"[Arms Control Today] has become indispensable! I think it is the combination of the critical period we are in and the quality of the product. I found myself reading the May issue from cover to cover."
U.S. Sanctions Russian Operator at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
March 2025
The United States announced sanctions on the Russian entity operating the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant amid renewed warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine.
In a Jan. 15 statement, the Treasury Department said it was sanctioning Russia’s Federal State Unitary Enterprise Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which Moscow established to run the complex after Russia’s illegal attack and occupation of the facility.
The operating organization was included in a list of sanctions targets that Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said is aimed at undermining Russia’s abilities to “circumvent our sanctions and get access to the goods they need to build weapons” for use against Ukraine.
In January, the IAEA team stationed at the Zaporizhzhia site reported explosions near the perimeter. The IAEA delayed rotating new staff into the facility in February due to military activity in the area. IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said it is “completely unacceptable” to disrupt the rotation of agency staff, “who are carrying out vital work” to prevent a nuclear accident.
He also expressed concern about a Feb. 14 strike that punctured the roof of the structure designed to prevent radioactive releases at the Chernobyl nuclear complex and sparked a fire. Despite the damage, the IAEA said there was “no change in radiation levels at the site.”
Grossi said the attack on the Chernobyl facility is “especially concerning” given the increased military activity around the Zaporizhzhia complex. “Attacking a nuclear facility is an absolute no-go” and should never happen, he said.—KELSEY DAVENPORT
Biden Loosens Missile Technology Export Controls
March 2025
Among his final acts, U.S. President Joe Biden loosened controls on missile technology exports for “certain [U.S.] partners with strong export control systems.” The new policy guidance directing implementation of Category I military missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space-launched vehicles (SLVs) under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was contained in a national security memorandum issued Jan. 3.
It said that Biden sought a “renewed U.S. commitment to nonproliferation … strengthening allied defense capabilities, bolstering the U.S. defense industrial base, streamlining defense trade, and deterring adversaries.”
The memorandum loosened the policy set in 1993 by allowing additional exports of U.S. MTCR-class missiles to more countries; to MTCR member states for their own military missile programs; and to MTCR and non-MTCR SLV programs.
The change also undermines ballistic missile and SLV interchangeability, according to Vann Van Diepen, a former acting assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.
In a Jan. 21 blog post for the Arms Control Association, he wrote that in the past “basic rules” for ballistic missiles and SLVs were the same and this interchangeability created the “bedrock of western opposition to SLV programs in Iran, North Korea, and other proliferant states.” With the new guidelines, the United States can now export to certain SLV programs in countries that are not MTCR members while banning exports to the countries’ Category I “military missile” programs.
Van Diepen wrote that the new guidance “make[s] it harder for the United States to prevent other countries from taking the same ‘national discretion’ approach and making missile-related exports to present and future U.S. adversaries who are their friends, especially in the guise of ‘SLV-related’ technology.”
The 2016 Trump administration reinterpreted MTCR implementation to expedite unmanned aerial vehicle sales to other countries and allow more rapid export of large drones to more potential buyers (see ACT, September 2020). It is unknown what the new Trump administration will do with the Biden guidelines.—LIBBY FLATOFF
Efforts to support a Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire will have to include specific conventional arms control measures for which the CFE Treaty can be a model.
March 2025
By Loïc Simonet
There are many factors that could contribute to the end of Russia’s war on Ukraine in 2025: the military escalation by the combatant parties, the weariness of their populations, the strategic stalemate, and President Donald Trump’s promise to resolve the conflict within “24 hours” of taking office.
At their first meeting on February 18 in Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to each appoint high-level teams to work on ending the conflict in Ukraine in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.1 Although Ukraine now has everything to fear from a hasty deal between the two powers, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that he would “do everything to end this war next year through diplomatic means”2 and would be ready to start negotiations under certain conditions.3 Fifty-two percent of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the hostilities as soon as possible.4
Kyiv’s current priority is to conclude the war on favorable terms and gain maximum leverage over Russia. Over the longer term, a sustainable conflict resolution and a stabilized post-conflict environment will need to include specific arms control measures. The defunct Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty sets out definitions, provisions, procedures, and categories for armament limitation that could one day inspire a comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine, including monitoring and verification provisions.
Post–Cold War Origins
Signed in Paris November 19, 1990, the CFE Treaty was history’s largest and most complex conventional arms control agreement. It aimed to eliminate disparities between the conventional military potential of the Warsaw Pact and NATO and their capabilities to launch large-scale offensive operations in Europe or regional surprise attacks. The treaty also established numerical ceilings for collective holdings of five categories of armaments (battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery systems, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters) within four different zones stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains.
A separate stability zone with equal subceilings for the European flank in Northern Europe, the eastern Balkans, and the Caucasus region, including Turkey, was created to prevent new subregional force accumulations as well as the possibility of an encircling maneuver. Compliance was assured through a comprehensive set of intrusive verification measures emphasizing on-site inspections.
After 20 years of implementation, the treaty has contributed to the elimination of more than 72,000 pieces of military equipment, enabled more than 5,500 on-site inspections and facilitated the detailed exchange of data. Its value was not only in its effect on force levels, but also on preventative diplomacy, transparency, and exchange of information. Overall, the treaty helped overcome the Cold War division of Europe and provided overall military stability between major powers. It facilitated reduced threat perceptions and increased trust between former adversaries through legally binding mutual reassurances that both sides would exercise military restraint and abandon zero-sum games. In sum, it enabled political détente.
Although the product and symbol of a “new era of democracy, peace and unity in Europe”5 at a rare moment in history, the treaty could not survive the gradual decline and collapse of the post–Cold War order. It started to lose relevance when NATO launched accession negotiations with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia in 1996. Eventually, attempts to enhance the treaty’s viability and effectiveness by taking into account the changing European security environment and the legitimate security interests of participating states in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) failed.
The process of concluding a CFE Adaptation Agreement, which was signed by all 30 CFE states-parties on the margins of the OSCE summit in Istanbul November 19, 1999, stalled when the George W. Bush administration demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from Moldova and Georgia before the United States and its NATO allies would ratify it. NATO’s further enlargement in 2004 rendered the CFE rationale—maintaining a numerical balance of forces and geographical distance between two groups of states-parties—obsolete. On December 12, 2007, invoking a serious risk to its national security, Moscow suspended its obligations regarding the CFE Treaty.
Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia, its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, and the stationing of Russian forces in those disputed territories without Georgia’s consent further complicated attempts to revive conventional arms control. On November 22, 2011, the U.S. Department of State announced that the United States “would cease carrying out certain [CFE] obligations with regard to Russia”6; NATO allies followed suit. On March 11, 2015, Russia suspended its participation in the joint consultative group, which oversaw the treaty’s implementation, although its allies Armenia, Belarus and Kazakhstan remained in the pact.
