June 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

Nuclear and defense strategists have long understood that the developing and deploying of strategic missile interceptors is ineffective against determined nuclear-armed adversaries because it could lead them to build more numerous and sophisticated offensive missile systems—at a relatively lower cost and more quickly—to overwhelm and evade missile defenses.

Strategic missile defenses can never be effective and reliable enough to defend the entire United States, but they can still negate a portion of a potential missile attack and upset strategic stability. Unless limited by national policy or mutual agreement, as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty once did, ambitious U.S. missile “shield” proposals can spur adversaries such as China and Russia to enhance their strategic forces to maintain the ability to inflict a devastating nuclear retaliatory strike.

Consequently, even after the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 to rush deployment of a limited strategic interceptor program before the next election, U.S. policymakers have focused mostly on improving capabilities to address limited attacks from lesser North Korean missile threats rather than more substantial threats posed by the major nuclear powers.

Upending longstanding U.S. policy and ignoring strategic realities, U.S. President Donald Trump announced May 20 that he wants to spend at least $175 billion of taxpayer dollars for a crash strategic missile interceptor scheme dubbed “Golden Dome” to defend the continental United States against all missile threats, including those from China and Russia, “within three years.” Trump’s radical plan is technically complex, prohibitively expensive, and counterproductive.

Golden Dome, which is still in the conceptual phase, would patch 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 missile interceptors. The system is designed to destroy incoming missiles by destroying them early in flight, targeting them midcourse, or seeking to hit them just before impact on their targets.

Members of Congress from both parties need to cut through Trump’s hyperbole and demand serious answers to basic questions about this initiative before writing a blank check to a few big defense contractors. What specific threat is it designed to defeat? What success rate is being sought? What is the plan for building the system? How will adversaries respond? What effect will it have on strategic stability and space security?

Clearly, Trump’s radical strategic missile defense scheme would be even more costly than advertised. Consider that more than $250 billion already has been allocated to Missile Defense Agency programs since 1985. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that a new space-based interceptor program would exceed $500 billion over the next 20 years. That program was originally scoped for the North Korean missile threat of 10 years ago, not today’s threat of the peer and near-peer states that Trump wants to defend against. Even Sen. Tim Sheehy, (R-Mont.), who announced plans to form a Golden Dome caucus, said: “It will likely cost in the trillions if and when Golden Dome is completed.”

No matter how much money is spent on exotic crash programs, however, an effective U.S. missile defense system will not be feasible anytime soon, which means that it will not affect strategic stability in the near term. As a result, Chinese and Russian military planners would be smart not to overreact by building up their strategic offensive nuclear forces.

If Trump’s strategic missile defense plan is eventually implemented, however, it would destabilize the already precarious nuclear balance of terror that exists among the major nuclear-armed powers. It would heighten the danger that space will become a war zone and push China and Russia to further improve and expand their strategic offensive capabilities.

Moscow is already developing new systems—such as an undersea torpedo, a hypersonic glide vehicle, and a nuclear-powered cruise missile—to ensure it can overcome any future U.S. missile defenses. It is also developing a capability for a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon, which underscores the vulnerabilities of a space-based interceptor network. Beijing, meanwhile, has already begun to respond to U.S. missile defense and conventional long-range strike capabilities by increasing its nuclear-armed ballistic missile force.

These factors make it even more vital that Russia and the United States engage immediately in strategic stability talks and negotiations to cap or reduce their massive strategic nuclear arsenals before the last remaining treaty, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, expires in 2026. China, too, needs to back up its complaints about U.S. unilateralism, strategic missile defense, and space-based interceptors by agreeing to participate in direct, high-level, strategic risk-reduction talks with the United States.

If Trump, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping continue to bicker in public rather than negotiate mutually beneficial limits on strategic offensive and defensive weapons, the world faces a more dangerous future. 

June 2025 
By Igor Moric

Impressed by the effectiveness of the Israeli Iron Dome defense system against short- to medium-range rockets and drones, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order January 27 directing ambitious plans for an “Iron Dome for America.” The initiative, since renamed Golden Dome, maintains the goal of defending the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, and advanced cruise missiles from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries. In an announcement May 20, Trump stated that $25 billion had been allocated initially in the defense budget to begin constructing a missile defense architecture comprising land-, sea-, and space-based interceptors and sensors, “forever ending” the missile threat to the homeland by the end of his term.

Although Trump was correct to warn recently about the destructive capability of nuclear weapons, the need to reduce nuclear arsenals, and the massive budgets being spent on them,¹ pursuing the fantasy of national missile defense will accomplish the opposite; it will incentivize China and Russia to double down on building up their nuclear arsenals, it will cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, and it  
will not work as intended.

