Election 2024: The Next U.S. President’s Nuclear Challenges

September 2024

With the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, are campaigning in earnest to become the next U.S. president. (Photos by Justin Sullivan and Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Weeks before the United States elects a new president, the global nuclear security environment could hardly be more precarious. Russia continues to raise the specter of escalating its war on Ukraine to nuclear use; Iran and North Korea persist in advancing their nuclear programs; China is moving to steadily expand its nuclear arsenal; the United States and Russia have costly modernization programs underway; and the war in Gaza threatens to explode into a region-wide catastrophe entangling Iran and nuclear-armed Israel, among other countries. Meanwhile, Russia and China are refusing to enter arms control talks with the United States, new countries are raising the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons and decades of arms control treaties are unraveling. The situation has driven Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Agency, to warn in an interview with The Financial Times on August 26 that the global nonproliferation regime is under greater pressure than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. presidential election campaign has not engaged publicly on most of these issues in any serious way despite the fact that whichever candidate wins will, once inaugurated, immediately inherit the sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons. In an effort to foster debate and prudent decision-making, Arms Control Today asked a group of respected nuclear experts to consider the challenges facing the president ahead.—CAROL GIACOMO