The War in Ukraine and CFE
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and NATO support for Kyiv in that war provided the pretext for Moscow’s complete withdrawal from the treaty. In May 2023, the Russian Duma voted unanimously to terminate the landmark pact, as requested by President Vladimir Putin. Six months later, at midnight November 7, the legal waiting period for withdrawal was over. As the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, “Thus, the international legal document, the operation of which was suspended by our country in 2007, has become history for Russia once and for all.”7 In turn, NATO allies decided to suspend operation of the treaty for as long as necessary. The collapse of a legally binding arms control regime that was once labelled a “cornerstone of European security” went almost unnoticed amid the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.
Today, the CFE Treaty seems beyond repair. Yet, among many reasons for opposing Russia’s determination to consign it to the history books for good, one at least deserves serious attention: the treaty mechanisms and spirit may well inspire the peace deal that one day will end the conflict in Eastern Europe.
Russia’s war in Ukraine, the first major, full-scale conflict in Europe since World War II, has been conventional by nature. Since Moscow launched what it euphemistically called a “special military operation,” the war has been a land-heavy, World War II–type offensive operation and not a 21st-century conflict.8 Pictures of shattered Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers destroyed by anti-tank missiles have become a routine sight on the battlefield. Despite Putin’s heightening nuclear rhetoric calling into question longstanding global norms against the use and testing of nuclear weapons, the war in Ukraine so far has not gone beyond the limits of a classic war as theorized by Carl von Clausewitz. Although potential harbingers of a dangerous cycle of escalation, Ukraine’s recent strike with U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles into Russian territory and Russia’s use of its new intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik missile have not undermined the conventional nature of the conflict.
This is why efforts to support a Russian-Ukrainian ceasefire will have to include specific conventional arms control measures. The many one-off, short-term ceasefires negotiated between the Ukrainian armed forces and the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine between 2014 and 2022 set a precedent by banning the use of certain types of armaments and the deployment of heavy weapons in and around specified areas.9 A geographically localized, conventional arms control regime complemented by confidence-building measures could make a significant contribution to de-escalating hostilities, and to rebuilding confidence and stability. It also could facilitate ‘windows of silence’, an OSCE term referring to temporary ceasefires for rescuing civilians and repairing critical infrastructure. Such a pause might allow for negotiation; support the disengagement of forces and withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons with transparency and verification measures; and address the risk of weapons diversion to unauthorized end users, thus increasing the chances of a successful ceasefire.
A “mini-CFE” could be fit for this purpose.10 It could act as a complement to other traditional components of a ceasefire—the armistice commission, possible peacekeeping troops and international observers operating on the ground—and strengthen their stabilizing effect.
The CFE Treaty already has inspired one arrangement of this kind. Article IV of the Dayton Peace Accords on Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was concluded in 1996 and provided the framework for negotiations on a subregional arms control agreement in the Balkans, used a process based on the CFE Treaty to ensure transparent withdrawal of the warring armies and subsequent equipment reductions. A “sub-regional expression of the CFE,” the Dayton agreement established numerical ceilings in the same five categories of heavy conventional armaments, resulting in the destruction of 6,580 heavy weapons.11 In addition, the Dayton agreement provided for specific reduction methods, an extensive exchange of information and intrusive inspections. Although the political provisions of the Dayton Peace Accords, which created a state comprised of two multiethnic entities, have been criticized, their subregional arms control mechanism has been successfully implemented.12
The definitions, provisions, procedures, and categories for armaments limitation set forth in the CFE Treaty, its 1999 adaptation, and Article IV of the Dayton agreement could offer useful terms of reference for post-war negotiations in Ukraine regarding restrictions on military deployments in designated geographical areas; restrictions on location and withdrawal of heavy weapons; and numerical limits on holdings of agreed categories of armament, and their reduction. The CFE/Article IV categories would need to be updated to include a new generation of weapons that has emerged beyond the scope of those earlier agreements, namely unmanned aerial vehicles, which have had considerable impact on the war in Ukraine.
A prospective Russian-Ukrainian agreement also would have to set guidelines for the notification of certain planned military activities, including international military assistance and training programs; and the exchange of information and data, including on arms diversion which is a growing problem in wartime Ukraine.
Compliance with certain steps of the ceasefire—such as the withdrawal of heavy weapons, disarmament, destruction, and decommissioning of weapons—would need a verification mechanism. Although in recent years verification possibilities have been improved substantially, the far-reaching verification regime common to the CFE Treaty and Article IV could provide the combatants with a pattern that they could adapt.
Over the longer term, a CFE-inspired regime could facilitate the reunification with Ukraine of the four oblasts annexed by Russia. In this regard, West Germany is now considered a possible status model for Ukraine,13 supported by a growing part of the Ukrainian population.14 This model would ensure NATO membership for Kyiv-controlled parts of Ukraine—an option that remains a ‘no go’ for Moscow—and leave the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory under Russian control subject to future negotiation. In that context, it should be recalled that the CFE Treaty, by eliminating the potential for surprise attacks and assuring geostrategic restraint between the two Cold War blocs15, made the German reunification more acceptable to Russia.
The CFE Treaty is not the only post–Cold War relic that could be reinvigorated to frame the implementation of a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Open Skies Treaty, from which the United States withdrew in 2020, also could be used to support monitoring and observation of troop movements. Reinvigorating the mechanisms of the CFE and Open Skies treaties for the purpose of a ceasefire could serve as a starting point for rebuilding a much-needed arms control regime adapted to the existing geopolitical environment and able to succeed over the eroded post–Cold War mechanisms. As two experts outlined, the “specific arms control arrangements negotiated for Russia and Ukraine in the context of a durable armistice of that conflict might serve as a starting point for imagining a broader arms control regime fit for current purposes.”16 Arms control, including a CFE Treaty–inspired mechanism, would then be the condition for a successful ceasefire arrangement and for lasting peace-and-security in Europe.
The OSCE also could help advance a ceasefire in Ukraine and broader European stability. Although it had its own legal existence, the CFE Treaty was negotiated under the auspices of the Vienna-based organization and the upheavals that have shaken the treaty have mirrored those of the OSCE. After a decade of turmoil in Ukraine, the institution stands at an existential crossroad, undermined by divisions and fighting for its own political survival. However, as with the CFE Treaty, the OSCE still can be helpful. With the experience of and lessons learned from its Special Monitoring Mission, a cutting-edge peace operation in Ukraine in 2014–2022, the OSCE could monitor a ceasefire and its arms control component.
The rapidly changing war in Ukraine presents the CFE Treaty and its sister institution with new opportunities for advancing European stability.
ENDNOTES
1. U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia, “Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov,” February, 18, 2025.
2. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, interview with the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, November 16, 2024, published online by The Kyiv Independent, November 16, 2024.