An invincible shield that can safeguard the United States from nuclear war just as a “roof protects a family from rain” is a captivating idea that survives despite many past failures.² Use of metaphors such as shields or domes made of iron or gold, or bullets hitting bullets, combined with a lack of publicly available information and a limited general understanding on how missile defense works, perpetuate the illusion that with enough time and money, technology will advance to eventually enable protection against all external threats.

Over the years, this has spurred over-ambitious attempts at building missile defense systems, with the momentum collapsing once limitations become apparent and policymakers recognize that even attempting to establish such a capability adds an element of strategic instability because of increasing pressures for the other side to deploy additional missiles to counter it.

In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation, asking whether people wanted to continue relying on the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack. Troubled by the moral implications of mutually assured destruction and the vulnerability of strategic ballistic missiles, and driven by the technological optimism of his science advisers, Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This effort aimed to stabilize the relationship between offensive and defensive nuclear arms and ultimately free the world from the threat of nuclear weapons by rendering them impotent and obsolete.

Due to its futuristic vision of missile defense, the program was derisively nicknamed “Star Wars.” It included ambitious concepts such as space-based lasers and particle-beam weapons, and a network of ground- and space-based interceptor systems. Contrary to Trump’s claim in the executive order, SDI was not prematurely cancelled. It was an obstacle to arms control, encouraged the buildup of Soviet offensive nuclear capabilities, and ultimately could not meet its technical requirements even in a scaled-down version. The system could be evaded and penetrated, and the cost dynamics favored the attacker, who had a major advantage by being able to “overwhelm” the interceptors with relatively cheaper warheads or “outfox” them with decoys.³

Star Wars: A New Hope

After the September 11 attacks, concerns over missile threats from terrorist and rogue states gained political momentum in the United States. This provided the Bush administration with an opportunity to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, removing all restraints on development of missile defense systems. Over the past two decades at a price of more than $200 billion, the incremental deployment of building blocks of national ballistic missile defense has continued unchecked, driven by steady technological creep, bureaucratic inertia and policy neglect, without much reflection on the cost or its strategic implications.⁴

Although not formally designated as such, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), already has been constructing its own version of the dome, even before Trump’s executive order. Without specifying the origin or the extent of the threat, the MDA plans envision a layered network to “defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends from missile attacks in all phases of flight.”

The first Trump administration’s 2019 Missile Defense Review maintained that the focus of U.S. missile defense was against “rogue states,” but the systems MDA has been developing are increasingly capable of degrading Russian and Chinese second-strike capabilities, causing concern in Moscow and Beijing. The recent order simply codified longstanding ambitions to reconfigure U.S. ballistic missile defense architecture to defend against large-scale attacks, enforcing Trump’s past public statements that the goal of missile defense is to “detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anytime, anywhere, and any place.”⁵

As with the proposed Golden Dome, MDA’s planned architecture is to include a few types of interceptors, supported by a combination of ground- and sea-based radars, hundreds of infrared sensors to detect launches, and communication satellites to distribute data to interceptors. In cooperation with the Space Development Agency, the roadmap calls for a continuously replenished satellite constellation, including a “birth-to-death” tracking and fire control sensor developed in the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program and referenced in the recent EO.

Although ballistic missile defense systems have been a longtime interest of the United States and Trump, the release of the executive order was likely influenced by recent events. In the April and October 2024 attacks on Israel, most of the launched Iranian ballistic missiles—about half of which failed at launch or in flight—were intercepted by defense systems operated by Israel and its allies. These systems, as well as Patriot interceptors operated by Ukraine in defense against the Russian invasion, demonstrated effectiveness at guarding sites against slower threats traveling in the atmosphere, including drones and medium- and short-range ballistic missiles.

Such successes by theater missile defense systems are widely publicized, creating an inaccurate public perception about missile defense in general. Replicating the same performance on a national scale is a very different problem.⁶ The Israeli Iron Dome effectively defends an area the size of New Jersey; intercepting faster and higher flying nuclear armed long-range ballistic missiles over a country 450 times larger is far more complex. Once incoming reentry vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds enter the atmosphere at an altitude of around 100 kilometers, U.S. terminal 

phase interceptor systems such as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot have only a few minutes to reach the intercept point, limiting the area they can realistically defend.

The most efficient way to defend a wide area is to destroy ballistic missiles in their boost phase, within 3-5 minutes after launch, while their engines are still firing and before reentry vehicles have been separated from the missile payload. During this phase, the missile’s bright exhaust makes it easier to detect the launch from space. Due to geographical realities and time constraints, however, U.S. land and sea-based interceptor systems cannot be positioned close enough to engage launches from deep within Russian or Chinese territory in a timely fashion.

Enter space-based interceptors, a capability referenced in the order and previously explored in SDI. This would involve a mega-constellation of orbiting satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) carrying interceptor missiles and potentially other non-kinetic weapons such as lasers.

