Issue Briefs

For the foreseeable future, the United States will likely continue to provide Ukraine with substantial military assistance in accordance with the needs of the Ukrainian armed forces to repel the Russian offensive. Oversight of the assistance provided to Ukraine can ensure the weapons are used for the intended purposes and not diverted elsewhere, especially after the conflict.

Resumed talks between the United States and Iran over restoring compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last month underscored the inflexibility of the U.S. and Iranian positions on issues extraneous to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

When the United States ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, it accepted the treaty mandate to eliminate its chemical weapons within a decade. But several extensions have come and gone, and the government is pushing hard to finish destroying the last vestiges of its once-massive Cold War-era stockpile by 2023.

Although Putin's regime must suffer international isolation now, U.S. and Russian leaders must eventually seek to resume talks through their stalled strategic security dialogue to defuse broader NATO-Russia tensions and maintain common sense arms control measures to prevent an all-out arms race.

Si bien el régimen de Putin debe sufrir el aislamiento internacional ahora, los líderes de EE. UU. y Rusia deben buscar eventualmente reanudar las conversaciones a través de su estancado diálogo de seguridad estratégica para calmar las tensiones más amplias entre la OTAN y Rusia y mantener medidas de control de armas de sentido común para evitar una carrera armamentista total.

The 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) verifiably blocked Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons and provided incentives for Tehran to maintain an exclusively peaceful nuclear program.

It is in the interest of both the United States and Russia to ensure that progress on new nuclear arms control arrangements does not fall victim to deep, and perhaps irreconcilable, differences. 

As the Biden administration prepares to initiate a review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy, its first budget request proposes to continue every part of the unnecessary and unsustainable nuclear weapons spending plans it inherited from the Trump administration.

Current U.S. nuclear weapons policies exceed what is necessary to deter a nuclear attack from any U.S. adversary, and the financial and opportunity costs of the current nuclear modernization plan are rising fast. Here are responses to several common arguments advanced by the supporters of the nuclear weapons status quo against proposals for adjusting the current U.S. nuclear modernization plan so that it is less costly and more conducive to efforts to reduce nuclear weapons risks. 

While President Joe Biden faces an array of complex foreign and domestic challenges, early proactive outreach to North Korea must be a priority.