3. Zelenskyy, interview with Sky News, November 30, 2024.
4. Benedict Vigers, “Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War,” Gallup, November 19, 2024.
5. Charter of Paris for a New Europe, 1990.
6. Victoria Nuland, “Implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces In Europe,” U.S. Department of State, November 22, 2011.
7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “Foreign Ministry statement on the completion of the procedure for the Russian Federation’s withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty),” November 7, 2023.
8. Craisor-Constantin Ionita, “Conventional and Hybrid Actions in the Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” Security & Defence Quarterly, 2023, Vol. 44, No. 4, p. 14.
9. See for instance Press Statement of Special Representative Grau after the regular Meeting of Trilateral Contact Group on July 22, 2020.
10. Robert Legvold, “Putin Invades Ukraine: Early Considerations for Arms Control and International Order,” Hoover Institution, December 19, 2022.
11. Carlo Trezza, “Reviving the Florence disarmament agreement,” NATO Defence College Foundation, December 29, 2023.
12. XIV Review Conference on implementation of Dayton Article IV Agreement, Vienna, November 7, 2024.
13. Anchal Vohra, “Ukraine Could Be the Next West Germany,” Foreign Policy, July 10, 2023.
14. Martin Fornusek, “70% of Ukrainians support ‘West German’ model for NATO accession, survey shows,” The Kyiv Independent, December 10, 2024.
15. Article 3 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (September 12, 1990) refers to the CFE Treaty and to the commitment of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany to reduce the strength of the armed forces of the united Germany.
16. Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro, “Elements of an Eventual Russia-Ukraine Armistice and the Prospect for Regional Stability in Europe,” Stimson Center, December 14, 2023.
Loïc Simonet, a researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, was a senior adviser to the French Permanent Representation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2008–2012 and involved closely in implementing the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and attempting to revive it.
The moribund process offers the best tool for reviving the international arms control regime.
March 2025
By Thomas Countryman
The global architecture of arms control and nonproliferation is faltering. The risk of nuclear conflict is impossible to measure objectively but is certainly higher than at any time since 1962. All five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—are studiously ignoring their legal obligation under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith on reducing and eliminating their nuclear arsenals, although each is articulate in explaining why this situation is not their fault.
Non-nuclear-weapon states, which encompass most of the rest of the world, view the lack of disarmament progress with alarm. The loss of faith in the nuclear-weapon states drove the most important step in disarmament in the last 10 years, entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Continued inaction on Article VI and the foreseeable transition from modernizing nuclear arsenals to an all-out arms race will turn alarm into despair, sapping the vitality of the NPT, which is the cornerstone of global efforts to prevent nuclear conflict.
A Promising Beginning
Fifteen years ago, the five NPT-designated nuclear-weapon states began a process that was intended to reassure the world that Article VI was being taken seriously: the P5 process of consultations among the senior nuclear policy officials, at the level of undersecretary or deputy minister, of the five states.1 Launched amid the optimism generated by U.S. President Barack Obama’s Prague speech on arms control and the success of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the process was intended to demonstrate that nuclear issues were a top priority of all five governments, requiring constant discussion and coordination, and not subject to the vicissitudes of global politics. Although some non-nuclear-weapon states complained that the P5 process was a “cartel,” and that the consultations served to maintain a permanent nuclear monopoly, most non-nuclear-weapon states welcomed the effort.
Since 2010, the P5 consultation process has broadly, if inconsistently, served three goals, all of which are shared by the five nations: to increase mutual understanding of each other’s nuclear doctrines and postures; reassure other NPT states-parties of the NPT’s continued vitality, as reflected in P5 joint statements on the importance of the nuclear test moratorium and on achieving NPT universality; and lay the groundwork for the good-faith negotiations that Article VI obliges the five nations to pursue.
The last meeting of P5 principals, as officials at the undersecretary and deputy foreign minister level are known, in December 2021 resulted in a historic statement by the five nations, namely that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” This statement, announced in January 2022 and first articulated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan at their summit in Reykjavik in 1986, was broadly welcomed by the rest of the world, although during its negotiation, each of the P5 states insisted on adding text that diluted the powerful simplicity of the original Reagan-Gorbachev sentence.
Disrupted Contacts
Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, senior-level contacts among the P5 nations have all but stopped, on a bilateral basis and also within the P5 process that was intended to be compartmentalized from the broader political context. In the last three years, the P5 nations have been limited to less frequent meetings of officials two bureaucratic levels lower and they focused on only two important topics: nuclear posture and risk reduction. These meetings have been the only meaningful contact between Russian nuclear officials and their Western counterparts. Some participants say discussion at this level is often more substantive than at the senior level.
Despite the breakdown in contacts, the current moment offers an opportunity that the 2025-2026 chairman of the P5 process, the United Kingdom, must seize.2 Maximizing such an opening will require ambition and decisiveness, traits not commonly associated with multilateral diplomacy or the P5 process, but of which the UK is more than capable.
The UK could inject new value into the process program that would increase the frequency of P5 meetings, expand the topics for discussion, raise the level of participation, and build on past success.
Ambition will be required because the P5, as with nearly all multilateral processes, operates on the basis of consensus. Extended disagreement over timing, venue, agenda, and participation level have long provided the excuse for avoiding more intensive engagement. A more ambitious process would be supportive of, and consistent with, U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent statements favoring a renewed denuclearization effort.
Reviving the P5 Process
As the new chair, the UK should lay out for its partners a schedule of nine or 10 meetings per year, to be held either in the UK or at a mutually agreeable site. The UK would need to insist firmly that disagreements over the best site not be allowed to interfere with the regularity of meetings. If there is a complaint that this schedule is too intense, then it should be noted that none of the disarmament officials in the five ministries are overworked in the current period.
The UK also could lead additional dialogues among arms control officials outside of national capitals. Without labeling them as official P5 meetings, or publicizing them, the UK ambassadors in Geneva and Vienna could host monthly lunches or coffees for counterparts, as was done before 2022.
No discussion topics should be forbidden, which is to say no one should have a veto over the agenda. The UK could prepare a list of specific topics with the aim of covering one in each of the regular meetings. Importantly, the list should include the topics that the UK is most eager to discuss, such as threats to use nuclear weapons, and also those it has been more reluctant to discuss, such as the potential for multilateral negotiations among the five states. (See box below for examples.) Having one topic as the primary subject does not imply that participants could not explore other topics on a consensual basis or continue discussion from a previous month.
To encourage the most open discussion possible, the primary goal of each meeting should not be to agree on a joint statement or communique. Although such joint statements are welcomed by other states, they tend to detract time and attention from the P5 effort to fully explain and understand each other’s positions. Each participant’s focus should be on substance, rather than on preparing post-meeting press statements. Although the greatest possible transparency about nuclear postures and policies is in principle desirable, excessive media focus on any single meeting is not conducive to a frank exchange of views.