Because LEO satellites are constantly orbiting Earth at high velocities, many would be needed to provide coverage over any specific region. For example, to cover a single launch of the North Korean Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and defend most locations in the United States (excluding Alaska), it is estimated that the United States would require at least 1,600 orbiting interceptors.⁷ Defending against missiles launched from China or Russia would demand many more, while also somehow avoiding reaction over the orbital placement of tens of thousands of weapons overflying their territory.

Attempting to construct a constellation capable of protecting against attacks by peer adversaries would be prohibitively costly, even accounting for the falling costs of space-launches.⁸ Additionally, as satellite orbits decay over time, orbiting interceptors would need to be continuously replenished. A single layer would not provide reliable protection, because the attacker could target the vulnerable satellites with relatively cheap missiles or maneuverable satellites, punching a hole through which long-range missiles could pass. China and Russia already possess such advanced anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities. They also could detonate a nuclear explosion in orbit, blinding sensors detecting launches and tracking missiles, and polluting the interceptor orbit with debris.

Therefore, to ensure effectiveness of the shield, the United States would have to deploy multiple layers of interceptors in different orbits and a fleet of maneuverable satellites to defend them, multiplying the overall cost of the system and rendering the whole concept absurd.

Realistically, MDA’s near-term focus likely will remain building a patchwork of their existing interceptor systems, while continuing to expand space-based sensor and communication layers. Most of the agency’s efforts focus on intercepting ballistic missiles during their exo-atmospheric midcourse phase, in which missiles travel unpowered through space for 20 to 30 minutes and reentry vehicles are released from the payload.

MDA’s midcourse defense systems include the legacy Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), which consists of 44 “hit-to-kill” interceptors stationed in Alaska and California, the developing Next-Generation Interceptor (NGI) system with 64 interceptors that is to replace GMD, and the land- and ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, which uses shorter-range SM-3 IIA missiles with kinetic, non-explosive warheads.

Scripted tests performed under “controlled conditions” demonstrate that GMD interceptors have a single-hit kill effectiveness of just 56 percent, with all successful interceptions against ICBMs occurring during daytime. Aegis interceptors have only been tested successfully once against a short-range ICBM, also under optimal conditions where the launch times and the trajectory for the target missile were known in advance.

Because they were never tested in realistic conditions, the real-world reliability of GMD and Aegis systems against sophisticated threats remains unknown.

For example, none of the tests accounted for the possibility of jamming the interceptors or considered cyber or kinetic vulnerabilities of the defense. The target missiles were not allowed attempts to evade interception or carry more than one warhead. In practice, attacking ICBMs would carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, each able to target a different location within some area. The missiles also could be launched with unexpected trajectories or from submarines near the U.S. coast, further limiting the system’s effectiveness.

In addition, as reentry vehicles containing warheads are released from the missile payload, the attacker would employ countermeasures designed to make interception more difficult. For example, some warheads could be replaced with cheap, lightweight decoys that can simulate the radar signature and trajectory of warheads. In LEO there is not much air resistance, and warheads and decoys move virtually the same, making discrimination challenging. The defender needs to identify decoys and ignore, or waste interceptors to destroy them.⁹

Given that there are many imaginative ways to confuse the defender, and the defender may only learn about the method used at the moment of the attack, the United States may end up launching some of its half-billion-dollar interceptors at chaff wires, decoys mimicking the signature of reentry vehicles, balloons, or bomblets, quickly exhausting the limited supply of interceptors without fully eliminating the threat.¹⁰

The Many Costs of the Golden Dome

In 1985, Reagan’s arms control adviser, Paul Nitze, outlined three criteria that a missile defense system must meet to be successful: It must work, it must be survivable, and it must remain cost effective at the margin. Most analyses of ballistic missile defense (BMD) focus on the first two requirements and examine the technological feasibility of the proposed systems. The 2011 report by the Federation of American Scientists, the 2012 report by the National Academy of Sciences, the 2016 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the recently released report by the American Physical Society all indicate that at the moment, U.S. BMD systems have near zero capability against a large-scale Chinese or Russian nuclear attack, and only a very limited capability against a smaller-scale North Korean attack.¹¹

Shielded from public oversight, however, the U.S. government appears to have decided that the nearly half-trillion dollars spent so far on ballistic missile defense, and the $200 billion that was projected to be spent in 2020-2029, are not enough and that this time is different.¹² Despite decades of failures, the U.S. national BMD system, with enough funding and effort, may yet evolve into a reliable shield against nuclear ballistic missile attacks.

In a recent analysis,¹³ we therefore forwent questioning MDA’s techno-optimistic claims, and imagined that the technology required for ballistic missile defense with 90 percent overall system effectiveness had been reached, matching the goal of the GMD and mirroring the claimed effectiveness of the Israeli Iron Dome, in spite of vastly more demanding requirements.¹⁴ It also was assumed that the systems could not be easily jammed or destroyed by an adversary, and rather than asking how, we asked how much?

