November 2025
By Christopher F. Chyba

Russia invaded Ukraine February 24, 2022, after having occupied Crimea and part of the Donbas eight years earlier. The invasion represents a deterrence failure (although perhaps an unavoidable one) on the part of the United States, its NATO allies, and Ukraine, despite timely intelligence warning. But Ukraine remains unconquered and nuclear weapons remain unused. Even while acknowledging the enormous suffering caused by the invasion and occupation, these remain—at least for now—two important successes of the Western response.

The Western powers were playing a weak deterrence hand prior to the invasion because Ukraine was not, and still is not, a member of NATO. Even in the face of Western preparations, warnings, and targeted intelligence revelations prior to the invasion,¹ Russia knew that there was no treaty obligation for NATO to come to Ukraine’s defense, and it had a “no-limits” partnership with China that could lessen the sting of any resulting Western sanctions.²

True, the Budapest Memorandum had been signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1994 upon Ukraine’s decision to eliminate the nuclear weapons left on its soil by the Soviet Union and to join the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).³ The memorandum recorded its signatories’ commitment to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” But there were no consequences specified in the event of violation, apart from seeking action from the UN Security Council, a body on which all the signatories but Ukraine held veto power.⁴

In 2014 and 2022, Moscow simply swept its 1994 commitments aside. Russia sought to coerce Ukraine and deter the West by using kinetic force, information warfare, and implicit nuclear threats, consistent with its own understanding of “strategic deterrence,” a phrase it appears to interpret more broadly than the West.⁵ Explicit and implied references to nuclear weapons were used by Russia to deter direct NATO intervention and to limit the quantity, quality, and employment of Western military aid, and possibly also to convey that Russia, or at least Russian President Vladimir Putin, views the fate of Ukraine as bordering on existential for Russia.

Moscow planned to seize Kyiv within days and all of Ukraine within weeks or months of the outbreak of war, creating a fait accompli. When a remarkable Ukrainian resistance aided by Western intelligence and materiel thwarted this plan, Russia settled into a grinding, brutal ground and aerial-bombardment war that continues to this day. According to the UN Human Rights Council, Russian occupation has featured systematic torture, including by sexual violence, of both prisoners of war and civilians, as well as targeting civilian infrastructure including hospitals. That same UN body verified the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children to the Russian government.⁶ Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab has documented the associated Russian system of coerced adoption.⁷ The International Criminal Court has indicted Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children.⁸

Throughout all of this, Russia’s nuclear capabilities remain omnipresent, hovering in the background and frequently invoked more concretely. Moscow’s cacophony of nuclear signals has included claims to place its nuclear weapons on heightened alert, threats to resume nuclear testing, the suspension of its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty(New START) , the movement of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, a new nuclear doctrine with a lower threshold for use, nuclear readiness exercises, repeated references to its new Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and veiled and sometimes explicit references to being prepared for nuclear war.⁹

It is still early to assess the longer-term implications of Russia’s invasion and behavior in its war against Ukraine. But questions of nuclear deterrence are so vital for peace and survival that even amid the ongoing war it is important to ask what lessons already might be tentatively drawn. What light is shed from events prior to the 2022 invasion? What is being learned about implicit and explicit nuclear threats, deterrence, and coercion during the war itself? Are there implications for how the United States and its allies should assess the U.S. nuclear posture for the coming decades, as the world enters a landscape of three nuclear peers with China in some partnership with a Russia behaving belligerently in Eastern Europe?

Immediate European Consequences

The brutality of Russia’s occupation in Ukraine is a reminder of the potential cost of deterrence failure. At the same time, the invasion and occupation have had broader consequences, some damaging for Russia’s strategic position, even apart from its losing perhaps tens of thousands of pieces of equipment and sustaining upward to an estimated 1 million casualties.¹⁰

Finland and Sweden had not previously been part of NATO, but the fate of Ukraine emphasized the danger of proximity to Putin’s Russia without having the defense commitment of that alliance. Senior officials from each country have been explicit that their NATO membership was the direct result of Russia’s invasion.¹¹ The two countries have now joined NATO, lengthening Russia’s border with the Western military alliance by 830 miles. NATO countries had been pressured by successive U.S. administrations to increase the fraction of their GDP devoted to defense, but after the invasion and under strong pressure from the Trump administration, these countries have now agreed to raise their core defense and broader security-related investments to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, up from the current average of 2.6 percent.¹²

Perhaps less remarked upon has been NATO’s shift at its 2023 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, from a posture based on forward presence to one based on forward defense, a change driven by reminders of the nature of wartime occupation practiced by the Russian army in Ukraine, and likely informed by an evaluation of Putin’s vision for Russia.¹³ As one salient example, Western analysts have long noted the vulnerability of the Estonian city Narva, a city on the Estonian-Russian border, that is 88 percent ethnic Russian and physically closer to St. Petersburg than to the Estonian capital, Tallinn.¹⁴ On June 9, 2022, Putin made remarks in a casual setting to young Russians in which he praised Peter the Great’s 1704 victory in the Great Northern War, when Russia captured Narva from Sweden. He described Narva and other captured regions as having been under Russian control “from time immemorial” so that they were not being conquered by Peter the Great, he said, they were only being “returned.”¹⁵

The implicit comparison with Ukraine or indeed themselves could not have been missed by Russia’s northern neighbors. Two weeks later, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas decried what she described as NATO’s plan to lose her country to a Russian invasion “and liberate it afterwards,” in about six months. She said that Russian atrocities in the Ukrainian city Bucha 80 days after the invasion showed that NATO’s “tripwire concept doesn’t really work.”¹⁶ The nature of the Russian occupation, and the apparent credibility of Putin’s desire to continue the “gathering of Russia” pushed NATO toward a forward defense, one that would somehow have to be immediately effective—a task that might appear to encourage consideration of battlefield nuclear weapons.

Even while NATO strengthens its conventional forces and alters its force posture, France and the United Kingdom have taken steps to increase the European role in the nuclear protection of the alliance as a whole. In July 2025, they issued the Northwood Declaration, announcing that they “agree that there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by our two nations,” and that while independent, their nuclear forces “can be coordinated and contribute significantly to the overall security of the alliance.”¹⁷

Reasons for Caution

There are broader implications for nuclear deterrence beyond these immediate consequences of Russia’s invasion. Yet one should be wary. After all, there is still a fierce debate about nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, now a quarter-century distant and with a historical understanding benefitting from the partial examination of archives from the two primary nuclear powers. Scholars have nevertheless not resolved the question of whether nuclear deterrence prevented the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe, or if, instead, the Soviets never intended to attack,¹⁸ or whether deterrence by the prospect of another major-power war might in itself have been sufficient even absent the nuclear danger.

Are nuclear weapons responsible for the “long peace”—the absence of direct major-power war since 1945, however much other savagery may have taken place over those decades? Even more imposing is the question of whether nuclear weapons should be credited, albeit perversely, with preventing the outbreak of thermonuclear war? This assertion must contend at least with the argument that certain near-catastrophic events, such as the Berlin and Cuban missile crises, might not have happened at all in the absence of nuclear weapons.¹⁹ Johns Hopkins University historian Francis Gavin dryly notes regarding thermonuclear war that, “We are understandably eager to have an explanation for the most important nonevent in human history.”²⁰

Yet we do not; so modesty in assertions about nuclear forces and deterrence is called for. But national security officials are known often to be overly certain in their professional judgments. A recent study of over 63,000 responses to contemporary international security questions made by almost 1,900 national security officials from 40 NATO allies and partners found the responders to be “overwhelmingly overconfident.”²¹ As one example, when such officials said a statement had a 100 percent chance of being true, they were wrong over 25 percent of the time. Anyone with experience in interagency meetings in Washington has seen the social power of confident statements made with apparent certainty at the conference table—and the bureaucratic weakness of admitting to uncertainty. This is a broad cultural failing.

Deterrence and Survival

At the end of World War II, scientists, defense intellectuals, and policymakers grappled with how humanity could survive in the face of the new atom-bomb technology, given the fraught reality of international politics. One proposed answer was international control, perhaps necessitating the establishment of a supranational authority that to some extent would transcend the anarchic world order.

Another was the theory of deterrence. The current international situation has elements of both. There is an international control regime, consisting of the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency, among other mechanisms, meant to curtail horizontal proliferation, as well as NPT Article VI and the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (unsigned by every state with nuclear weapons), meant to lead to their complete elimination. There is also deterrence, together with strategic arms control in the U.S.-Russia case, as a central mechanism for strategic stability among the nuclear powers.

But much of this familiar, if frustrating and imperfect, architecture is breaking down. China is now rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal toward U.S.-Russian levels, and Russia has swathed its invasion of Ukraine in implicit nuclear threats. Brown University political scientist Nina Tannenwald has argued that that war so far shows that the “nuclear taboo” continues to hold in its most basic sense; there have been, after all, no nuclear explosions.²² But one could not say that nuclear weapons have gone unused in the war, most overtly by Russia in its efforts to manipulate and limit the Western response.