In each P5 capital, concerns about certain policy issues such as Ukraine, NATO, and Taiwan have increased resistance among governments to conducting business as usual, whether bilaterally or in a multilateral process such as the P5. The UK should seek to break through this impasse in the last few months of its 12-month term by inviting officials at the level of undersecretary and vice foreign minister—the level that attended previous meetings before the P5 process broke down—for the final session.
In the last three years, political leaders in London, Moscow, Paris, and Washington have resisted this kind of senior-level contact on a wide range of issues, insisting on “no business as usual” while the Russian war in Ukraine rages. To overcome this resistance, the UK would need to take a clear stance on the urgency of addressing the risk of nuclear conflict. Failure to assign this priority would be understood correctly by non-nuclear-weapon states as demonstrating lack of serious interest in arms control.
Consensus is as important in this process as in any other multilateral diplomatic process, but consensus should not mean simply allowing any one of the five states to avoid senior-level discussion of nuclear issues. UK insistence on elevating the discussion level ultimately would bring the others to participate at senior levels.
A Possible Outcome
Although the current focus of the P5 process should be on understanding one another’s positions, rather than on negotiating joint statements, there are some important topics on which P5 members share consensus, or near consensus, and could add value with their public reinforcement. These topics include building upon their 2022 statement that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The P5 states also should expand upon and embrace a 2022 declaration by Group of 20 leaders on the inadmissibility of nuclear threats.
In addition, the P5 should reaffirm a statement based upon the 1973 U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, which is still in effect. It pledges that they will “refrain from the threat or use of force against the other Party, against the allies of the other Party and against other countries, in circumstances which may endanger international peace and security” and commits them to consult during crises.
Other constructive moves would be a reaffirmation of P5 support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and for entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and for the principle of prenotification of ballistic missile launches. They also should prepare a joint statement for the 2026 NPT Review Conference, as they did in 2015, and plan for how to achieve a consensus outcome at that conference.
The bottom line is that the international arms control architecture is broken. The P5 process is the handiest tool with which the major world powers can begin to repair it.
Topics for P5 Process Discussion No-first-use policy: China has circulated a paper advocating that all nuclear-weapon states commit to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, yet has not engaged in substantive discussion on this topic with other nuclear-weapon states. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the nuclear test moratorium: The U.S. Senate is unlikely to ratify the CTBT in the near future. A strong P5 consensus on sustaining the moratorium would at least preserve that option, and the entry into force for the CTBT for a future date. China has not ratified the treaty; Russia “de-ratified” it. Fissile material cutoff treaty: The nuclear-weapon states need to discuss how to overcome the impasse in initiating negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament. Radiological weapons: The P5 states should commit to making progress on a new treaty involving these weapons at the Conference on Disarmament. Negative security assurances: Threats of nuclear use in the context of the Ukraine war have raised doubts about the credibility of P5 promises not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear-weapon states should be able to commit to begin negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a binding treaty providing such negative assurances. Intermediate-range missiles: Russia insists that President Vladimir Putin’s offer of a moratorium on deploying nuclear- and conventionally armed intermediate-range forces remains on the table. All of the nuclear-weapon states share an interest in limiting such deployments. Nuclear risk reduction: The valuable work of the last three years to reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear war must continue, such as new mechanisms of crisis communication among the five capitals. Structuring a multilateral arms reduction negotiation: The United States seeks to include China in nuclear negotiations with Russia, whereas Russia seeks to include Britain and France in any such negotiations. Rather than repeating stale formulae, the nuclear-weapon states should discuss the concept of linking successful Russian-U.S. negotiations to a future five-way negotiation. Doctrine/force posture/transparency: The nuclear-weapon states should seek to achieve greater mutual understanding about each other’s readiness to use nuclear weapons, particularly at a time when China is expanding its arsenal, and Russia, and perhaps the United States, are modifying their declaratory policy. Ballistic missile defense: The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty limiting Soviet and U.S. deployment of ballistic missile interceptors provided an essential basis for the gradual reduction of Russian and U.S. arsenals. The U.S. withdrawal from the treaty in 2002 began dissolving the arms control architecture. With Beijing, Moscow, and Washington all investing heavily now in ballistic missile development, the P5 states could contribute to stability by discussing the potential for limits on deploying these missiles. Nuclear “fail-safe” reviews: Valuable work has been done in a “track-two” context on reviewing national procedures to prevent accidental nuclear war. The same work should be done, on a common procedural basis, by all five nuclear-weapon states and the results reported publicly. Artificial intelligence in nuclear command and control: A China-U.S. agreement on the principle that humans must be kept in the loop on nuclear-use decisions should be extended to all P5 process members and actualized. The principle already has been embraced by France and the UK. Proliferation challenges in Iran and North Korea: Without detracting from the focus on NPT Article VI and disarmament, the five nuclear-weapon states should continue their efforts to cooperate on preventing Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and dealing with the implications of North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. |
ENDNOTES
1. The author prefers the term “N5” to distinguish the status of the five nuclear-weapon states under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty from their status as permanent members of the UN Security Council; however, this article uses the name “P5 process” in keeping with its official name.
2. The author shared many of these ideas with Chinese officials at the outset of China’s 2024-2025 chairmanship.
A military aide carrying the satchel with the nuclear codes has been in presidential entourages since the late 1950s. Now, the football follows President Donald Trump.
March 2025
By William Burr
When U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his aides were escaping the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, a Coast Guard officer carrying a heavy briefcase was following him on a staircase. That briefcase was the so-called nuclear football. Presidents and vice presidents are routinely accompanied by a military officer carrying the football, which includes information and technology needed for the worst-case situation when the president or his successor decides to order military action in response to a nuclear or possibly conventional attack on the United States or its allies. A military aide carrying the football has been in presidential entourages since the late 1950s and with vice presidents since the late 1970s. Now aides with footballs shadow President Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance.
The football includes information on emergency procedures, nuclear war plans, and communications arrangements with the Pentagon and key U.S. allies. Initially referred to as the “satchel” or the “emergency actions pouch,” it also has been called the “black bag,” the “black box,” and by 1963, it became known as the football.
The football is a symbol of the president’s authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Since the Harry Truman era, presidential control over nuclear weapons and any decisions to use them have flowed from that authority. Before atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities in August 1945, Truman knew little about the nuclear targeting plans but concurred with the arrangements to use the weapons, believing that the targets were straightforward military installations.1 Days later, Truman, shocked by the mass civilian casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, asserted presidential control by stopping further atomic bombings without his express authority.2 Determined to maintain control, in 1948 he refused to turn nuclear weapons over to the Pentagon, declaring that they were not “military” weapons but are “used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people.”3
The Cold War Era
As the Cold War unfolded, Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, and the presidents that followed, sustained the practice of presidential control, with John Kennedy tightening it after Eisenhower transferred custody of most of the weapons from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Department of Defense.4 Eisenhower and his successors faced the particularly daunting challenge of heightened strategic nuclear competition with the Soviet Union, which developed long-distance bombers—and by 1957, showed a capability to develop and eventually deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles. As the possibility of a severe crisis precipitating a Soviet nuclear attack became more than a theoretical issue, U.S. leaders wanted to be prepared.