By accepting that all things work as advertised and focusing on missile defense costs, this analysis derived how many dollars the United States would need to spend to deploy land and ship-based defenses for each dollar China or Russia spend to field a major scale nuclear attack with their land-based ballistic missiles.

First, based on archival data and by adjusting for inflation and purchasing power, the cost of a hypothetical ICBM with adequate range to strike the United States from China or Russia was estimated at $42 million, including missile maintenance and construction of a silo launch facility. The analysis assumed that the attacker could deliver between 500 and 6,000 warheads, reflecting estimates of China’s expanding arsenal and Russia’s deployed and retired but not yet dismantled weapons.

Next, the analysis estimated the costs of establishing and maintaining a U.S. BMD system built around the planned ground-based NGIs and ship-based Aegis interceptors. The assumed unit cost for the NGI interceptor was about $487 million, based on a report released by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office.¹⁵ For the Aegis ship interceptors, the approximate cost was $60 million per unit, including the SM-3 Block IIA missile, and its maintenance, and accounting for the cost of critical subsystems of the Aegis Combat System: the VLS-41 launcher and AN/SPY-6 radar.

Finally, a scenario was modeled where the United States established a two-layered defense, made possible by geographically distributing Aegis ships near trajectories of Chinese or Russian missiles. By considering the size of the defense and the attack, in a two-layered defense the defender can minimize the number of interceptors by being able to shoot, look to see how many threats have been destroyed, and shoot again. The BMD system was assigned an overall effectiveness of 90 percent, while individual interceptor kill-effectiveness was set at either 50 percent (a more realistic, but still highly optimistic case) or 90 percent (a wildly optimistic case, but targeted efficiency).

The results show that in an ideal case for the defender, where interceptors reach 90 percent kill effectiveness and the system can perfectly reject all countermeasures, the United States needs to spend on average 8 times more to defend itself than the attacker needs to spend to build, equip, and launch its missiles. This scenario assumes that each attacking ICBM carries five warheads, it excludes the cost of the defender’s sensors and ignores past and future projected missile defense technology development expenditures.

Recognizing that U.S. missile defense systems have not yet been proven to have any capability to discriminate decoys or identify countermeasures, we accounted for this in a more realistic scenario by assuming the attacker’s ICBMs carry two decoys per warhead, or 15 targets per missile. Because it is speculated that the attacker could pack many more decoys in the payload and use other countermeasures, this is still a highly optimistic case. With interceptor kill effectiveness set at the demonstrated 50 percent, while still ignoring the costs of development and external sensors, the United States needs to spend an average 70 times more than the attacker, making defense economically difficult to sustain.

These findings show that even if technical challenges could be overcome and the efficiency of U.S. national ballistic missile defense against faster long-range ballistic missiles matched the efficiency of the Israeli Iron Dome against shorter-range Iranian missiles and drones, the cost-exchange dynamics still heavily favor the attacker.

By extension, if the United States builds an expensive missile defense system that may never function as imagined, its adversaries have every incentive to respond by building nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles that can overwhelm the defense at a much lower relative cost. The United States may be able to operate with such an economic disadvantage against North Korea, but unless nuclear weapon arsenals are reduced dramatically a successful nuclear offense-defense race against China or Russia is unlikely to become feasible.

As technology improves and production is expanded, the cost of U.S. interceptors could decrease and match the cost of an attacker’s ballistic missiles relying on legacy 1960 technology. Yet, to detect missile launches, track reentry vehicles, and guide interceptors, the defender still requires a costly network of radars and space-based sensors.

That the cost-exchange dynamics favor offense was recognized by U.S. military planners since the beginning of missile defense programs. Relatively cheap countermeasures can nullify the effectiveness of any BMD system and, as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara argued in 1962, “no amount of money could make possible an absolute defense against ICBMs.” Unfortunately, decision-making on U.S. ballistic defense is often steered by political motivations and economic interests of the military-industrial complex, making it difficult to constrain the development drives by cost or strategic considerations.

With not much to show for it, by the end of the decade, the combined U.S. expenditures on ballistic missile defense since the late 1950s could reach many times more than the cost of the Manhattan Project, a few times more than landing the first men on the Moon, and double what is estimated to land humans on Mars.