Admittedly, whenever nuclear weapons exist, they are being “used” by exerting influence in international relations. But this overt emphasis on nuclear weapons during wartime by Russia, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and a nuclear-weapon-state legally bound by Article VI of the NPT, overshadows the post-Cold War hope that the role of nuclear weapons in international relations might, at the least, become less salient.²³ Moreover, virtually all of the nuclear powers continue updating and upgrading their nuclear arsenals, including with some new technologies that could make stability harder to maintain.²⁴

When New START, the 2011 treaty, expires in February 2026 there will no longer be legally binding caps on U.S. and Russian strategic warhead numbers, although it seems possible that these limits may be extended by at least another year. If each of the three major nuclear powers—Russia, the United States and China—concludes that it must match the combined arsenals of the other two, an endless arms race is before us. The ultimate solution to this dangerous and bankrupting spiral is either purposeful restraint or diplomatic agreement. Until those are realized, however—and even afterward, as long as nuclear weapons or the ability to reconstitute them exist among hostile powers—international security will also rely on deterrence of one kind or another.

Deterrence in the United States is often understood as an effort to affect the cost-benefit calculation of one’s adversary. This can be done in two ways. One is by denial, through efforts to convince the adversary that their planned actions will not succeed—at least not at an acceptable level, given the costs they will suffer. The other is by the threat of punishment, through efforts to convince the adversary that the price they will pay exceeds whatever benefits they might gain.

Both efforts, but especially the second, are based in part on psychology. In order for deterrence by the threat of punishment to succeed, the threat must be effectively communicated, it must seem sufficiently credible, and it must appear sufficiently terrible. The adversary must also be assured that if they do not take the action being deterred, they will not be punished. The central claim of what deterrence theorists have called the “nuclear revolution” is that thermonuclear (hydrogen fusion) weapons mated with ballistic missiles provide the ultimate deterrent. It is credible because there remains no credible sufficient means of defense, whatever hopes for the eventual “Golden Dome” may be; likewise is it horrific, because a single heavy warhead can obliterate a city, thereby preventing a nuclear attack by another rationally governed power. Major-power war, therefore, should also be deterred, because there is just too much risk that such a war would escalate to nuclear-weapon use. In the game theorist Thomas Schelling’s phrase, nuclear deterrence is effective in part because it is “the threat that leaves something to chance.”²⁵ The possibility of inadvertent escalation, of a catastrophic loss of control over the situation, is therefore built into the ostensibly rational calculations made to sustain peace through this balance of terror.

The Fog of Deterrence

For this sort of “deterrence by cost-benefit analysis” to work, one had better have a reasonably good understanding of the motives of their adversary and of what they hold dear. In light of their grievances, ambitions, and fears, what costs would they consider too high to pay for what they hope to gain? Viewed through this lens, the months immediately prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine offer limited comfort.

U.S. intelligence and senior Biden administration officials observed Russian preparations for war and concluded correctly that Russia was not bluffing and intended to invade. In working to convince allies of this, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged how wrong the United States had been with its weapons-of-mass-destruction assessments two decades earlier in the leadup to the Iraq War. The most prominent had been when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a confident but largely incorrect presentation to the UN Security Council.²⁶

In 2021 and 2022, a number of senior French and German officials, including intelligence officials, argued that an invasion of Ukraine would have too high a cost for the Russians and that other options were more likely. The head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service is reported to have told the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency director that the Russian invasion “was not going to happen.” The French intelligence service reportedly felt that an invasion would have too “monstrous” a cost for Moscow. Similar incorrect utility-based arguments were made by many Western nongovernmental analysts and apparently by some analysts in Moscow as well.²⁷

Some of the mistaken Western assessments may have resulted from a form of mirror-imaging—expecting one’s adversary to assess a situation according to one’s own values or preferences—coupled with a lack of strategic empathy, namely assessing decision-making criteria that differ from one’s own as being irrational. But all that is necessary for Putin’s decisions to qualify as rational is for them to follow logically from his premises, and Putin published an essay in 2021 that seemed to display these. Titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin surveyed 1,200 years of history, claiming to show that “Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus” and that Kyiv had been identified by Oleg the Wise 1,100 years ago as “the mother of all Russian cities.” He concluded that contemporary Ukraine had been subjected by “western authors” to a “forced change of identity,” but that nevertheless Russians and Ukrainians remain “one people.”²⁸

To be fair, Putin’s apparent sentiments do not by themselves tell an analyst, Western or Russian, what price the Russian leader would be willing to pay to rebuild the historical union that he asserts. They do not tell the West how many Russian or other lives lost Putin views as acceptable to achieve his goals. Nor do they make clear the extent to which his public views are really his own, or a façade. But nuclear deterrence depends exactly on making such assessments of one’s adversaries, and making them correctly, or at least correctly enough. Successful deterrence depends on understanding what price adversaries would pay for their goals, and what price would be too high.

The imperfect track record of analysts should not be a surprise: personalist regimes such as Putin’s Russia are especially hard to predict because their actions depend so strongly on what lies within the skull of one individual minimally constrained by government bureaucracy.²⁹ This dilemma will only worsen at the threshold of nuclear war because of the compressed decision-time that ballistic missiles and other hypersonic technologies will force on heads of state. With respect to nuclear war, all three major nuclear powers now have personalist governments of varying degrees, making it more challenging for them to anticipate and calibrate one another’s behavior.

Such calculations will be especially consequential during a crisis. Observations from the leadup to the invasion of Ukraine reinforce lessons, perhaps too quickly forgotten, from the Cuban missile crisis. At that time President John Kennedy included on his Executive Committee of the National Security Council Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, a career diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union who was fluent in Russian and had worked closely with Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. Kennedy’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, later described Thompson’s role in interpreting Krushchev’s messaging and motivations during the crisis as critical to the outcome.³⁰ Kennedy evidently understood the need for strategic empathy.

The leadup to the Russian invasion of Ukraine suggests that even with an adversary as familiar as Russia, interpreting other powers’ motivations and tolerance for pain is challenging. In this respect, a crisis with China would likely prove more fraught. Tufts political scientist David Logan skeptically asks, “Are they reading Schelling in Beijing?” and ponders whether certain Chinese decisions are an effort to manipulate risk to enhance deterrence along the lines that U.S. deterrence theory might predict, or simply driven by China-specific factors.³¹ University of Pennsylvania political scientist Fiona Cunningham argues that China is adopting an asymmetric deterrence strategy quite different from those employed by the United States and Russia.³² Both scholars are fluent speakers and readers of the Chinese open literature.

An important lesson about deterrence ad bellum from the Cold War and Ukraine is that prior to, and perhaps especially amid, a crisis with a nuclear country the United States will need more figures like Tommy Thompson, and a president who is self-confident and thoughtful enough to ensure that deep expertise in the relevant language and foreign political and military culture is present when nuclear decisions are made. University political science departments might query the extent to which they are encouraging such scholars to flourish.³³ Congress and presidential administrations might seriously consider whether such voices are respected and heard, especially when their message is unwelcome.

Testing Deterrence in Bello

It is too easy for a bloodless discussion of nuclear deterrence to lose sight of the scale of human suffering implied in that discussion. Yet because the ideas are so significant and the stakes so high, they nevertheless need to be examined analytically and skeptically.³⁴ It is also important to ask to what extent the putative verities of deterrence as developed and taught in the United States in and since the Cold War are objective truths or, at the other extreme, U.S. constructs that may be only partly accepted or even understood by U.S. adversaries. The war in Ukraine sheds some light on these issues.

Cold War deterrence theorists argued that nuclear war is so horrifying that its very prospect ironically gives state adversaries the freedom to engage in violence below some threshold. The chance of nuclear catastrophe, should hostilities be pushed too far, generates this stability-instability paradox by assuring nuclear powers that recklessness will in the end be curtailed because adversaries will step back from the brink. Yet the fear that this “guarantee” might fail and disaster nevertheless occur through accidents or inadvertence—fears justified by Cold War history—itself perversely enhances the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. Russia and the United States, along with Britain and France, are fighting by proxy on the battlefields and in the cities of Ukraine and to a much lesser extent, Russia, conscious that escalation to nuclear-weapon use is possible, but exercising some freedom of action below that threshold. In the words of University of Minnesota political scientist Mark Bell, nuclear weapons “act as a shield behind which Russia can engage in aggression.”³⁵ Nuclear weapons not only deter, but they enable.