Among the preparatory actions that the Eisenhower administration took was in 1956 when Arthur Flemming, director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, asked a variety of U.S. agencies to begin developing continuity-of-government arrangements and to prepare Emergency Action Documents (EADs), including a proclamation of a national emergency, orders to suspend habeas corpus, provisions for a national censorship office, and other martial-law arrangements. The president would sign them in a crisis.
White House military aide Edward Beach devised the idea of using a satchel to carry emergency information, despite mistaken claims that the Atomic Energy Commission created the football in the early 1960s. Photographic evidence demonstrates that by 1957 naval aides were carrying a locked satchel, but it was not until June 1958 that the agencies had nearly completed a set of the EADs to be carried in it.5 The EADs were in the satchel along with documents authorizing emergency use of nuclear weapons, including instructions to make the weapons available to NATO allies that had nuclear sharing arrangements with the United States.6
Eisenhower approved instructions in 1956-1960 for “advance authorizations for the use of atomic weapons,” designed so that the United States “could not be caught by surprise.” Those were the highly secret pre-delegation instructions for military commanders-in-chief in the event that the president and vice president were killed in a nuclear attack.7
The Kennedy Administration
Before John Kennedy’s inauguration, Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster, a White House aide, briefed the president-elect on the satchel’s contents, including the EADs, Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus, and a document for calling Congress into special session, presumably at the secret location in The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virgina. Goodpaster’s briefing also covered emergency plans to move the president and his family to emergency facilities at Mount Weather and other locations “from which he would operate.”8 During the meeting, Eisenhower told Kennedy, effectively, that the satchel would be in the hands of “an unobtrusive man who would shadow the president for all his days in office.”9
Goodpaster also showed Kennedy a booklet that included information on the predelegation instructions. Another booklet described U.S. Department of Defense “emergency actions” and how the Joint Chiefs of Staff would communicate with the president in a severe crisis. Goodpaster further explained the “arrangement” that Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon had established if the president were incapacitated: the “Vice President would accede to the powers of the Chief Executive.” Nixon also had a military aide assigned to him, and presumably a satchel, if something happened to the president. Early in the Kennedy administration, the president’s military aides sent a satchel to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who had it returned. Years later, Johnson suggested that he found the presence of a military aide with the satchel to be disconcerting.10
During the Kennedy administration the satchel would include information on U.S. nuclear war plans that was not available when Eisenhower was president. Before that happened, however, in early 1962, Kennedy had requested the Joint Chiefs to develop procedures to enable the president to initiate a nuclear strike “without prior staffing at the Pentagon.” He wanted to know what “he would say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike” and how the Pentagon could authenticate such instructions. White House naval aide Captain Tazewell Shepard sought to ensure that the procedures in the JCS Emergency Actions File were flexible enough to allow the president to act in a crisis. By November 1962, the White House had received from the Pentagon an emergency actions folder, later renamed the Gold Book, for inclusion in the satchel. It may have offered the procedures, along with emergency conferences, that Kennedy had sought.11
When Kennedy became president, the Eisenhower administration had recently completed the first Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), a nuclear war plan that included targets for strategic bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Initially the SIOP was a one-shot plan involving the launching of thousands of nuclear weapons simultaneously against the Soviet Union and its allies with the potential of causing scores of millions of casualties. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were dissatisfied with this plan’s inflexibility and in 1961-1962 approved arrangements to break up the SIOP into more discrete options, such as preemptive or retaliatory strikes on military and urban-industrial targets together, or military targets only. Those options also would involve huge casualties.12
A Comprehensible War Plan
Distilling the war-plan options into a form that was comprehensible for any president took time, but in 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed the SIOP Execution Handbook, later known as the “black book,” and gave a copy to Kennedy in July. The satchel included booklets with explanations of SIOP attack options and estimated casualties presented in “cartoons and color schemes to make the thing more understandable.” As the SIOP changed over the years, military aides would update the handbook and related material.13
By 1963, the satchel was becoming known as the “football” for unknown reasons—but possibly because it was passed from military aide to military aide and the Kennedy family had a fondness for touch football. At that time, when the president was traveling outside Washington, warrant officers on shifts carried the football because they were closer to the president than the military aides. Yet only the military aides knew the combination for the lock and could make its contents available to the president. During the 1960s, the aides and warrant officers did not follow the president around Washington because the Pentagon knew how to get in touch with him, but eventually the aides routinely would accompany the president during local travel. The football was not light: By 1963 it weighed about 30 pounds and by the 1990s, about 45 pounds.14
When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, Ira Gearhart, an Army warrant officer, was at the back of the motorcade. He rushed to the hospital and, learning of Kennedy’s death, took the football to the room where Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sitting. Although the Pentagon was worried about Gearhart’s location, he followed Johnson to the airport and was on Air Force One when the new president took the oath of office. During the flight back, military aide Chester Clifton briefed Johnson on the football. Once back in Washington, Tazewell Shepard arranged for fuller briefings for the new president on the football and its contents.15
Although Johnson did not like the idea of the football and wanted to hand off the responsibility to the Pentagon, he eventually acquiesced in the arrangement. A newspaper article from 1965 included the first public reference to the football, quoting White House aide Jack Valenti as saying, “The ‘black bag’ or ‘football,’ as we call it, goes wherever the President travels.”16 As far as is known, Johnson did not arrange for a football to be assigned to his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and no information is available indicating that vice presidents Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford, who served under President Richard Nixon, or Nelson Rockefeller, who served under President Ford, had a football assigned to their military aides. When Nixon resigned in August 1974 and flew off to California, the football was in the hands of Ford’s military assistants.17
A Football for the Vice President
Believing that the vice president should be a partner in national security policymaking, President Jimmy Carter assigned a football to Vice President Walter Mondale and this became the practice for future U.S. administrations.18 By Carter’s time, if not before, the president carried a laminated card, known as the “biscuit,” with unique alphanumeric codes needed to authenticate his identity with the Pentagon before authorizing nuclear weapons use. Carter accidentally left the biscuit in clothes sent for dry cleaning at one point. In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot, the card was separated from him during surgery and found later in a shoe, while the aide with the football was left behind at the Washington Hilton Hotel when Reagan was rushed to the hospital. Years later, President Bill Clinton lost his biscuit.19
The protocols that developed over the years for the football and the military aides who carry it remain highly classified. No doubt, the football includes the EADs and information on basic options in nuclear and non-nuclear strike plans. Reportedly, the football includes communications gear, is hardened to protect against electromagnetic pulse, and holds a tablet with satellite links to tactical warning systems. All of that plus armor has added to the football’s weight.20
The fact that one person, the U.S. president, has had the singular authority to make life-or-death nuclear use decisions has led to debates and proposals to address the dangers inherent in this arrangement, including by involving other responsible officials in nuclear use decisions in order to prevent a rushed process and by Congress asserting its war powers more robustly.21 Such reforms are worth serious discussion no matter who resides in the White House, but the advent of a new president who rejects checks on executive authority and is determined to expand personal control over the government increases their relevance.