Trump gave the Pentagon only 60 days to propose an architecture for the Golden Dome, but it took military contractors even less time to overpromise on something on which they ultimately will underdeliver. For example, Lockheed Martin called for a “Manhattan Project-scale” effort to deliver the first Golden Dome within a year. L3Harris praised Trump’s bold vision for Golden Dome, urging a dramatic acceleration to adopt commercial products to a “catastrophic threat.” SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, who also heads administration cost-cutting efforts, reportedly has teamed up with defense startups Anduril and Palantir to compete for the Golden Dome contract.¹⁶

Reason for the Need

When announcing SDI, Reagan called on the scientific community to develop BMD as a safer, morally preferable alternative to relying on nuclear deterrence based on mutual destruction. In 2019, Trump called for a program that can shield every U.S. city, and has since warned that there is no greater danger than the menace of nuclear weapons, signaling the need to strengthen U.S. security without relying on the threat of nuclear retaliation.¹⁷

Yet, as long as nuclear weapons exist, fully eliminating the danger of nuclear war is not a plausible choice. Even if Golden Dome is fully assembled and achieves 90 percent interception rate, 10 percent of incoming warheads would still get through. In the event of a major-scale attack, at least 60 Chinese and 150 Russian warheads would still strike targets in the United States.

The resulting fallout would inflict catastrophic damage across the country and trigger a U.S. nuclear response, regardless of the adversary’s targeting plans. Although there is no evidence a conflict between nuclear-weapon states would just fizzle out, there are plenty of indicators to suggest otherwise.

These include the recently declassified 1983 “Proud Prophet” wargame, which demonstrated how a limited nuclear war in Europe likely would escalate rapidly and catastrophically. Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, described their nuclear wargaming exercises in 2017: “They end the same way every time. They end badly, with global nuclear war.” Finally, Trump himself warned that any nuclear weapon use would mean “probably oblivion.”¹⁸

National ballistic missile defense is technologically unfeasible, prohibitively costly, and bad for deterrence. Although it may be efficient in “mopping-up” missiles from an adversary’s limited retaliatory nuclear strike (in the unlikely case a hypothetical U.S. nuclear first strike manages to take out most of the other capabilities), this scenario also presumes that adversaries would passively observe the massive undertaking required to establish an effective national BMD system.

A defense with 90 percent effectiveness would allow only 10 out of 100 warheads to go through, but a strike consisting of 1,000 warheads would leak 100. While in a static case a missile defense system could enhance deterrence by reducing the adversary’s confidence that an attack will be successful, if it is not perfect, it also creates incentives for a nuclear arms race. Unless constrained by resources, adversaries will attempt to regain lost confidence by increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals or by modernizing to improve delivery vehicles.

In addition to building up its nuclear stockpile and adding hundreds of new ICBM silos, China has tested systems specifically aimed at evading missile defense, including by reviving the idea of placing nuclear weapons in fractional orbit. Meanwhile, Russia is modernizing its ICBMs and developing “exotic” nuclear systems to bypass missile defenses.¹⁹ Russia is also testing concepts for nuclear anti-satellite weapons, and has recently warned that any attempts to deploy U.S. space-based interceptors would further fuel the militarization of space.²⁰

Although U.S. missile defense efforts are not the only reason, they provide a pretext for Chinese and Russian military expansion and refusal to discuss nuclear disarmament and arms control. U.S. ballistic missile defense also is not deterring North Korea’s nuclear buildup, with Pyongyang rapidly closing its technological gap with U.S. peer competitors.

Justified by pseudo-rational military purposes and guarded from accountability by the protection of national security, the ideas of national ballistic missile defense periodically resurface to defend the United States against threats of its own making, driven by promises of impending technological breakthroughs and a sunk cost fallacy.

As with SDI, public perception and political commitments to the idea of what Golden Dome should be are conflicting with what it can be—limited by cost, physical and technological realities constraining its effectiveness, and strategic implications of its deployment.

Before deciding to pursue national ballistic missile defense, Trump’s administration should consider: Will the deployment of Golden Dome truly enhance U.S. national security interests, or will it increase the risks of nuclear escalation and fuel arms racing? Can such a system, with all its limitations, deter a Russian or Chinese attack? Should deterrence fail, can it meaningfully limit the consequences of nuclear war?

The United States also should further examine the technological feasibility of national ballistic missile defense before committing billions to building it. This is not a political question or one for deterrence theoreticians but for scientists and engineers. To start, Trump should direct MDA to set clear system requirements and conduct independently reviewed tests under real-world conditions, without limiting the types of techniques used to obtain favorable results.

In 2010, the JASON independent advisory group of experts produced a report on discrimination techniques for U.S. midcourse missile defense. JASON could be called upon again, given access to required classified data, and tasked with evaluating the credibility of planned interceptor and sensor architecture against Russian and Chinese ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and their delivery vehicles.

Alternatively, if Trump is serious about reducing unnecessary military spending, he could leverage administration experts with significant technical knowledge and without conflicts of interest, tasking them to evaluate the program objectively and ensure that its continuation aligns with goals of government efficiency and effective resource allocation.

ENDNOTES

1. “Remarks by President Trump at the World Economic Forum,” January 23, 2025.