A central uncertainty about the stability-instability paradox is identifying the line beyond which disaster will come. Herman Kahn, perhaps the grimmest of the Cold War’s serious theorists, thought that it might lie above the initial use of nuclear weapons. He did not believe that the horror of nuclear war would necessarily prevent it from ever again taking place, so the United States had to think seriously about levels of escalation beyond the nuclear threshold.³⁶

Should a first nuclear weapon be used, Kahn argued, deterrence of the very worst might come higher on the ladder of escalation. For this to be credible, adequate command, control, and communications would have to persist during nuclear war, and fear or rage not overwhelm governments’ calibrated nuclear signaling. If all went well, a political leader might convince the adversary that they could not further escalate without the advantage going to the other side (“escalation dominance”), or perhaps more credibly, without triggering the apocalypse. Kahn’s “metaphors and scenarios” were conceived in the world of 1965; the Ukraine war calls for more intensive examination of intra-war deterrence for scenarios in the world of 2025.³⁷

Prior to the Ukraine invasion, Russia had appeared to embrace a limited version of Kahn’s view in its notion of “escalate to de-escalate.” In this concept, in the event of a sufficiently successful NATO conventional attack on Russia, Russia would detonate a tactical nuclear weapon. This would demonstrate Russia’s resolve and make NATO sit up at attention and cease hostilities through pure fear of what otherwise might follow. What was less clear was the extent to which “escalate to de-escalate” was official Russian doctrine, whether that would matter anyway given that such a decision would de facto likely be made by just one man, and at what threshold and for what purpose that man might decide that a nuclear detonation was called for.

Russia’s frequent references to nuclear weapons at the time of its invasion of Ukraine and throughout the war were mated with particular concrete actions. The decision to move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus did not meaningfully enhance Russian capabilities, but introduced an additional element of risk that through mistake or inadvertence the weapons might be used; it seems that Schelling was, so to speak, being read in Moscow. NATO took at least some of Russia’s actions seriously, perhaps most so in the fall of 2022, when Russia’s forces were in retreat and Putin’s was citing the “precedent” of U.S. nuclear use in the Second World War. Reports in the press claimed that U.S. intelligence assessed that Russia’s probability of nuclear use might rise as high as 50 percent.³⁸

NATO’s approach was to test repeatedly Russia’s possible red lines. If Moscow was going to manipulate risk to deter NATO’s support of Ukraine, Washington was going to reduce the uncertainty by escalating incrementally in terms of conventional weapons provided to Ukraine or by relaxing restrictions on their use, and then watch for any tangible reaction from Moscow. If Moscow’s reaction was rhetorical only, the constraints initially set by President Joe Biden early in the war could be relaxed a step further.³⁹

So far, both NATO and Moscow have been deterred. Russia repeatedly implied the potential of nuclear-weapon use but refrained from actually doing so. It also decided not to strike Ukrainian arms supply lines within NATO countries, although recently Russia seems to have engaged in multiple incursions of NATO airspace and other forms of harassment of European nations and testing of the alliance. Whether limiting itself to these hybrid activities provides evidence for nuclear deterrence as such or more broadly as deterrence due to the risk of entering into direct war with a far more powerful military alliance is unclear. Perhaps it is even unclear to the Russians themselves. But they may hope that by probing and testing the alliance, clarity may come.

Uncertain Conclusions

The invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s frequent invocation of nuclear weapons reinforces the sense that this nuclear moment is different, and grimmer, than what the world knew for the first decades after the Cold War. Perhaps even more powerful in this regard is China’s rapid nuclear expansion, and the upgrading and possible expansion of other nuclear arsenals around the world. What are key, albeit necessarily tentative, conclusions from this analysis of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war?

Russia has not openly attacked NATO despite NATO’s supplies of materiel and intelligence to Ukraine that continue to bloody Russia on the battlefield. It is not easy to disentangle deterrence by the prospect of major-power war from deterrence by the threat of nuclear weapons, especially since the first could well lead to the second. But deterrence at the level of NATO has so far been effective despite Russia’s ongoing testing of the alliance, and despite the smaller tactical nuclear arsenal held by NATO compared to that of Russia. In addition to its thousands of strategic warheads, according to open-source estimates, NATO can call upon perhaps 200 variable-yield gravity bombs, hundreds of variable-yield, air-launched cruise missiles, and a small number of low-yield warheads on submarine-launched ballistic missiles.⁴⁰ The existing quantitative imbalance has not yet led Russia to escalate to more than probes of NATO defenses.

Before the war, Ukraine was “protected” only by the Budapest Memorandum, which committed no country to act in its defense. Although most NATO countries do not fall within Putin’s apparent desire to gather in the historical Russian people as he conceives them, Putin might well see Narva in that light. Yet Estonia is part of NATO, albeit terribly exposed, and he has not attacked. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty appears to matter.

Russia’s failure to attack in the Baltic states may be overdetermined, however, since it has its hands full in Ukraine. Were Ukraine to fall or be abandoned by the West to its fate, Putin might feel fewer constraints and reach his own feral conclusions about the commitment and steadfastness of the United States.

For deterrence as commonly understood in the United States to work, it is vital to understand, at least crudely, the motives and values of the adversary. It is daunting that even with an adversary as familiar as Russia, this proved challenging for some European allies during the leadup to the 2022 invasion. This will likely prove all the more challenging with an adversary such as China, with whom the United States has a much less extensive baseline in nuclear weapons discussions and signaling, and whose thinking about nuclear weapons may not be so easily fit into Western boxes. China may have concluded that Russia’s nuclear signaling in the Ukraine war effectively has constrained Western actions, and that it too might “achieve the coercive leverage of nuclear weapons without crossing the threshold of explicitly threatening nuclear use.”⁴¹

Expertise of the type that is built up over the course of a career is essential to understanding Russian and Chinese motives. It needs to be fostered if not rebuilt by universities and welcomed by Congress and the executive branch. Funding for language and area studies, coupled with respect for policy-relevant regional expertise in hiring and retention decisions, would be good places to start.

An important element of U.S. grand strategy that persisted from early in the Cold War to at least the second Trump administration is to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries, including to U.S. allies. The United States has aggressively sought to curtail the pursuit of nuclear weapons not just by adversaries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, but also by friends such as Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan. Underlying U.S. motivations include concern that more countries with nuclear weapons mean more opportunities for nuclear accidents or for escalation to the horror of nuclear war; that the approach to nuclear weapons capabilities by certain allies could trigger preventive war by an adversary; that a nuclear-armed foe could directly attack the United States, and that a nuclear-armed ally could pull the United States into a nuclear conflict. Another concern is that nuclear weapons in the hands of other countries could restrict U.S. freedom of action, deterring Washington from certain paths and enabling its adversaries to act with greater impunity. The war in Ukraine seems to demonstrate exactly this last concern.

Russia knows that it would not win a conventional war with NATO. If one lesson from the Russian war in Ukraine is that nuclear weapons enable, another is that a defense commitment such as Article 5 can be a powerful countervailing force, provided the United States does not fritter it away. Deterrence may depend more on maintaining and communicating the durability of U.S. security commitments than on the details of nuclear capability.

ENDNOTES

1. Kristian Gustafson, Dan Lomas, Steven Wagner, Neveen Shaaban Abdalla, and Philip H. J. Davies, “Intelligence warning in the Ukraine war, Autumn 2021 – Summer 2022,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2024): pp. 400-419.

2. China and Russia announced their “no-limits” bilateral partnership in Beijing three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. See “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development,” President of the Russian Federation, February 4, 2022.

3. “Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” United Nations, December 5, 1994.

4. On February 7, 2022, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution S/RES/2623, which called for an emergency special session of the General Assembly regarding Ukraine because the Security Council’s permanent members were deadlocked. On February 24, 2025, it passed resolution S/RES/2774, which mourned the “tragic loss of life throughout the Russian Federation-Ukraine conflict” and urged a “swift end to the conflict and a lasting peace.” Proposed amendments by European states to, in the words of the Danish representative, “reject the false equivalence between aggressor and victim” were vetoed by Russia (the United States abstained).

5. Russia’s understanding of “strategic deterrence” (strategicheskoe sderzhivanie) seems more akin to the Western phrase “all-domain coercion.” See Dmitry Adamsky, The Russian Way of Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War, Stanford University Press, 2024.

6. See the second and third reports of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, United Nations Human Rights Council, March 18, 2024, and October 25, 2024. Ukraine estimates the number of unlawfully deported children at over 19,500, per Bring Kids Back UA.

7. Nathaniel A. Raymond, Oona A. Hathaway, Caitlin N. Howarth, and Kaveh Khoshnood, et al., “Russia’s Systematic Program of Coerced Adoption and Fostering of Ukraine’s Children,” Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, December 3, 2024.

8. International Criminal Court, “Situation in Ukraine: ICC Judges Issue Arrest Warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova,” March 17, 2023.

9. For a timeline, see Claire Mills, “Russia’s Use of Nuclear Threats During the Ukraine Conflict,” UK House of Commons Library Research Briefing, December 20, 2024.

10. This includes as many as 250,000 fatalities. See Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, “Russia’s Battlefield Woes in Ukraine,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 3, 2025.

11. See, for example, Guardian News on YouTube, “Boris Johnson Holds Press Conference with Finnish President,” loc. 24:37-26:40, and Tobias Billström, “Why Sweden Joined NATO - a Paradigm Shift in Sweden’s Foreign and Security Policy” speech, April 17, 2024.

12. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “The Hague Summit Declaration,” June 25, 2025.

13. Marta Kepe, “From Forward Presence to Forward Defense: NATO’s Defense of the Baltics,” Real Clear Defense, February 14, 2024.

14. Matthew Evangelista, “A ‘Nuclear Umbrella’ for Ukraine? Precedents and Possibilities for Postwar European Security,” International Security 48 (3), winter 2023/24, pp. 7-50.

15. Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with Young Entrepreneurs, Engineers, and Scientists,” President of the Russian Federation, June 9, 2022.

16. Richard Milne, “Estonia’s PM Says Country Would Be ‘Wiped from Map’ Under Existing Nato Plans,” Financial Times, June 20, 2022.

17. Statement by the United Kingdom and the French Republic on Nuclear Policy and Cooperation (Northwood Declaration), July 10, 2025.

18. Vojtech Mastny, “Imagining War in Europe: Soviet Strategic Planning,” in Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark and Andreas Wenger, eds., War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War, Routledge, 2006, pp. 15-45.

19. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton University Press, 1999), Part III.

20. Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy, Brookings Institution Press, 2020, p. 147.

21. Jeffrey Friedman, “The World is More Uncertain than You Think: Assessing and Combating Overconfidence Among 2,000 National Security Officials,” The Texas National Security Review 8 (4), Fall 2025, pp. 34-48.

22. Nina Tannenwald, “The Bomb in the Background: What the War in Ukraine has Revealed about Nuclear Weapons,” Foreign Affairs, February 24, 2023.

23. Veiled or ambiguous nuclear threats have also been made by the United States, although not with the same frequency as Russia over the past three years. In 2018, U.S. President Trump warned North Korea that his “nuclear button” was “much bigger and more powerful” than that of Korea’s Kim Jong Un. On August 1, 2025, Trump posted on social media that he had “ordered two nuclear submarines” to be repositioned in response to former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s July 31 social media references to the apocalypse and to strategic nuclear systems. (David E. Sanger, “Trump Said He Ordered Subs Repositioned in Rare Nuclear Threat to Russia,” The New York Times, August 1, 2025.) With no sense of irony, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, then replied that “Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric.” (See Dmitry Antonov and Mark Trevelyan, “Kremlin plays down Trump’s submarine order, urges caution on nuclear rhetoric,” Reuters, August 4, 2025.)

24. Christopher F. Chyba, “New Technologies and Strategic Stability,” Daedalus, Vol. 149, No. 2 (Spring 2020): pp. 150-170.

25. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Harvard University Press, 1960, 1980, pp. 187-194.

26. Blinken told the UN Security Council: “Now, I am mindful that some have called into question our information, recalling previous instances where intelligence ultimately did not bear out. But let me be clear: I am here today, not to start a war, but to prevent one.” See Antony Blinken, “On Russia’s Threat to Peace and Security at the UN Security Council,” February 17, 2022.

27. Jonas J. Driedger and Mikhail Polianskii, “Utility-based Predictions of Military Escalation: Why Experts Forecasted Russia Would Not Invade Ukraine,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2023): pp. 544-560. See also Gustafson, et al., “Intelligence Warning in the Ukraine War,” and Associated Press, “Russians Scoff at Western Fears of Ukraine Invasion,” February 15, 2022.

28. Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” President of the Russian Federation, July 12, 2021.

29. Rose McDermott, “Psychology, Leaders, and New Deterrence Dilemmas,” in Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, The Fragile Balance of Terror, Cornell University Press, 2022, pp. 39-62.

30. James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang, The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, Ch. 1. See also Goldgeier, et al., Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer 2019): pp. 222-257.

31. David C. Logan, “Are They Reading Schelling in Beijing? The Dimensions, Drivers, and Risks of Nuclear-Conventional Entanglement in China,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 46 (2023): pp. 5-55.

32. Fiona S. Cunningham, Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security, Princeton University Press, 2025.

33. See Michael C. Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security, Princeton University Press, 2019.

34. Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 687-718.

35. Mark Bell, “The Russia-Ukraine War and Nuclear Weapons: Evaluating Familiar Insights,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2024): pp. 494-508.

36. Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, Hudson Institute, 1965, Ch. 2.

37. Brad Roberts, “Between Tragedy and Catastrophe: Taking Intra-War Deterrence Seriously,” Livermore Papers on Global Security No. 16, September 2025.

38. Ulrich Kühn, “The Fall Crisis of 2022: Why Did Russia Not Use Nuclear Arms?”, Defense & Security Analysis, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2025): pp. 280-300.

39. This framing of Washington’s actions is due to Janice Gross Stein, “Escalation Management in Ukraine: ‘Learning by Doing’ in Response to the ‘Threat that Leaves Something to Chance,” Texas National Security Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Summer 2023): pp. 29-50.

40. Russia is estimated to have over a thousand such “tactical” weapons deployed. See Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle, “United States Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 80, No. 3 (2024): pp. 182-208, and Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle, “Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2025,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol.81, No. 3, (2025): pp. 208-237.

41. Tong Zhao, “Implications for Russia’s Nuclear Signaling During the Ukraine War for China’s Nuclear Policy,” Asia-Pacific Leadership Network, 2022.

November 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

Well before U.S. President Donald Trump ran for the White House, he was thinking about nuclear weapons and aspired to be the person who addressed their dangers. In 1984, Trump told The Washington Post he wanted the Reagan administration to put him in charge of U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control negotiations. “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump said. “I think I know most of it anyway.”

Pressed by a public alarmed about the risk of nuclear war and arms racing, President Ronald Reagan’s team (minus Trump) would painstakingly negotiate an arms control approach with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev that led to agreements mandating the verifiable elimination of thousands of nuclear weapons.

In 1990, Trump told Playboy, “I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process.” He called it the “ultimate catastrophe.” It certainly would be, and the risk of nuclear war and a new, unconstrained arms race is higher today than it has been since the end of the Cold War.

Unfortunately, Trump, now in his second term as president, so far has failed to achieve his long-ago vision. Rather than negotiate a lasting arms control or nonproliferation agreement, he has withdrawn from or jeopardized existing nuclear restraint agreements, adopted a more aggressive nuclear posture, and exploded the cost of the U.S. nuclear weapons modernization program. On Oct. 29, he threatened to “start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”

To his credit, however, Trump has expressed repeated interest in denuclearization talks with China and with Russia. In January, he opined: “Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about.… So, we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.”

But Trump and his unorthodox national security team have been unable or unwilling to translate his talk into action. He still has time to do so if he and his advisers develop a coherent, pragmatic, and sustained approach for engaging Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and other leaders.

Trump is certainly no Ronald Reagan, ideologically, temperamentally, or in terms of governance style. If Trump really wants to succeed at denuclearization, he and his team might look to the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva in 1985.

Unlike Trump’s three-hour tete-a-tete with Putin in Alaska in August, that summit lasted three days and took more than two months of preparation. Reagan and Gorbachev agreed on several key principles that established a foundation for detailed talks on nuclear arms cuts. They agreed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and pledged that neither side would seek military superiority.

The two leaders also endorsed the principle of 50-percent reductions in their respective nuclear arsenals, as well as an interim agreement to phase out intermediate-range nuclear-armed missiles. Because these issues are complex and negotiations require give and take, Reagan and Gorbachev also agreed on the need for regular, intense dialogue at various levels to operationalize their top-level directions.

To make concrete progress in today’s complex geostrategic environment, Trump and Putin should formally agree to Putin’s Sept. 22 offer to continue respecting the central limits of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty for at least one year after the treaty expires Feb. 5, 2026, which Trump has called “a good idea.” This would reduce tensions, forestall a costly strategic arms buildup, create leverage to curb China’s nuclear buildup, and buy time for talks on a broader, more durable, follow-on framework deal.

As Reagan and Gorbachev did, Trump and Putin should direct their teams to begin negotiations on a new, more comprehensive agreement on further offensive nuclear constraints and recognize the interrelationship between strategic offensive and defensive forces.

Trump also has a chance to broaden the disarmament effort by inviting China, France, and the United Kingdom to freeze their nuclear forces at the current number of strategic launchers, provided Russia and the United States pursue deeper nuclear cuts. Today, Russia and the United States have fewer than 700 deployed strategic nuclear launchers each; China currently has about 300 total; and France and the UK have a combined total of 96.

Maintaining the de facto nuclear test moratorium and establishing a mutual freeze on strategic launchers would not adversely affect any one country’s nuclear deterrence capabilities; it would provide needed predictability and a basis for bilateral talks on further nuclear restraints and reductions.

Finally, Trump could seek to solidify the joint 1985 declaration that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” by multilateralizing the forgotten 1973 U.S.-Soviet Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement so that it commits all five major nuclear-armed states to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the other Party, against the allies of the other Party and against other countries.”