The current configuration of power, with one party controlling all major institutions of government, suggests that meaningful reforms are not in the cards for the foreseeable future. The United States can only hope that serious crises do not emerge when the football must be unlocked.
ENDNOTES
1. Alex Wellerstein, “A ‘purely military’ target? Truman’s changing language about Hiroshima” Restricted Data: A Nuclear History Blog, January 19, 2018.
2. Henry Wallace, “Diary Entry, Friday, August 10, 1945,” and Leslie Groves, “General L. R. Groves to Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, August 10, 1945, Top Secret, with a hand-written note by General Marshall,” in William Burr, ed., “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book (EBB), No. 716, August 4, 2020. See also Alex Wellerstein, “The Kyoto Misconception: What Truman Knew, and Didn’t Know, about Hiroshima,” in Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, editors, The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton University Press, 2020).
3. James V. Forrestal, “‘Meeting at the White House—Atomic Bomb Custody,’ 21 July 1948,” in William Burr, ed., “U.S. Presidents and the Nuclear Taboo,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 611, November 30, 2017.
4. Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977,” in William Burr, ed., “United States Secretly Deployed Nuclear Bombs In 27 Countries and Territories During Cold War,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 20, October 20, 1999.
5. David F. Krugler, This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 156-162. For the argument that the Atomic Energy Commission devised the football, see Annie Jacobsen, “What’s Inside the President’s Nuclear Football,” Time, April 11, 2024.
6. Charles Finucane, “Letter from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Personnel, and Reserve Charles Finucane to General Andrew J. Goodpaster, 9 December 1959,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 8, 2023.
7. William Burr, “First Documented Evidence that U.S. Presidents Predelegated Nuclear Weapons Release Authority to the Military,” National Security Archive, March 20, 1998, and William Burr, “Newly Declassified Documents on Advance Presidential Authorization of Nuclear Weapons Use,” National Security Archive, August 30, 1998.
8. Andrew J. Goodpaster, “Memorandum for the Record by Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, 25 January 1961, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, July 9, 2018; Krugler, This Is Not a Test, pp. 169-171; Emily Matchar, “The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Bunker a Secret for Three Decades,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 9, 2024; Federation of American Scientists, “Mount Weather High Point Special Facility,” November 25, 1999.
9. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1965), p. 617.
10. William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20 – November 25, 1963 (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 261; Garrett Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), pp. 177, 250.
11. Tazewell Shepard, “Tazewell Shepard to the President, ‘JCS Emergency Actions File,’ 16 January 1962, with attached ‘Alert Procedures and JCS Emergency Actions File,’ Top Secret,” and “Memorandum from G.C. Bullard to General Taylor, ‘President’s Emergency Actions “Gold Book,”’ 11 January 1964, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, September 20, 2018.
12. William Burr, “The Creation of SIOP-62: More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” National Security Archive, July 13, 2004; Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Berlin Contingency Planning,’ JCSM 431-61, 26 June 1961, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Long-Classified U.S. Estimates of Nuclear War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly Underestimated Deaths and Destruction,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 798, July 14, 2022; William Burr, “New Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” National Security Archive, No. 236, November 21, 2007.
13. Tazewell Shepard, “Memorandum of Conference with the President Prepared by Naval Aide Tazewell Shepard, 24 July 1963, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, September 25, 2018; “William Manchester interview with General Godfrey McHugh, 6 May 1964, excerpts,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.
14. “William Manchester Interview with Major General Chester Clifton, 21 April 1964, excerpts,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, No. 834, July 18, 2023; Ibid., citing Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 27, 1965; Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 62-63, 261, 321; Nancy Benac, “Nuclear ‘halfbacks’ carry the ball for the president,” Seattle Times, May 17, 2005.
15. Manchester, The Death of a President, 62-63, 321; Manchester interview with Clifton and “William Manchester Interview with Captain Tazewell Shepard, 1 May 1964,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.
16. “Untitled two-part draft memorandum, n.d. [1965],” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, July 9, 2018; Allen and Scott report, July 27, 1965.
18. “Memorandum from Denis Clift to Vice President Mondale, with Mondale memorandum attached, “PEADS,” 1 March 1979, Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.
19. Jamie Dettmer, “Of biscuits and footballs: The perils of presidents and the nuclear codes,” The Hill, January 23, 2017; Christopher Woody, “Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months, and a ‘comedy of errors’ kept anyone from finding out,” Business Insider, January 3, 2018.
20. Hans Kristensen, “US Nuclear War Plan Updated Amidst Nuclear Policy Review,” Federation of American Scientists, April 4, 2013; various tweets by Marc Ambinder, including on October 23, 2020 at 17:37 UTC. Stephen Schwartz’s “Atomicanalyst” site at bsky.social is a valuable source for photos of military aides carrying the football.
21. “Policy Roundtable: Nuclear First-Use and Presidential Authority,” Texas National Security Review, July 2, 2019; Bruce Blair, “Strengthening Checks on Presidential Nuclear Launch Authority,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2018; Adam Mount, “There’s Nothing Between an Unstable President and the Nuclear Button,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2024.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a return to maximum pressure on Iran but reiterated support for a nuclear deal.
March 2025
By Kelsey Davenport
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a return to maximum pressure on Iran but reiterated his support for reaching a nuclear deal. The move to ratchet up sanctions sparked a backlash in Tehran, prompting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to caution against negotiations with Washington.
In a Feb. 4 presidential memorandum, Trump said that the United States will deny Iran “all paths to a nuclear weapon” and directed the Treasury Department to “impose maximum economic pressure on the Iranian regime.” The pressure campaign will include “driving Iran’s export of oil to zero,” the memorandum said.
Trump told reporters Feb. 4 that the memorandum is “very tough on Iran” but he was “torn” and “unhappy” about signing it. He expressed a preference for reaching a nuclear deal but did not provide any details about the possible terms of an agreement.
In response to the return to U.S. maximum pressure, Khamenei said Feb. 7 that negotiations with the United States are “not intelligent, wise, or honorable.” There should be “no negotiations with such a government,” he said. The comments appear to signal a shift away from Khamenei’s previous support for talks (see ACT, October 2024).
Khamenei did not expressly forbid President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration from engaging in talks, suggesting that there may still be space for diplomacy in Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a Feb. 8 conference in Tehran that Iran still wants to see sanctions lifted but emphasized that negotiations cannot take place “under the maximum pressure policy.”