2. Comparison of missile defense to a roof which protects family from rain comes from a President Reagan speech in 1986, “Remarks at the High School Commencement Exercises in Glassboro, New Jersey”, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, June 19, 1986.

3. Hans A. Bethe, Richard L. Garwin, Kurt Gottfried, Henry W. Kendall, Carl Sagan, and Victor F. Weisskopf, “Why Star Wars Is Dangerous and Won’t Work,” The New York Review of Books, February 14, 1985.

4. Jaganath Sankaran, “The Delusions and Dangers of Missile Defense,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 53 (September 2023). Cost estimate from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Missile Defense: Addressing Cost Estimating and Reporting Shortfalls Could Improve Insight into Full Costs of Programs and Flight Tests,” February 2, 2022.

5. U.S. Department of Defense, “Trump Pledges to Protect America From Any Enemy Missile,” January 17, 2019.

6. Fred Kaplan, “Trump’s Order to Create a U.S. Version of Iron Dome Makes No Damn Sense,” Slate, January 29, 2025.

7. “Strategic Ballistic Missile Defense Challenges to Defending the U.S.,” American Physical Society, March 3, 2025, p. 30.

8. Congressional Budget Office, “Effects of Lower Launch Costs on Previous Estimates for Space-Based, Boost-Phase Missile Defense,” May 5, 2025.

9. The Restless Technophile, “ABM 101,” November 8, 2019.

10. For an overview of countermeasures see, Andrew M. Sessler et al., “Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System,” Union of Concerned Scientists, April 18, 2000; Union of Concerned Scientists video, “Missile Defense Countermeasures,” originally published in 2000 and uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2011; and Richard L. Garwin, “Effectiveness of Proposed National Missile Defense Against ICBMs from North Korea,” March 17, 1999.

11. Reports in order: Yousaf Butt and Theodore Postol, “Upsetting the Reset: The Technical Basis of Russian Concern Over NATO Missile Defense,” Federation of American Scientists, September 2011; National Academies, “Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense,” 2012; Laura Grego, George N. Lewis, David Wright, “Shielded from Oversight,” June 23, 2016; “Strategic Ballistic Missile Defense Challenges to Defending the U.S.,” APS, March 3, 2025.

12. For cost estimates, see Frank N. von Hippel, “U.S. Expenditures on Ballistic Missile Defense Through Fiscal Year 2021,” October 26, 2021. For cost projections, see CBO, “Costs of Implementing Recommendations of the 2019 Missile Defense Review,” January 2021.

13. Igor Moric and Timur Kadyshev, “Forecasting Costs of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Against a Major Nuclear Strike,” Defence and Peace Economics, September 3, 2024.

14. Charles L. Glaser, Steve Fetter, “Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China,” International Security, Vol. 41 (2016).

15. “New ICBM Interceptor to Cost $18 Billion,” Arms Control Today, June 1, 2021.

16. Lockheed Martin, “Golden Dome for America Revolutionizing U.S. Homeland Missile Defense,” accessed tktk 2025; Ken Bedingfield and Ed Zoiss, “Space-based capabilities are critical to enabling a missile shield for America,” Breaking Defense, March 6, 2025; “Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX is frontrunner to build Trump’s Golden Dome missile shield,” Reuters, April 17, 2025.

17. “Remarks by President Trump and Vice President Pence Announcing the Missile Defense Review”, January 17, 2019; Shelby Talcott, “There is no greater danger: Trump unveils a 2024 missile defense plan,” Semafor, January 27, 2023.

18. William Langewiesche, “The Secret Pentagon War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times,” The New York Times, December 2, 2024; Speech by Gen. Hyten for the Mitchell Institute Triad Conference, U.S. Strategic Command, July 17, 2018. See also, “Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts,” AP, February 14, 2025.

19. Federation of American Scientists, “Nuclear Notebook: Russian nuclear forces, 2024”, March 7, 2024; Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight, “Chinese nuclear weapons, 2025,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 12, 2025.

20. Unshin Lee Harpley, “DOD Official Confirms Russia Is Developing an ‘Indiscriminate’ Space Nuke,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, May 2, 2024. See also, Dmitry Antonov, “Russia condemns Trump missile defence shield plan, accuses US of plotting to militarise space,” Reuters, January 31, 2025.

June 2025
By Fernando Arias

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is an international organization made up of 193 states that are parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a treaty that entered into force in April 1997.

By joining the CWC, the states-parties have committed themselves to the total elimination of all stockpiles of chemical weapons, abiding thus by the principles of zero tolerance and accepting the stringent OPCW verification system. As a result, after 28 years of OPCW efforts, more than 72,000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons declared by the states-parties have been irreversibly destroyed.

In 2023, the destruction of all declared chemical weapons was hailed as a great success, and a sign that the ethical and political taboo against the use of chemical weapons remains strong among states-parties.

