OPCW Finds Toxic Chemical Use in Ukraine
December 2024
Investigators for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the presence of a toxic chemical at the site of a September military battle in Ukraine, which is fighting to repel a full-scale invasion by Russia.
In a report issued on Nov. 18 after a technical assistance site visit near the village of Illinka in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the OPCW said that the toxic chemical 2-Chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile, also known as CS, was determined to be present during a confrontation that took place on Sept. 20.
The OPCW expert team collected documentation and digital files and testimonies from first-hand witnesses and received three samples gathered by Ukraine: a grenade shell and two soil samples collected from a trench. Afterward, grenade and soil samples analyzed by two separate OPCW designated laboratories found traces of CS, a riot control agent that is prohibited from being used as a method of warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
The OPCW visit was requested by Ukraine under Article VIII of the CWC. It came after the Ukrainian Parliament ratified an agreement on privileges and immunities for technical assistance visits between Ukraine and the OPCW Technical Secretariat. (See ACT, June 2024.)
OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias lamented the treaty violation represented by the incident and reiterated the secretariat’s commitment to assisting CWC states-parties in upholding the norm against chemical weapons.
Ukraine asked the secretariat to make the full report public and share it with all states-parties. The report was released one week before the beginning of the annual CWC conference of states-parties, Nov. 25-29 in The Hague.—MINA ROZEI
Floyd Reappointed to Head Test Ban Organization
December 2024
Member states of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) have reappointed Robert Floyd as executive secretary for a second term through 2029. The decision was made on Nov. 11.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has helped keep a lid on nuclear testing for 28 years, but there is increasing talk in the United States and elsewhere of resuming testing.
In a Nov. 12 social media post, Floyd expressed gratitude to the member-states for their trust and support and renewed his commitment to the organization’s goals. “I am truly touched and heartened by the encouragement and confidence you have shown over the past 3.5 years,” Floyd wrote. “I look forward to continuing our work together, advancing our shared mission of a nuclear-test-free world—building a world of peace and security for this generation and generations to come.”
At the Nov. 11 meeting, Floyd shared his vision for the organization’s future and outlined several key priorities, including completion of the CTBTO International Monitoring System, carrying out an on-site inspection field exercise in Sri Lanka to help prove the CTBTO verification regime, and promoting continued diversity within the organization.
Floyd, a former head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, has led the CTBTO since August 2021 after an unusually contentious appointment process. (See ACT, June 2021.)—SHIZUKA KURAMITSU
Pentagon Releases Nuclear Employment Report
December 2024
The U.S. Defense Department said it “may be necessary to adapt current U.S. [nuclear] force capability, posture, composition, or size” in an “evolving security environment,” according to a report to Congress released Nov. 15.
The report on U.S. nuclear employment strategy is mandated by law and summarizes changes to the classified nuclear weapons employment guidance developed by the Biden administration in line with the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review. (See ACT, December 2022.)
The report’s statement on the size of the nuclear arsenal is consistent with comments by Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, in June that U.S. nuclear forces “may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.” (See ACT, July/August 2024.)
The report otherwise largely adheres to the nuclear posture review and reaffirms the policy that “the fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States or its allies and partners.” It also restates the U.S. commitment to ensuring that all nuclear plans must be “consistent with the Law of Armed Conflict.”
The last report on U.S. nuclear employment strategy, released in 2020 at the end of the Trump administration, did not mention a potential increase in the size of U.S. nuclear forces. The corresponding 2013 report issued by the Obama administration said that U.S. forces under the limitations of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would be “more than adequate for what the United States needs to fulfill its national security objectives.”
—XIAODON LIANG
Global nuclear dangers are growing, and international peace and security are at severe risk.
December 2024
By Daryl G. Kimball
Global nuclear dangers are growing, and international peace and security are at severe risk. In January, the second presidential administration of Donald Trump will be tasked with managing a complex array of nuclear weapons-related dangers, some of which were partly of his own making and all of which will be difficult to address. Trump’s proposed solutions to these challenges were hardly explained, let alone debated, during the 2024 campaign cycle.
The war in Ukraine and the risk of escalation. Perhaps the most critical foreign policy variable will be whether and how Trump pursues his ambitious goal to impose a deal that halts the ongoing war being waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine but would lead to major territorial concessions to Russia. A ceasefire likely will not come swiftly, and if it does, it will shape very profoundly the European security environment for years to come.
As Putin pushes to gain additional territory ahead of any talks, he may try to employ new or more lethal weaponry and use nuclear coercion to try to gain some advantage. Trump, as U.S. President Joe Biden, should refrain from issuing nuclear threats of his own and instead join other global leaders to condemn threats of nuclear first use as inadmissible.
Heading off a three-way nuclear arms race. All major nuclear-weapon states are spending tens of billions of dollars modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Talks on nuclear arms control remain stalled. With the last remaining agreement limiting the Russian and U.S. arsenals due to expire in February 2026, an era of unconstrained nuclear competition looms.