The nuclear weapons challenge is one of the most vexing and dangerous. It cannot be solved in an hour or a day, but with persistent, competent, and bold leadership, it can be solved.

November 2025

Nuclear Abolition: A Scenario
By Timmon Wallis
Indispensable Press, 2025

In this book, Timmon Wallis, executive director of NuclearBan.US, presents a detailed and hopeful vision for dismantling nuclear weapons worldwide. The title riffs off the 2024 bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario, in which author Annie Jacobson charts the chain of events that could unfold during a nuclear conflict, ending in global devastation. Wallis, in contrast, imagines a step-by-step pathway of activism leading to complete nuclear abolition.

Drawing on extensive interviews with disarmament campaigners and experts from countries as varied as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Australia, and Ireland, Wallis shows that abolishing nuclear weapons is not simply a matter of persuading political leaders; it requires shifting the center of geopolitical gravity toward direct grassroots action. His scenario envisions national and global movements using legal frameworks—from local legislation to multilateral agreements such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—to delegitimize and even criminalize nuclear arsenals.

Walis emphasizes the power of financial pressure, including divestment campaigns, boycotts, and the targeting of nuclear weapons manufacturers such as General Electric, Ford, and Motorola, as a direct way to disrupt the nuclear weapons industrial complex. He highlights how similar tactics in the 1980s helped lay the groundwork for negotiations leading to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He argues that these remain practical, actionable tools for individuals, communities, and civil society organizations seeking nuclear abolishment today.

By reframing the conversation from “if” nuclear abolition is possible to “how” it can be achieved, Wallis offers a roadmap that is urgent and empowering. His book is a pragmatic call to action that insists that dismantling the world’s most destructive weapons is not only necessary, but achievable through collective will and coordinated effort.—SHAGHAYEGH CHRIS ROSTAMPOUR

 

November 2025
By Tariq Rauf

The June 22-23 Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have dealt a major blow to Iran’s nuclear program, as well as to the international transparency and verification regime. Satellite imagery reveals the destruction of Iranian facilities that process natural uranium into chemical and physical forms suitable for enrichment, production of uranium metal, and fuel elements. Images also show damage to Iran’s three main enrichment facilities, as well as its centrifuge manufacturing plant.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi reported to the agency’s Board of Governors Sept. 3 that prior to the attacks, the IAEA had verified 125 full-sized operational cascades installed in Iran’s three enrichment facilities, containing a total of more than 20,000 IR-1, IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 type centrifuges.¹ He noted that the world was “…in the midst of a serious conflict, involving three IAEA member states, during which Iran’s nuclear sites are coming under attack,” and warned that “the weight of this conflict risks collapsing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.”²

Safeguards and Transparency

For 23 years, since Iran first declared its uranium enrichment#endnote07 activities, the IAEA had routine access to structural and functional design information, centrifuge cascades, and nuclear material to verify Iran’s declarations. The IAEA carried out hundreds of inspections each year involving the equivalent of more than 1,000 person-days annually of physical and data assessment. It provided detailed reports on the status of Iran’s declared nuclear program and its enrichment activities to the Board of Governors and the UN Security Council.

The IAEA verification regime became even more stringent when the now-defunct 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, between Iran and China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, was in force.

Following the June military strikes, the transparency into Iran’s nuclear program has closed. The Iranian parliament enacted, and President Masoud Pezeshkian implemented, a law allowing the country’s Supreme National Security Council to withhold inspections and cooperation with the IAEA until certain security conditions are met.³

IAEA safeguards inspectors, who were in Iran when the strikes began and were moved to a UN compound in Tehran, were withdrawn after the strikes. Grossi informed the board that “the June attacks on nuclear installations in Iran led to an inevitable suspension of the inspection work in Iran.”⁴

Thus, since the start of the military attacks in mid-June, the IAEA has accessed the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in August and September. The purpose was to verify refueling operations pursuant to Iran’s safeguards agreement, as insisted by Russia to fulfill the requirements of its nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran.

Iran has asserted that its safeguards agreement under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “lacks provisions on implementation of safeguards measures under war conditions. However, on a goodwill basis, Iran has entered into negotiation with the agency to find ways to continue its safeguards commitments under [the] current situation.”⁵ In this regard, Grossi has told the Iranians that “establishing the facts on the ground is a prerequisite for any agreement, and this can only be done through IAEA inspections.”⁶

Grossi has stated that “Iran’s NPT Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement … remains in force and is the sole legally binding treaty governing the rights and obligations of the agency and Iran with respect to safeguards implementation in Iran.… Notwithstanding, [he recognizes] the current circumstances and expressed the agency’s readiness to consider Iran’s concerns and suggestions insofar as these would be compatible” with the safeguards agreement.⁷

The Situation Before the Strikes

Shortly before the military strikes, the IAEA released a report on safeguards implementation in Iran, which confirmed that all of Iran’s enrichment activities remained under safeguards. It stated further that between 2019 and 2020, safeguards inspectors accessed three sites engaged in nuclear activities and took environmental samples. The samples indicated that nuclear material and contaminated equipment that once were involved in Iran’s historical nuclear activities with possible military dimensions, were present at the sites after those activities were abandoned in the early 2000s.⁸

The inspectors assessed that the nuclear material and equipment may have been moved to an unknown location, in late 2003 and early 2004. This included small but heavily contaminated, and possibly full, uranium hexafluoride  cylinders. Small cylinders are typically used to store highly enriched uranium, due to the criticality risks that arise from accumulating too much fissile material in any one container.

The inspectors also determined that Iran’s responses to the IAEA regarding the provenance of undeclared nuclear material, and the current location of this material and equipment, were not technically credible.

Since February 2021, Iran has not fully implemented its safeguards agreement, which requires it to declare to the IAEA design information about any new construction or modifications to an existing nuclear facility as soon as the project is authorized. Under an older version of the design requirement, Iran declared the existence of a new enrichment facility 90 days before the introduction of nuclear material.⁹

In light of such unresolved safeguards concerns, the IAEA concluded that “Unless and until Iran assists the agency in resolving the outstanding issues, the agency will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful.”¹⁰

Although the IAEA did not find credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear weapons program in Iran, it noted with concern that former high-level Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that Iran has all the capabilities needed to produce nuclear weapons if it decided to pursue them.

Following consideration of the report, the IAEA Board adopted a censure resolution 19-3-11, finding that “Iran’s many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran … constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its safeguards agreement.”¹¹

In November 2024, Iran retaliated against the Western sponsors of an earlier noncompliance resolution earlier that month by announcing a quadrupling of its declared monthly production of 60 percent U-235 highly enriched uranium.¹²

The Challenges to Reestablishing Safeguards

As the military strikes began, Iran informed the IAEA that it had “already adopted special measures to protect its nuclear equipment and materials.” Iran stated that due to national security considerations it would explain these “special measures” in due time.

Nevertheless, Iran remains obliged by its safeguards agreement to make “special reports without delay” on “any unusual incident or circumstances that might have resulted in the loss of nuclear material.”¹³

Grossi has stated that, “Resuming this indispensable [inspection] work would not be an automatic, or a simple bureaucratic process, after what happened.”¹⁴ Despite the implementation of national legislation mandating the suspension of cooperation with the IAEA, Iran has argued that it remains committed to its safeguards agreement. It also has maintained that the new law merely passes control to the Supreme National Security Council, which would consider requests for cooperation with the IAEA on a case-by-case basis.¹⁵

Iran’s conditions for the restoration of full cooperation with the IAEA were reported to include guarantees that Iran’s facilities will not be attacked again, that it will continue enriching uranium, and that the UN Security Council sanctions suspended by the 2015 JCPOA will not be “snapped-back” by parties to that agreement.¹⁶

On the other hand, any credible assurances in this regard by JCPOA states could only be made once the IAEA is in a position to conclude that all Iranian nuclear materials and activities are accounted for and are used for peaceful purpose. Rebuilding IAEA nuclear safeguards activities in Iran would require fulfilment of Iran’s NPT and safeguards requirements and the provision of assurances that all Iranian nuclear activities are for peaceful uses.

Technical Barriers

Regarding nuclear material, the IAEA’s highest priority would be to determine the provenance and location of the 184.1 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 20 percent uranium-235 and 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent U-235, in addition to stocks of natural uranium and 2 percent and 5 percent of enriched uranium.

Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is typically stored in small cylinders, roughly 1 meter long and 12 centimeters in diameter to avoid setting off a criticality incident. Iran’s approximately 440 kilograms of 60 percent U-235 can fit in 16 or more cylinders. For safeguards purposes, the IAEA categorizes HEU as “direct use material,” suitable for nuclear weapons purposes, subject to high frequency access and verification.¹⁷

Even if Iran were to reinstate IAEA access and inspection of its sensitive nuclear facilities, there would remain significant logistical and technical hurdles to be overcome. Additional hazards include unexploded ordnance and remnants, and chemical and radiological hazards of dispersed uranium hexafluoride and compounds.¹⁸

This process could take time and careful phasing. Iran already might be struggling to recover and account for nuclear material that was dispersed, contaminated, or aerosolized by the strikes. It would be challenging to sift through the debris of concrete and steel, nuclear materials, equipment, and records to verify Iran’s nuclear material accountancy reports. In these chaotic circumstances, concerns might persist regarding the correctness and completeness of Iran’s declarations, including any indications of diversion of nuclear material. However, the IAEA has shown over time that it can deal with challenging situations on the ground and hold Iran to account.