The notion that chemical weapons are abhorrent and have no place in today’s world is firmly accepted and represents a consolidated understanding. In recent years, chemical weapons have been used in some countries, but their use has never been acknowledged by the perpetrators because of the strong taboo against their use.

Beyond the destruction of declared chemical weapons, the OPCW’s other main activities have included regular inspections of chemical industry sites, international cooperation and capacity-building programs, scientific research, and various types of investigations and assistance provided to the states-parties.

The purely technical nature of the organization’s mandate requires a strong corps of staff equipped with top-notch expertise in various scientific and technological fields. At the same time, because the membership is made up of states-parties, the OPCW also possesses a highly visible diplomatic component, directly affected by the political positions adopted by the states-parties in their capitals and conveyed to the organization through their respective ambassadors.

When the CWC was negotiated, some relevant stakeholders believed that following the elimination of all declared chemical weapons stockpiles, the OPCW could be shut down or downsized to a very small Secretariat, as the core goal of destruction would have been reached.

But given the recent significant advances in science and technology, as well as the unstable global world order, the organization is now more necessary than ever.

Today, emerging technologies provide new and powerful instruments that offer clear advantages, yet also pose serious risks. Drone technology, for example, has increased the ability to widely disseminate chemicals, while nanotechnology offers the possibility to reduce significantly the size of laboratories. With the advent of 3D printing technology, laboratory equipment now can be produced locally while avoiding international trade scrutiny.

Nanotechnology has reduced the size of laboratories and automation systems have boosted the capacity of chemical production. These developments also have allowed reductions in the number of staff with access to sensitive information, making it much more difficult to detect illicit production. Moreover, quantum computing with the necessary programs has become instrumental in the design of new chemicals. Together with artificial intelligence, the efficiency and power of these new technologies has increased exponentially.

In this context, the use of the internet in its various forms, including the dark web, has facilitated access—sometimes illegal—to equipment, chemical substances, different sorts of instruction manuals, and expert advice.

All of these new technical features present new risks and threats that create a far more complex and difficult environment to manage than the one in which the recently concluded destruction of classic chemical weapons took place.

The most effective way to tackle these new threats is by ensuring there is always a combination of robust expertise in the OPCW Secretariat and that the OPCW agenda has the active support of the states-parties.

In this respect, the organization already has at its disposal a powerful instrument in the OPCW Centre for Chemistry and Technology, a facility inaugurated by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in May 2023.

The center was designed specifically to keep pace with the rapid international progress in science and technology. It is composed of a modern laboratory, multiuse training areas featuring state-of-the-art equipment, classrooms, meeting rooms, and a multipurpose atrium to cater to different types of activities.

The center’s potential is high: Many scientific research, training, and international-cooperation activities already are taking place there, and many more will be carried out in the coming years.

In addition, the Secretariat is paying particular attention to a number of other matters with the Syrian and Ukrainian dossiers being of high relevance.

Our task in Syria is very challenging. Its chemical weapons program became more open to complete elimination after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024, and Ahmad al-Sharaa became the new caretaker president.

The Syrian chemical weapons dossier is a very old one. In 2005, Syria declared to the 1540 Committee of the United Nations that it had no chemical weapons. Eight years later, Syria became a member of the OPCW and declared its chemical weapons program to the organization, fully aware that the details would be verified by OPCW inspectors.

In its initial declaration, Syria listed 27 chemical weapons production facilities and 1,300 metric tonnes of chemical weapons stockpiles that were part of a program that had spanned four decades. All of the declared facilities and chemical agents were inspected by the OPCW and destroyed by the international community under the stringent OPCW verification system. Most of the 1,300 metric tonnes were destroyed outside of Syria.

Soon after Syria’s CWC accession, OPCW inspectors realized that the declaration was neither accurate nor complete. Moreover, there were indications that chemical weapons were still being used by the Assad regime.

To address these outstanding issues, the Secretariat established several special teams dedicated to the Syrian chemical weapons dossier. The Declaration Assessment Team has been in charge of clarifying the initial declaration of Syria, which was incomplete. After 28 rounds of consultations, the initial declaration submitted by the Syrian authorities was amended 20 times, and when the Assad regime fell in December there were still 19 outstanding issues, some of them of a very substantive nature.

The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) has been responsible for determining whether toxic chemicals have been used as weapons in Syria. At the request of the former Syrian government, the FFM mandate did not include identifying who was responsible for any alleged attacks. The FFM has produced numerous reports confirming that toxic chemicals were used in Syria on repeated occasions.

On August 7, 2015, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2235 by consensus, creating the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) and expressing the determination to identify and hold accountable those responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The JIM produced seven reports, attributing four cases of chemical weapons use to the Syrian Armed Forces of the Assad regime and three to the Islamic State. Because of disagreements at the Security Council, the JIM expired in November 2017 as its mandate was not renewed.