In response, congressional Republicans and the authors of the Project 2025 plan want Washington to spend even more than the current $756 billion, ten-year price tag for nuclear modernization in order to increase the number and diversity of the arsenal. Such a buildup would reverse 35 years of Russian-U.S. reductions, is not necessary to deter nuclear attack, would divert resources from other defense and human needs, and would prompt China and Russia to match any U.S. increase.
Trump and his team have not offered a plan for constraining Russia’s strategic arsenal, and some Republicans may lobby Trump to withdraw from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Instead, Trump could try to achieve what Biden could not: a simple, informal deal with Putin pledging each side to maintain the existing caps on their strategic nuclear arsenals as long as the other does. This would allow the U.S. nuclear enterprise to focus on maintaining the existing force, buy time for formal talks to limit strategic, intermediate, and tactical nuclear weapons and the systems that carry them, and forestall a costly arms race that no one can win.
Maintaining the global test ban. No state except North Korea has conducted a nuclear test explosion in this century, the United States has not tested since 1992, and the world is more stable as a result. For the United States, nuclear explosive testing is technically and militarily unnecessary. A generously funded and proven Stockpile Stewardship Program maintains the existing U.S. warhead types.
Nevertheless, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien proposed a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in Nevada, which would violate the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Project 2025 calls for reducing the time necessary to resume nuclear testing to six months or less. Any such move would be a self-inflicted nuclear policy disaster that would open the door to Chinese, North Korean, and Russian testing and blow apart global nonproliferation efforts at a time of heightened nuclear danger.
Stopping a nuclear-armed Iran. Since Trump withdrew from the successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Tehran’s leaders have restored their capacity to produce weapons-grade nuclear material and reduced access to international inspectors who are needed to guard against nuclear breakout.
Iran’s new president has offered to engage in talks that could lead to action-for-action steps to deescalate tensions, which could help move Iran further away from the nuclear threshold. But most advisers in Trump’s circle want to double down on the failed "maximum pressure" sanctions policy of Trump’s first term to force Iran to back down or help Israel try to destroy parts of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Such action would make Iran’s acquisition of the bomb in the future far more likely. Last month, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Tehran would withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if the United States and others sought to snap back international sanctions through the UN Security Council before October 2025. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. Any setback in its nuclear infrastructure would be temporary and likely lead Iran to pursue a clandestine bomb program.
The risk of nuclear war, nuclear arms racing, and nuclear proliferation is already greater than at any point since the Cold War. In the months ahead, the new Trump administration will make key choices that could determine whether the situation improves or deteriorates. It will be essential that responsible members of Congress, responsible Western and non-nuclear-weapon states, and civil society campaigners help steer toward a safer course.
Inside the Arms Control Association
November 2024
Defending the “Guardrails” Against Catastrophe
There is no plausible military scenario, no morally defensible reason, nor any legally justifiable basis for threatening or using nuclear weapons first—if at all.
Statement by Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director
For Immediate Release: November 19, 2024
Media Contacts: Daryl Kimball, executive director (202-463-8270 x107); Xiaodon Liang, senior policy analyst (202-463-8270 x113)
(Washington, D.C.)— As foreshadowed by an earlier statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin issued a decree that revises Russian policies regarding the employment of nuclear weapons in war in a way that further blurs the threshold for Russian use of nuclear weapons and adds significant uncertainty to the already unsteady balance of nuclear terror between Russia and the United States and other members of the NATO alliance.
The new doctrine includes language that asserts that Russia “reserves the right” to use nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional-weapons attack that creates a “critical threat” to its “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” whereas the previous doctrine, which was issued in 2020, only reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if an attack on Russia threatens “the very existence of the state.”
From the beginning of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly issued threats to use nuclear weapons to reduce the level of U.S. and European support for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression. So long as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, there will be a heightened risk of nuclear war. Any use of nuclear weapons by Russia in the context of its war on Ukraine would be disproportionate and militarily counterproductive, in part because it would very likely trigger a direct military clash with U.S. and NATO forces that would be extremely costly for both sides and could lead to all out nuclear war.
As Presidents Reagan, Biden, Xi, Gorbachev, and even Putin have all said, a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Once nuclear weapons are used in a conflict between nuclear-armed states, there is no guarantee it will not result in nuclear retaliation and escalation to an all-out nuclear exchange with catastrophic global consequences.
Because nuclear war would affect all people, Russia’s dangerous behavior demands a global response. We call on all responsible governments everywhere to clearly condemn all nuclear threats, explicit or implicit, and any use of such weapons, and speak out against changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, or any other state’s nuclear-use doctrine, that allows for the use of nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack. As the powerful Group of 20 (G-20) nations said in joint statements at their 2022 and 2023 summits, the use of nuclear weapons and threats of use are “inadmissible.”
Current U.S. policy asserts that the “fundamental role” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attacks as well as “a narrow range of other high consequence, strategic-level attacks.”
Until nuclear weapons are eliminated, the sole purpose of nuclear weapons should be strictly limited to deterring nuclear attacks by other nuclear-armed states. There is no plausible military scenario, no morally defensible reason, nor any legally justifiable basis for threatening or using nuclear weapons first—if at all.