In accordance with its usual practice, the IAEA has been monitoring the remnants of Iran’s destroyed and damaged nuclear facilities to detect any signs of recovery and movements of nuclear material and equipment, using commercial satellite imagery and any intelligence information provided by member states.

However, the IAEA and Iran signed an arrangement on “Practical Modalities for the Implementation of Safeguards” Sept. 9 in Cairo.¹⁹ Pursuant to its comprehensive safeguards agreement and associated subsidiary arrangements, Iran agreed to provide declarations on the status of the bombed nuclear facilities and the nuclear material contained therein, although no timeline is specified.

The best way forward would be for IAEA nuclear safeguards, security, and safety teams to assist the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in recovering, cataloging, and reconstructing nuclear material balance areas through identifying and segregating the different categories of nuclear material by composition and enrichment levels.

For reference, the IAEA has previous records and data from late May and early June on the total quantity and composition of declared nuclear material in Iran, including an accurate count of tagged uranium storage cylinders categorized by quantity and enrichment level.

Reestablishing Safeguards

The IAEA and Iran agree that Iran is committed to the NPT and its IAEA safeguards regime. Iran has allowed IAEA inspections in August and September at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and the Tehran Research Reactor, and there are no indications that these would be curtailed.

The Cairo arrangement on safeguards provides an opening for further progress. However, the restoration of all suspended UN sanctions against Iran, under the “snapback” mechanism in the JCPOA triggered Sept. 28 by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—known as the E3—has led Iran to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, other than on the Bushehr nuclear power plant and the Tehran research reactor.20

According to news reports, Iran’s recent outreach on the margins of the UN General Assembly in late September failed to attract the support of the E3 and the United States.²¹ On October 18, Iran informed the United Nations that Security Council Resolution 2231, which approved the JCPOA, had expired as of that date and all nuclear-related sanctions are terminated.²²

The next IAEA report on safeguards implementation in Iran is due in early November in time for the Board of Governors meeting. The IAEA will provide its updated assessment of Iran’s nuclear program based on satellite imagery and open-source and “third-party” information, including any information or declarations provided by Iran.

If the conditions can be established for Iran to rebuild its essential relationship with the IAEA and restore verification activities in a phased manner, it might be possible to engineer a new framework agreement on the future scope of Iran’s nuclear program and the IAEA’s role in verifying its exclusively peaceful nature.

In an ideal world, this role would be built on a foundation of Iran’s full proactive implementation of its safeguards agreement, strengthened by Iran’s entry into force of the Additional Protocol to that agreement. Such transparency would be supplemented by enhanced reporting and verification measures until the time that Iran can return to normal routine safeguards.

These steps could allow the IAEA to conclude, for the first time since 2002, that Iran’s safeguards declarations are both correct and complete, and that all of Iran’s nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful. Achieving such a solution may seem a long way off, but if the international community wants assurances that Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful in accordance with the NPT, then IAEA member states must overcome their deep political differences and unite to vigorously support the IAEA in rebuilding transparency and verification in Iran and terminating sanctions.

ENDNOTES

1. International Atomic Energy Agency, “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” GOV/2025/50, September 3, 2025.

2. IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi, Introductory Statement to the Board of Governors, June 23, 2025.

3. Iran Insight, “Iran parliament presses government to apply law limiting IAEA cooperation,” August 26, 2025; Islamic Republic News Agency, “Iran parliament presses government to apply law limiting IAEA cooperation,” October 15, 2025.

4. IAEA, “Statement by IAEA Director General on Iran,” September 10, 2025.

5. IAEA, Communication from the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Agency, INFCIRC/1315, September 9, 2025.

6. IAEA, “Statement by IAEA Director General on Iran,” June 23, 2025.

7. IAEA, “Statement by IAEA Director General on Iran,” September 8, 2025.

8. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2025/25, May 31, 2025.

9. IAEA, Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2010/10, February 18, 2010.

10. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2025/25, May 31, 2025.

11. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Resolution adopted on 12 June 2025 during the 1769th session.

12. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2025/25, May 31, 2025.

13. IAEA, INFCIRC/214, para. 68.

14. IAEA, “Statement by IAEA Director General on Iran,” September 10, 2025.

15. Islamic Republic News Agency, “Supreme National Security Council to manage future cooperation with I.A.E.A.: Araqhchi,” July 12, 2025.

16. Iran Insight, “Iran moves to suspend cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog,” June 25, 2025.

17. IAEA, IAEA Safeguards Glossary: 2022 edition.

18. IAEA, Update on Developments in Iran, June 19, 2025; IAEA Director General Grossi’s Statement to UNSC on Situation in Iran, 20 June 2025.

19. IAEA, “Statement by IAEA Director General on Iran,” September 10, 2025.

20. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2025/10, February 26, 2025.

21. Jennifer Peltz and Michael Weissenstein, “Iran’s president tells the UN that his country wants to play a ‘constructive role’ in world affairs,” Associated Press, September 25, 2025; Seth Frantzman, “Iran seeks global isolation of Israel amid UN diplomacy and support for Hezbollah,” The Jerusalem Post, September 25, 2024.

22. Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
“Press Statement on the Expiration of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231,” October 18, 2025.

November 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

(Note: This essay contains spoilers.)

Throughout the course of the nuclear age, feature films have helped to shape public perceptions and understanding of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons—from the post-apocalyptic “On the Beach” (1959), the satirical masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), the alert-gone-wrong thriller “Fail Safe” (1964), the mind-numbing realism of “The Day After” (1983), “War Games” (1983), which illustrated why no one wins a nuclear war, to “The Hunt for Red October” (1990) and the biopic “Oppenheimer” (2023).

Now, there is a new entry into the nuclear war film canon by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow that brings home the dangers of nuclear deterrence and omnipresent risk of nuclear catastrophe for new audiences. “A House of Dynamite” opened for limited theatrical release in early October and started streaming on Netflix, which has 300 million subscribers worldwide, beginning October 24.

The film is an instant classic. Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, aided by an A-list cast, deliver a riveting, immersive, emotionally powerful, and realistic¹ inside look at the dangerous paradoxes and flaws of the system of nuclear deterrence as it might play out in one of the several potential crises that could erupt on any given day.

The film explores the heart-pounding 18 minutes before a single, unattributed nuclear-armed missile hits the United States, as seen from the perspective of three sets of characters: first the intelligence officials and launch officers, then the military implementers and civilian advisers, and finally, the key decision-makers, the president, and the people around him. It shows how, in a real-world nuclear crisis that might unfold today, the answers are never clear, decisions are all always too rushed, and the options are all very, very bad.

Unlike the nuclear war films of Cold War and immediate post-Soviet eras, “A House of Dynamite” arrives at a time when global nuclear dangers are even more complex and numerous, while public and policymaker attention on the problem is much more fragmented and less well-informed than in years past.

Today, a military conflict between India and Pakistan; in Europe, between NATO forces and Russia; in East Asia, between the United States and China over Taiwan; or in a war between North and South Korea could far too easily lead to the use of nuclear weapons, especially in the absence of effective crisis communications and diplomatic channels between key adversaries.

At the same time, key agreements that serve as guardrails against nuclear catastrophe and dangerous nuclear competition are gone or are in jeopardy. Progress on nuclear disarmament has been stalled for more than a decade. 
The last remaining treaty limiting the massive U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals will expire in early 2026. Without new forms of restraint, a dangerous three-way nuclear arms buildup is on the horizon, as the United States, Russia, and China spend tens of billions of dollars annually to modernize and upgrade their nuclear arsenals.

Worse yet, some nuclear-armed states are also incorporating artificial intelligence tools into their nuclear command and control and early warning systems. Although states such as the United States and China agree that AI should never supplant human judgment in the authorization or execution of nuclear weapons use, it is clear that AI integration may create false confidence or distort the information that guides nuclear-related decisions.²

With these realities as backdrop, “A House of Dynamite” could help refocus attention on the grave risks posed by nuclear weapons and help motivate a larger segment of the public to demand concrete action to reduce the nuclear danger.

Already, some public opinion survey data suggests the film might have such an impact.

Shortly before “A House of Dynamite” premiered, the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative commissioned research on the film’s two-minute trailer, with 1,000 Americans watching the trailer and 1,000 watching another piece of unrelated content. Those who watched the trailer were less likely to say that nuclear weapons keep us safe (44.9%), more likely to desire a world without nuclear weapons (75.6%), more likely to believe the United States should work to reduce nuclear weapons globally (74.3%), and more likely to say reducing nuclear weapon risks was important to them personally (68.8%).³ Those who see the entire film will surely feel even more strongly.