After signing the memorandum, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu said that the United States and Israel share the goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and if maximum pressure can achieve that goal, “so be it.”
Netanyahu’s visit came amid reports that Israel is still considering military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
The Washington Post reported Feb. 12 that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that Israel is likely to attempt a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the first six months of 2025. According to the source referenced in the report, the agency assessed that Israeli strikes would set back Iran’s activities only by months and would incentivize Iran to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. The attack scenarios would require U.S. support for Israeli operations, the intelligence report said.
Trump has refused to commit the United States to supporting an Israeli attack on Iran. Following the Netanyahu meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social that “Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran to smithereens ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.” Trump said in the Feb. 5 post that he prefers a “Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement.”
Despite Trump’s comments, Netanyahu expressed confidence that with “unflinching support” from the United States “we can and will finish the job” of neutralizing the threat posed by Iran. Netanyahu made the comment during a Feb. 17 press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, Pezeshkian suggested that Iran will rebuild its nuclear programs if Israel attempts a military strike. He said Feb. 13 that Iran’s enemies can “hit the buildings … but you cannot hit those who build it.”
Despite Trump’s stated support for a nuclear deal, it is not clear who in his administration is the point person for talks with Iran.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Feb. 14 that “we are running out of time” to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. He said talks can be concluded quickly and the IAEA “has all the information and elements” but it is up to the states to determine what is necessary in an agreement.
In addition to the risk of military strikes derailing the prospects for diplomacy, it is likely that the Western European states-parties to the 2015 nuclear deal (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) will begin the process of reimposing
UN sanctions on Iran by mid-summer if there is no progress on a deal.
The process uses a veto-proof mechanism in UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, to reimpose UN sanctions and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. That mechanism, known as “snapback,” expires in October 2025.
The Trump administration, having withdrawn the United States from the nuclear deal during its first term, cannot trigger the snapback (see ACT, September 2020).
Trump’s Feb. 4 memorandum called for the U.S. ambassador to the UN to work with U.S. allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.”
Iran has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if UN sanctions are snapped back.
The president signaled interest in “denuclearization” with Russia and China, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and other differences are a challenge to talks.
March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang
U.S. President Donald Trump signaled interest in “denuclearization” with Russia and China, but efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and differences over the scope of potential arms control negotiations present challenges to talks.
Responding by video to a reporter’s question about the U.S.-China relationship at the World Economic Forum Jan. 23 at Davos, Trump said “we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.” He reiterated this position later that day during an interview at the White House with Fox News.
“I want to say: Let’s cut our military budget in half,” Trump told reporters on Feb. 14, on the prospect of a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons; we already have so many,” he added, Associated Press reported.
In his remarks to the Davos meeting, Trump said he spoke during his first presidential term with Putin about “denuclearization of our two countries, and China would have come along.” Although the United States attempted to engage Beijing in arms control talks in 2020, U.S. officials were unable to convince China to attend a trilateral summit with Russia or commit to negotiations (see ACT, July/ August 2020).
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump Jan. 24, saying, “there is something to talk about, we need to talk. Time has been lost in many respects,” according to Reuters.
The Russia-United States New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire Feb. 5, 2026, leaving the nuclear peers without limits on their deployed strategic forces.
The U.S. Department of State indicated in a Jan. 17 report on Russian compliance with New START that, although Russia “may have exceeded the deployed warhead limit by a small number during portions of 2024,” the “United States assesses with high confidence that Russia did not engage in any large-scale activity above the Treaty limits.”
During the Biden administration, Russia maintained that talks on nuclear arms control would not proceed until the United States dropped its support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. Moscow also suspended its participation in New START in February 2023 to protest Washington’s support for Kyiv (see ACT, March 2023).
Now, Moscow will insist that the nuclear arsenals of France and the United Kingdom be included in the scope of a new round of negotiations, Peskov said.
At a Feb. 10 briefing, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov sounded a note of pessimism. “The U.S. is proposing a three-way talks format, and we want a five-way format. We are going round in circles,” he told Reuters.
Four days later at a press conference in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun reiterated China’s traditional position that Russia and the United States should “further make drastic and substantive cuts to their nuclear arsenals, and create necessary conditions for other nuclear-weapon states to join in the nuclear disarmament process.”
Since the change of U.S. administrations, high-level contact between Russian and U.S. officials has accelerated, focused primarily on resolution of the Ukraine war. Trump and Putin held a 90-minute phone call on Feb. 12 on several bilateral issues, according to a social media post by the U.S. president. The call was preceded by a meeting between Putin and Trump’s special envoy for talks on Ukraine, the Middle East, and hostage negotiations, Steve Witkoff, CNN reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in Saudi Arabia Feb. 18. According to a State Department press release, the two sides agreed on steps to normalize relations and hold talks resolving the Ukraine conflict, “in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.”
Growing concern over the prospect of a Russia-United States agreement at the expense of Ukraine prompted an emergency summit of European leaders Feb. 17 in Paris. Speaking in a Feb. 4 online interview to the UK commentator Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated a previous call for allies to provide nuclear weapons to Ukraine to deter Russia. “Give us back nuclear arms. Give us missile systems,” Zelenskyy said.
A U.S. presidential executive order is expanding missile defense efforts, signaling a fundamental shift in missile defense policy.
March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang
In its first week in office, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump approved an executive order expanding missile defense efforts, signaling a fundamental shift in missile defense policy and calling for the revival of interceptor and sensor development programs.
The Jan. 27 order adopts a new policy of deterring and defending against “any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland,” marking a departure from the long-standing policy across administrations that U.S. missile defense investments should be designed primarily to manage threats from rogue states.
In its 2019 Missile Defense Review, the first Trump administration endorsed the traditional policy, stating that the “United States relies on nuclear deterrence to address the large and more sophisticated Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.”
But other aspects of the 2019 review have been resurrected in the new executive order, such as a call for “Development and deployment of space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept.” In its fiscal year 2020 budget request, the first Trump administration sought to fund studies of particle-beam and kinetic space-based interceptor concepts, although these were later dropped in the following year’s budget.
The new executive order also revives plans for a missile defense “underlayer and terminal-intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack.” The concept of an underlayer stationed in the continental United States, adapting the Standard Missile 3 Block IIA interceptor and the Aegis ship-based missile defense system, also was recommended in the 2019 review and included in the fiscal 2021 and 2022 budget requests.
In both of those years, Congress blocked most of the funding for the Missile Defense Agency’s proposal to adapt the Aegis and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems to fulfil the underlayer role (see ACT, January/February 2022).
The new executive order directs the defense secretary to produce within 60 days a “reference architecture” for implementing a plan to defend against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”
In addition to steps toward developing space-based and underlayer interceptor capabilities, this document should include plans to accelerate the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, according to the order. The Office of Management and Budget is instructed to price out the missile defense expansion so the proposals can be considered for inclusion in the fiscal year 2026 presidential budget request.
