More than 160 members and friends of the Arms Control Association gathered April 15 for our Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. for a full day of discussion on the crisis in U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control, the value of gender diversity in the nuclear policy field, the impact of new weapons technologies on international security, and next steps for the stalled U.S.-North Korean dialogue on denuclearization and peace.
Colleagues from New America, Human Rights Watch, Nuclear Threat Initiative, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and other partner organizations presented unique and engaging perspectives as part of our program.
Videos, photos, and transcripts of the conference are now available online for those who want to enjoy a recap and for our friends who were unable to participate.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland joined us for the post-event reception. He emphasized that we are at an “urgent moment” in the nuclear policy debate and noted the Arms Control Association's influence in providing critical information on nuclear weapons policy. He called for revitalizing key nuclear arms control treaties, including New START. He also warned against spending on new nuclear weapons capabilities that would make us less safe because they lower the threshold for nuclear use and will trigger a dangerous action-reaction-cycle with other nuclear-armed states.
We thank our very generous event, table, reception, and individual sponsors—our largest number in several years—for making this annual meeting, the largest we have organized in more than 20 years!
Thank you,
Daryl G. Kimball,
Executive Director
New Report Spells Out Saner Nuclear Spending Options
Despite characterizing during the Helsinki summit U.S. plans to replace the aging nuclear arsenal as "very, very bad policy," the Trump administration is pursuing an excessive and unsustainable expansion of the role and capability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to the tune of nearly $500 billion, after inflation, over the next decade. Over the next 30 years, the price tag is likely to top $1.5 trillion and could even approach $2 trillion.
As our newly published report documents, it doesn’t have to be this way. U.S. Nuclear Excess: Understanding the Costs, Risks and Alternatives describes three realistic options to reduce spending on nuclear weapons and recommends steps Congress can take to adjust the programs to deal with the long-term budget challenges.
A companion website will be launched this summer, will provide regular updates on cost estimates and key decisions. The report and website were made possible with support from a project grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.
Experts, Former Officials Meet In Moscow
In the latest in a series of expert conferences and dialogues in Moscow and Washington, a group of 29 leading nongovernmental experts released a joint public statement April 10 calling on U.S. and Russian officials to get back to the arms control negotiating table.
The experts called on the negotiators to take up as their first order of business agreement on a five-year extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, followed by talks designed to head-off new arms competition in the wake of the likely termination of the 1987 INF Treaty.
Daryl Kimball represented the Arms Control Association at the April 9-10 conference. The event was organized by the U.S. and Canadian Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN) and held at the Gorkachev Institute in Moscow. Previous conferences in this series have been co-organized by ISKRAN, the Arms Control Association, the Deep Cuts Commission, the Nuclear Crisis Group, the U.S. National Academies of Science.
Kimball and the other U.S. experts also met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Jon Huntsman.
Arms Control Association at the NPT PrepCom
From April 29 to May 10, executive director Daryl G. Kimball and research assistant Alicia Sanders-Zakre will attend the final Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Kimball will deliver one of the civil society statements during the morning session May 1. The statement, “The INF Treaty and New START Crisis and the Future of the NPT,” has been endorsed by a diverse array of more than 40 nongovernmental organizations and former government officials and diplomats. The statement calls upon all “NPT states parties to:
- press Presidents Trump and Putin to relaunch the dialogue on strategic stability;
- pledge to reach early agreement to extend the New START agreement; and
- refrain from pursuing deployments of INF-prohibited missile systems in the European theater (or elsewhere) that produce a dangerous action-reaction cycle.”
The proceedings of the conference can be viewed online via UN WebTV. Sanders-Zakre will provide ongoing reports from the conference via the ArmsControlNow blog.
New Members of the Board of Directors Elected
We are pleased to welcome to the Arms Control Association board of directors Angela Kane, former United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, and Maryann Cusimano Love, Associate Professor of International Relations, Catholic University of America, to its 22-member board of directors. Kane and Love were elected by the membership in the lead-up to this year's annual meeting.
As the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Kane provided strategy, vision and thought leadership for the UN on its multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation agendas. During her tenure at the UNODA, she conducted the ground-breaking investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in Syria in 2013, which resulted in Syria’s destruction of its chemical stocks.
Previously, she served as the UnderSecretary General for Management, heading the largest and most complex UN department, as well as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, focusing on the prevention and resolution of conflicts in all regions except Africa.
Kane is currently a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-proliferation.
Maryann Cusimano Love is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Politics Department of the Catholic University of America and brings her extensive experience engaging Catholic leaders and communities in foreign policy. She is as a member of the Core Group for the Department of State’s working group on Religion and Foreign Policy.
Love is also a fellow at the Commission on International Religious Freedom, serves on the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee, the Advisory Board of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, and is a board member of Jesuit Refugee Services.
Their participation will add to the depth of experience and knowledge we have on our stellar 22-member governing board.
On Our Calendar
- April 30: Daryl Kimball will speak at Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-sponsored side event at the NPT PrepCom in New York on “Tearing up the INF and attacks on the rules-based system” in Conference Room C at UN Headquarters beginning at 3:00 p.m.
- May 1: Board Chair Tom Countryman will speak at a Mansfield Foundation roundtable, “Arms Control and Disarmament in East Asia,” alongside Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki and Professor Nobumasa Akiyama of Hitotsubashi University. Sponsored by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and the Arms Control Association.
- May 2: Tom Countryman and Laura Kennedy will speak at a forum sponsored by the Deep Cuts Commission and Permanent Mission of Germany on “INF Treaty, New START, and Article VI of the NPT: How to Preserve the Global Arms Control Architecture?” at German House, 871 United Nations Plaza, beginning at 1:00 p.m.
- May 6: Daryl Kimball will travel to Princeton University’s Center for Science and Global Security to address the International Panel on Fissile Materials on pathways out of the crisis in U.S.-Russian arms control.
- May 8: Daryl Kimball will brief a Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Program executive roundtable in Washington, D.C. on the Trump administration's U.S. arms control and nonproliferation policies.
- June 4-5: Daryl Kimball will speak at the “Conference of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe” on maintaining effective arms control in the absence of the INF Treaty, Rome, Italy.
- June 16-17: Tom Countryman will travel to the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation to attend a Track 2 meeting with Russian nongovernmental experts.