Whether you happen to be a politician, a diplomat, a general, or a concerned mother, father, sister, or brother who watches “A House of Dynamite,” it should spur us all to consider: What can we can we do now, and what must change to avoid the many different scenarios that could lead us down the road to a nuclear war? What can I do to help get us on the path to the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons?

Based on my 35 years of work in the field, here are some reflections on what the film reveals and what we can do to defuse the house of dynamite we all live in.

Too Little Time, Not Enough Information

The film opens with key civilian and military officials arriving in the morning hours of a summer day at their respective workstations to find that a single, unattributed long-range missile has been launched from somewhere in the Pacific. Within minutes sensors indicate it is not on a test trajectory but is headed for the continental United States, setting off a scramble to determine who is responsible and how to respond in the minutes before impact.

This is an unlikely but still very plausible scenario. A single missile launch could be the result of an adversary missile test launch miscalculation or an elaborate but risky wider attack plan. It might also be possible that a cyberattack could interfere with early warning systems to disguise or obscure the origin of a single missile launch.

Most nuclear and military analysts believe it is more likely that a nuclear attack against the U.S. homeland, U.S. military forces, and/or a U.S. ally might develop out of a regional war between the United States and a nuclear-armed adversary such as Russia, China, or North Korea. In such a situation, U.S. early warning sensors might detect dozens or perhaps even hundreds of incoming nuclear-armed missiles, not just one, making response decisions even more complicated and difficult than what is depicted in the film.

Nonetheless, “A House of Dynamite” does drive home that on any given day, those responsible for responding, advising, or making life-or-death decisions about a suspected or verified nuclear attack—be it from a single missile or hundreds—might be indisposed, distracted, or distraught, and clear communication with adversary leaders may not be possible.

For instance, in the doomsday video conference call at the center of the film’s narrative, there are some notable absences, including senior officials from the State Department, the vice president, and the national security advisor.

This should also remind audiences that all the response (and nonresponse) options that should be considered may not, in practice, be presented to key decision-makers. Information about adversary actions and motives may be limited, misinterpreted, or disputed. Audiences will see that it is the president who has the sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, with or without good information, and likely under tremendous time constraints and emotional pressure.

The film’s president, played with gravitas by Idris Elba, is suddenly pulled from a light-hearted public event and presented with a choice between “suicide” or “surrender.” He is understaffed and unsure about who has attacked the United States and why, and how and whether he should respond.

The human scale and raw emotion of Bigelow’s film makes it clear why the fog of nuclear war is thick and could be overwhelming even to those who are supposedly in charge. And one of the strengths of the story Bigelow presents is that she leaves her audience to ponder what decision the president should have made.

Missile Defense Is No Panacea

“A House of Dynamite” also delivers the unpleasant truth that strategic missile defense systems are unreliable in real-world scenarios. In the early minutes of the crisis portrayed in the film, the Defense Department’s Northern Command puts into motion an attempt to destroy the incoming missile with two of the United States’s 44 Ground-Based Interceptors, (GBI) which are based in Alaska. Not surprisingly, the attempt to hit the incoming re-entry vehicle carrying the suspected nuclear warhead fails.

The Pentagon has reportedly claimed that “A House of Dynamite” unfairly depicts the failure rate of the GBI system.⁴ The film’s portrayal is, however, realistic and based on the system’s test record to date. Of the 21 highly scripted tests conducted since 1999, the interceptors successfully destroyed their targets 12 times, which is a 57 percent success rate. (The film puts it at 61 percent.) The kill vehicle is so unreliable that the Pentagon is now trying to develop a new one.⁵ Viewers should keep in mind that the single-missile scenario on a known trajectory is far easier to defeat than an attack involving multiple, perhaps hundreds, of incoming ballistic missiles with decoys to confuse intercept attempts.

This is why U.S. policymakers have focused missile defense capabilities to address limited attacks from lesser North Korean missile threats rather than more substantial threats posed by the major nuclear powers.

The GBI program has already cost $63 billion, but President Donald Trump wants to spend least $175 billion more for a crash scheme to defend the continental United States against all missile threats, including those from China and Russia, within three years. Trump’s radical plan envisions patching together existing and possibly new ground- and sea-based interceptors and radars with the introduction of hundreds, if not thousands, of space-based sensors and interceptors.

Not only are strategic missile interceptors unreliable against a serious missile attack, but they prompt adversaries to build more numerous and sophisticated offensive missile systems—at a relatively lower cost and more quickly—to overwhelm and evade missile interceptors.

Move Away from ‘Launch Under Attack’ and ‘Damage Limitation’ Strategies

Once it evades the missile interceptors, the rogue missile headed for the U.S. heartland sets into motion the U.S. nuclear doomsday machinery—the well-rehearsed plans to present the president with a range of options to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike within the short time before a larger enemy attack arrives. “A House of Dynamite” shows a U.S. Strategic Command apparatus geared up to encourage the president decide on one of several predetermined sets of nuclear attack plans, any one of which could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people within hours.

The fictional head of Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony Brady, played by Tracy Letts, speculates that the single missile attack is part of a wider, multistate, coordinated attack on the U.S. homeland. Brady pushes the president to strike all of the United States’ potential nuclear adversaries before they can launch a broader attack, in the name of limiting damage to the homeland and saving American lives, even if it destroys other nations and kills hundreds of millions of people in the process.

This echoes the current U.S. nuclear strategy, which requires that nearly all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are on prompt-launch alert, and a significant number of strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) at sea at any given time. Although it is likely that a portion of the United States’ 400 land-based ICBMs could survive a massive nuclear strike, the vulnerability of ICBMs creates a dangerous use-it-or-lose-it launch pressure to launch at an early stage in a crisis involving Russia or China.

A more prudent, if still bad, option would be for the fictional “House of Dynamite” president to take the time necessary determine who launched the attack and clearly communicate with adversaries before ordering a conventional or a nuclear counterattack. At any given time, there are approximately 950 thermonuclear warheads (most with an explosive yield of 90 or 455 kilotons TNT equivalent) on four or five invulnerable, operational SSBNs that can completely annihilate any aggressor nation.

Viewers should understand, however, that any retaliatory U.S. attack, delayed or prompt, would destroy mostly empty silos and population centers near military command and control targets, which could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people within a few hours.

As the characters caught up the scenario depicted in “A House of Dynamite” realize, once the United States (or Russia or China) launches its strategic nuclear forces at key military and command targets, the United States’ adversary would very likely launch the bulk of their own land-based missile forces (and potentially some of their air- and sea-based forces) at U.S. targets before the U.S. missiles would arrive. It would be MAD—mutually assured destruction—for the leaders to choose such a course of action.

More Nuclear Weapons Won’t Make Anyone Safer

The “insanity” of the choices, as Elba’s character describes them, should make it abundantly clear that deploying more nuclear weapons will not make anyone safer, nor would it more effectively deter a potential opponent from initiating or responding to a nuclear attack.

As Steve Andreasen, former National Security Council director for defense policy and arms control, has argued, “Adding more nuclear weapons … will not change the nuclear fundamentals.”⁶

Yet, today, members of the nuclear weapons establishment argue that the United States needs to build up the size of its already massive nuclear force to counter Russia’s nuclear force and a smaller but growing Chinese nuclear force. Why? They believe the United States needs to be able to target all adversary nuclear forces in order to limit damage and maintain leverage in a nuclear war. The reality is that the United States cannot destroy every adversary silo-based ICBM. It’s more likely that those ICBMs would be launched before they could be destroyed, either before a U.S. strike, or shortly after its detected.

What’s more, such an approach incentivizes opponents to consider rapid and large-scale use of nuclear weapons and to increase their nuclear forces, leading to a spiraling arms race no one can win.

A Safer Path

What we see in “A House of Dynamite,” or something close to it, can and will eventually happen unless we change course. As the film’s president says in exasperation, “We built a house made of dynamite, and now the walls are ready to blow.”

Getting on a safer path begins with channeling public anxiety about the nuclear danger into focused pressure on policymakers to take concrete and sustained steps to reduce it. Key elements include refraining from nuclear threats and coercion, reinforcing effective lines of crisis communications, maintaining the global nuclear test moratorium, engaging Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France in a sustained process to verifiably cap and then significantly reduce respective nuclear arsenals into the low hundreds, reforming nuclear strategy by expanding decision time and making credible pledges not to use nuclear weapons first, and recommitting to achieving a world without nuclear weapons.

ENDNOTES

1. The production team for the film had assistance from a team of experts, including technical advisor Dan Karbler, a former Army officer who previously served as Strategic Command chief of staff. See “Could A House of Dynamite Really Happen? An Expert Weighs In,” in Tudum, the official companion site for Netlix, October 27, 2025.