Following rapidly upon the executive order, the Missile Defense Agency issued a request for information to defense contractors on Jan. 31 that seeks ideas on how to meet the broad requirements of the Trump administration’s ambitious plans.
On Feb. 5, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), introduced a bill to authorize $19.5 billion in fiscal 2026 funding for a broad set of missile defense initiatives beyond the scope of the executive order. Most of the proposed spending, $12 billion, would go toward expanding the ground-based midcourse interceptor field at Fort Greely, Alaska.
The cabinet of political allies will advise on nuclear policy issues.
March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang
U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed a cabinet of political allies to advise on nuclear policy issues during his second term in office and supplemented them with some subcabinet staff from his first administration.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Trump’s secretary of state, former Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jan. 20. As a lawmaker, Rubio pushed for a strong U.S. response to Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and urged Trump to rescind the U.S. signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in response to allegations of Russian low-yield testing (see ACT, July/August 2019).
Awaiting confirmation is Thomas DiNanno, whom Trump nominated Feb. 11 to be undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. DiNanno previously served as acting assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance from 2019 to 2020 while confirmed as a deputy assistant secretary, and before that held several senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and former television commentator, had a more difficult path to confirmation, receiving only 50 votes in a split Senate. Senators raised questions about his lack of high-level policy and management experience and personal character.
During questions at a Jan. 14 confirmation hearing, Hegseth claimed that “Russia and China are rushing to modernize and build arsenals larger than ours.” Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not publicly reported a significant expansion of Russian nuclear forces, they have aired concerns that China might build an arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 nuclear warheads (see ACT, January/February 2025). Those projections remain below the roughly 3,700 warheads in the U.S. stockpile.
Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, has divided Republican hawks. Colby’s history of advocating for a military policy that prioritizes China is “a concern to a number of senators,” according to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Feb. 13 comments to The Hill.
Colby was deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development from 2017 to 2018, and a principal author of the first Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy. With past experience working on nuclear issues in government and at think tanks, Colby has an extensive track record that senators might scrutinize before his confirmation hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
In the past, he has argued against military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and urged the shepherding of U.S. forces and materiel for a potential war with China. In 2014, he also broached the possibility of first-use of U.S. nuclear weapons against China to ensure against a military defeat, long before this option was discussed more widely in Washington.
Another stakeholder in nuclear debates will be the incoming secretary of the Air Force, Troy Meink, who was appointed principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in October 2020. Among other roles, Meink was a test engineer for the Missile Defense Agency while a commissioned Air Force officer, according to his official NRO biography. In his more recent positions as a Defense Department civilian, his responsibilities centered on acquiring military space assets.
The new secretary of energy, Chris Wright, was confirmed 59-38 by the Senate Feb. 3. In comments to department staff the next day, Wright lauded nuclear weapons as having, “in the big picture, very much a peace-generating impact.”
An oil and gas industry executive, Wright recognized the need to continue environmental remediation work at contaminated Cold War-era nuclear facilities, including the former plutonium production site at Hanford, Washington. “We need to finish cleaning up all of these sites,” he said. Several Hanford clean-up workers were laid off by the Department of Energy later in February.
Trump nominated Brandon Williams, a former New York congressman and former Navy submariner, to be administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Williams, Meink, and Colby await confirmation.
Mike Waltz, until Jan. 20 a Florida congressman, joined the administration as national security advisor. In three terms in the House of Representatives, he sat on the foreign affairs, armed services, and intelligence committees and gained a reputation for being willing to engage across the aisle on issues despite holding doctrinaire conservative views on foreign policy.
The Trump administration reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to total North Korean denuclearization; Pyongyang said the goal is impossible.
March 2025
By Kelsey Davenport
The Trump administration reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to total North Korean denuclearization, a goal that Pyongyang described as impossible and impractical.
In a Feb. 15 trilateral statement, Japan, South Korea, and the United States expressed “their resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization” of North Korea and sent a “strong warning” that they will “not tolerate any provocations or threats to their homelands.”
The statement was issued after a meeting in Munich with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Japanese Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi, and South Korean Foreign Minister Korea Cho Tae-yul.
In a Feb. 18 statement in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea accused the three states of “inciting collective confrontation and conflict on the Korean peninsula” and said that the goal of denuclearization is “outdated and absurd.”
North Korea’s nuclear weapons are necessary for “defending peace and sovereignty” and a “legitimate tool of self-defence,” the statement said, and the country will “consistently adhere to the new line of bolstering the nuclear force.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had cast some doubt on whether denuclearization would remain a U.S. policy goal for the Trump administration. During his confirmation process, Hegseth referred to North Korea’s “status as a nuclear power” in a Jan. 6 questionnaire for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
His statement prompted a backlash in South Korea, whose foreign ministry issued a statement Jan. 15 saying that North Korea “can never be recognized as a nuclear-armed state.” Denuclearization is “a principle consistently upheld” by the international community, the statement said.
When U.S. President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore during his first term of office, the two leaders signed a joint declaration that called for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” (see ACT, July/August 2018).
Since returning to office, Trump has said he is willing to meet with Kim again. At a Feb. 7 press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said his administration “will have relations with North Korea” and noted that he and Kim got along “very well” during their meetings in 2018 and 2019.
But North Korea’s nuclear doctrine has shifted since 2018 and the country has invested in new military capabilities, including more accurate short-range, nuclear-capable missiles and long-range systems capable of targeting the continental United States.
Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, raised concerns about the intercontinental ballistic missile that North Korea tested in October 2024 during congressional testimony on Feb. 13. The shortened launch time of the solid-fueled Hwasong-19 missile may impact the effectiveness of U.S. early warning systems, he said. He also noted North Korea’s intentions to increase production of its missile systems and warned that this could “narrow [his] confidence” in the Northern Command’s “existing ballistic missile defense capacity in the coming years.”
Furthermore, recent comments by Kim suggest that North Korea is not interested in resuming dialogue with the United States at this time.
In a Feb. 8 speech marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army, Kim said his country must bolster its military readiness to “proactively respond” to regional security threats. He reiterated plans for an “unlimited defense buildup” and accused the United States of increasing the risk of conflict by deploying nuclear strategic assets in the region.
On the same day, a KCNA commentary said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not a “bargaining chip” and condemned U.S.-led efforts to disarm the country of its deterrent.
The deteriorating relationship between North Korea and South Korea could further challenge any U.S. diplomatic efforts. South Korean outreach to North Korea preceded the Trump-Kim summit in 2018.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also is looking to engage North Korea. At a Feb. 20 press conference in Japan, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi called for the establishment of an agency presence in North Korea.
The IAEA last accessed North Korea’s nuclear facilities in 2009. Grossi said that “there are areas like nuclear safety where we could try to establish some form of engagement” with North Korea.