea with them before they are suited up to make videos. The opportunity to strike these targets and potentially prevent a devastating attack is fleeting. This is the story central to the new film Eye in the Sky. Drone warfare has captured the attention of the media, national security experts, and policymakers alike. Eye in the Sky brings the issue to a wider audience and unpacks much of the current policy debates…

Kerry and Zarif Discuss Sanctions and Heavy Water U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York on April 22 to discuss implementation of last July’s nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The meeting was the second for Kerry and Zarif in a week, and took place amidst concerns from Iranian officials that the United States has not met its sanctions-relief obligations under the deal, despite Iran implementing required restrictions on its nuclear program. Valiollah Seif, head of Iran’s Central Bank, said at the…

On 27 April 2016, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed an audience, ranging from veteran officials to young leaders, on the need for the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The event was held in Vienna, Austria, but was followed across the world via media coverage, livestream, and social media.

On Thursday, May 19, 2016 at the House of the Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences will host the conference: "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at 20: Prospects for Ratification and the Enduring Risks of Nuclear Testing." The conference will be divided into a "Daytime Program" and an "Evening Program" that will both take place in Cambridge. However, the American Academy of Arts and Science will also be hosting a live-stream of the evening program in Washington, D.C. at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. To register for the…

Senior U.S. government officials have been touring different states to deliver addresses explaining the national security benefits of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty since October, with Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller and Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation Ambassador Adam Scheinman taking the lead. Scheinman’s keynote address at the "Deterrence & Assurance Academic Conference and Workshop” at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on March 4 was covered in the Omaha World-Herald. As part of her…

Jack Wood is a senior from Carbondale Community High School in Carbondale, Illinois. He spent the week of March 14 interning at the Arms Control Association as part of his AP Government class. Over the week that I worked here, I have learned vast amounts of what the Arms Control Association does and about nuclear issues in general. This kind of knowledge is not easy for a young adult or millennial to obtain, as the opportunities are just not that abundant. Because of this, we do not really think about arms control and nuclear security. Sometimes those issues do present themselves in our lives…

The eleventh U.S.-Russian biannual data exchange under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) shows a mixed measure of progress toward keeping under the treaty’s February 2018 ceilings.  Five of the six numbers are below or trending toward those ceilings. But Russia moved upward above the ceiling in operationally deployed warheads for the second consecutive time as the U.S. warhead count continued to fall. While disappointing in the signals it sends, the bump-up in Russia’s current warhead aggregate is neither militarily significant, nor necessarily indicative of an intent to…