2. See Lt. Gen. John N.T. Shanahan, “Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Command and Control: It’s Even More Complicated Than You Think,” Arms Control Today, September 2025.

3. Ernest J. Moniz, “Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘House of Dynamite’ Is a Wake-Up Call on Nuclear Weapons,” Variety, October 23, 2025.

4. Anthony Capaccio, “Pentagon Frets Over ‘A House of Dynamite’ Nuclear Doomsday Film,” Bloomberg, October 25, 2025

5. For more information on the program, see “Current U.S. Missile Defense Programs at a Glance,” an Arms Control Association Fact Sheet, January 2025.

6. Steve Andreasen, “The Great Powers Are Itching for Another Nuclear Arms Race. Who Will Stop Them?” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2024.

November 2025

Fallout
By Joel S. Wit
Yale University Press, 2025

Reviewed by Robert L. Gallucci 

The U.S. Failure to Disarm North Korea

Joel Wit’s book is aimed at explaining how the United States could over three decades fail to prevent North Korea—one of the world’s poorest countries, regarded almost universally as a pariah nation with a population subject to intermittent famine and gross human rights abuses—from possessing a nuclear weapons arsenal, complete with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Even worse, that country would threaten to fire those weapons at the U.S. homeland and present a risk against which the United States can claim no confident defense and, plausibly, no sure deterrent.

In other words, how could the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan, who are close neighbors to North Korea and armed with considerable military, economic, and political power, fail to dissuade the North from its destabilizing course?

To be fair, the book is about diplomacy and maybe the limits of diplomacy, at least for the United States. The author does not dwell on history, the awful catastrophe of the Korean War, or the reality of what a second Korean war would mean for South Korea, beginning with the modern city of Seoul, so close to the Demilitarized Zone and the artillery of the North. His book is about how the diplomacy of presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump failed to protect the United States and its Asian allies from North Korea becoming a very personality-driven dictatorship armed with nuclear and thermonuclear weapons and their means of delivery.

One way of looking at the reality that is northeast Asia today is simply to recognize that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, current leader Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, clearly saw nuclear weapons as essential to the survival of his country as early as the 1980s. At that time, the North’s ideological allies in China and the Soviet Union were slipping behind the United States, a rising superpower, and even behind South Korea, which was beginning to emulate Japan in becoming a world economy to be reckoned with.

One should not be surprised, then, that the North would have to carefully navigate its drive to become a nuclear-weapon state. It constantly and secretly worked to acquire the technical capability to do so while maintaining its commitment to non-nuclear-weapon status by joining the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and entering protracted negotiations with the United States. Those negotiations were aimed ostensibly at getting as much as Pyongyang could from Washington in payment for its commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons.

This is the backdrop to Wit’s detailed and fascinating narrative of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea over 30 years. In each administration, Wit identifies those who believed it was possible to “find a diplomatic solution” to the North Korean problem, and those whose skepticism was unbound. Understand, though, that this was no contest between realists and idealists—as much as those who doubted the plausibility of diplomatic success would have it be.

No one doubted the reality of the North Korean nuclear weapons program, which the South Korean and U.S. intelligence communities went to great lengths to expose in detail. The issue was whether it would be possible to craft a nuclear deal that would combine the essential elements of North Korean self-interest with the U.S. need to prevent another nuclear-weapon state from emerging—particularly one that would directly threaten the security of the United States and its northeast Asian allies. Any deal would have to address the threat as Washington thought Pyongyang perceived it, as well as economic and political improvements in the North’s condition.

Wit briefly explores the Clinton administration’s efforts, including the 1994 Agreed Framework, the visit to Pyongyang by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the failure to follow through on a planned visit to the capital by Clinton. But the author begins to go into depth with the bureaucratic battles of the Bush administration, of the secretary state at odds with the secretary of defense and the vice president, of Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, the transition at the State Department, and the start of six-party talks among China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The backdrop to all these in-house battles is the war in Iraq and the progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, right up to its first nuclear explosive tests in 2006. At this point in the narrative, the reader can already appreciate what will become a hallmark of the book: its balance.

For those familiar with the history of U.S.-North Korea relations, it is hardly necessary to point out that Wit is not without his views on policy and the question of negotiators and hardliners: Wit was a player in this field and still is. Having said that, his balance throughout is remarkable. It is not surprising that his treatment of Stephen Bosworth, negotiator with North Korea during the Obama years, is positive, even warmly affectionate as it is, and rightly so. Similarly, his characterization of the efforts of Bosworth’s predecessor, Chris Hill, as virtually herculean is appropriate, albeit expected because Wit worked with Hill.

What is surprising is the author’s approach to those who were deeply suspicious of efforts to engage the North Koreans diplomatically. It is not unusual for officials to worry that such an initiative could squander precious presidential credibility on a hopeless goal. The intelligence community and State Department officials Danny Russel and Kurt Campbell, among many others in the Obama administration who were at least skeptical of the likely success of diplomatic engagement with the North, are treated with respect and their importance in shaping policy is acknowledged. This is rare and should be appreciated.

That said, in Wit’s telling, the Obama years were deeply disappointing. From the beginning, the president made known his view that negotiating with an adversary should not be seen as a reward, and that the key condition was the careful preparation that would be essential to success. The administration’s inauspicious start made the execution all the more painful as the 2012 leap day deal with North Korea fell apart. As Wit writes, “In fact, the Obama administration had decided to deal with North Korea by not dealing with North Korea.” The decision to abandon even the pretense of seeking a diplomatic solution was captured by the phrase “strategic patience” to characterize the non-policy. It became clear to everyone that the administration was moving on to deal with Iran, where the president and his team would seek and achieve a diplomatic success.

Half of the book is taken up with the Bush and Obama administrations’ 16 years of efforts to stop the North Korean nuclear weapons program. The other half is devoted to the Trump administration’s four years aimed at the same objective. What had changed by the time Obama sat down with President-elect Trump at the White House in 2017 was the North Korean nuclear weapons program. The expanding number and sophistication of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles and the extent to which the North could put the United States at risk of losing its superpower status would soon be at the point where the United States could do virtually nothing about it.

Whether the new president understood this is unclear. Some comments made by Trump suggest that he had an inflated sense of the effectiveness of U.S. ballistic missile defense capability against attacking ICBMs. In the years since then, the North plausibly has tested a thermonuclear weapon, produced a more advanced version of its intercontinental delivery vehicle, and tested shorter range ballistic missiles. But during the Trump presidency, the United States engaged the North in a way it had never done before: directly at the presidential level, on three occasions.

Wit gives Trump credit for personally taking on an issue of overriding national security significance. It is arguable, by the author’s account, that if Clinton, Bush, or Obama had done the same thing, the United States might be better off today. But Trump’s engagement also left much to be desired. Notwithstanding the designation of the very capable Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun to be in charge of North Korea negotiations, the kind of carefully prepared summits that Obama had envisioned would not prove to be consistent with Trump’s style. Indeed, the last of his meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un proved to be be a disaster.

In retrospect, the idea that that last meeting in Hanoi—where the principals “met for lunch,”—would finally reach a breakthrough on North Korea’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons sounds absurd. Only the U.S. national security advisor, John Bolton, who was opposed to this or any other meeting with the North Koreans, was pleased with the way it ended. Trump was disappointed when he left and Kim was furious.

There followed another Democratic administration, headed by President Joe Biden, when nothing much was expected to happen on the North Korean front and nothing much did. However, Trump, from the start of his second term in office this year, has given reason to believe he will reach out again to Kim and renew their relationship.

Indeed, Kim has indicated recently that he would be happy to re-engage, as long as the United States does not pursue denuclearization again or improved relations between North and South Korea. Busy as Trump is in pursuing objectives in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Latin America, he arguably does have a comparative advantage in northeast Asia, where his personal diplomacy with Kim brought him more success than his predecessors. A word of caution, however, may nevertheless be appropriate.

Adopting an opening posture that does not insist on denuclearization would seem prudent now, but abandoning denuclearization as a goal, even a long-term goal, would indeed be imprudent. The United States still has a continuing interest in resisting the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, and in persuading states that have acquired nuclear weapons since the NPT came into force to freeze their programs, at least until reversal becomes politically plausible. With respect to North Korea, the least that can be said is that the world looks forward to the day when the Korean peninsula can become nuclear-weapons-free and united. To say less is to encourage more intense conversations in South Korea and Japan about the durability of their countries’ non-nuclear statuses, which is in no one’s interest.

Anyone who is interested in security in northeast Asia should not miss this book. The same is true for anyone interested in U.S. foreign policy, how it is made, and the way those who make it think about the nation’s interest. Wit is keenly aware of how wrongheaded U.S. policy can be even when very smart, well-meaning, experienced experts guide it. He does not shrink from pointing out how that applies to U.S. policy on North Korea. He has known the people, senior and junior, who have been important to this policy over the last three decades and he has treated them fairly and honestly. The book is a great service to the public record on North Korea and the men and women who shaped U.S. policy.