The CWC states-parties decided to hold a special session of the OPCW Conference of the States Parties in June 2018. The conference mandated that the OPCW Secretariat continue the task of the JIM, and set up the necessary arrangements to identify chemical weapons perpetrators in Syria.

As a result, the Secretariat decided to set up a new entity known as the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) which, so far, has produced reports concerning six cases. The Assad regime’s armed forces were identified as chemical weapons perpetrators against the Syrian people in five of the cases and ISIS, in one case.

The role of the OPCW in identifying chemical weapons perpetrators finds its basis in a number of fundamental principles, namely that the use of chemical weapons is reprehensible and the perpetrators of such use in Syria should be held accountable. These principles are in line with the well established positions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, other UN bodies, and those of a significant number of member states as expressed in their national statements to the UN and the OPCW. The principles also are laid down in the 2015 Ieper Declaration, which was issued for the centennial commemoration of the first large-scale use of chemical weapons during World War I.

Today, these common principles form an undisputed part of customary international law. In several instances, the Security Council has dealt with and discussed the content and findings of the IIT reports, thereby recognizing the role of the OPCW on this matter.

Over the past few years, the General Assembly has adopted resolutions, sponsored annually by Poland, concerning CWC implementation. The resolutions have stated that the individuals responsible for using chemical weapons should be held accountable and stressed the importance of the mandate conferred by the OPCW Conference in 2018 that originated the creation of the IIT.

After Assad’s fall, the OPCW Secretariat established contact with the new Syrian authorities, including with Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad al Shaibani. The high-level contacts and the deployments of the OPCW team of experts to Syria have been positive, and the new Syrian authorities, despite the difficult legacy they have inherited, are cooperating well with the OPCW.

The organization has a new and historic opportunity to obtain clarifications on the full extent and scope of the Syrian chemical weapons program. To do so, the Secretariat will need to have access to documents, locations, and people which, in turn, may shed further light on the program.

Establishing a full inventory of the components of the Assad chemical weapons program will be a difficult task, as the new authorities have very little knowledge about it. However, with the financial and political support of the states-parties and the knowledge of the OPCW experts, the organization will carry out this challenging task, visiting a large amount of chemical-weapons-related sites, to assess them, always counting on the goodwill and cooperation of the new Syrian authorities.

The situation in Ukraine has also required special attention. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the OPCW has been in contact with diplomats from both countries, which have repeatedly accused the other of using chemical weapons.

Upon Ukraine’s request, the OPCW Secretariat has provided assistance and protection programs to several groups of Ukrainian experts, and has already carried out technical assistance visits to Ukraine and produced two reports establishing that banned chemicals have been used on the front lines.

In China, meanwhile, operations continue for the excavation, recovery, and destruction of the chemical weapons abandoned by Japan at the end of World War II.

In the final days of the war, the Japanese Imperial Army, in its retreat, abandoned thousands of chemical weapons munitions in various provinces throughout China. The weapons were buried in pits and have remained there for many years, causing them to physically degrade.

Despite the clear degradation, most of the explosive charges and chemical agents contained in the munitions have been found to be still active. This has rendered the destruction of these abandoned munitions a dangerous, complex, and expensive endeavor.

Thanks to the good cooperation between China, Japan, and the OPCW;  significant Japanese financial support; and Chinese logistical support more than 92,000 items of chemical weapons abandoned in China have already been recovered and destroyed, using sophisticated technology in a responsible manner that ensures protection for individuals and the environment. But the task is not yet complete.

As this undertaking has been and continues to be dangerous and complex, the Chinese and Japanese teams responsible for this process must be commended for their determination and courage.

On the global scale, despite the efforts of the states-parties over the last 30 years and the significant accomplishments made, the current situation is very challenging, with the OPCW facing traditional and new risks and threats.

Advances in science and technology provide the organization with new instruments that increase efficiencies, including in our laboratory and in the training of our experts, rendering the investigations and the findings related to alleged chemical weapons use more accurate.

However, advances in science and technology also provide new means for non-state actors to cause harm. In this context, the national implementing measures, namely domestic legislation, adopted by the states-parties is of paramount importance for the responsible implementation of the CWC.

Most states-parties already have enacted comprehensive legislation enabling their law enforcement, customs officials, judiciary, military, chemical industry, and international trade authorities to implement and enforce the obligations under the CWC on the territory of each state-party.

Unfortunately, today, one-third of the members have yet to adopt comprehensive legislation. The Secretariat conducts regular capacity-building activities and promotes international cooperation between states that have already enacted legislation and those that have yet to do so. This includes the sharing of templates of legislation already in force and the exchange of information between legal experts from different states.

Today, the OPCW is an active, responsible, and strong organization that provides concrete results.

Nevertheless, chemical weapons have been used in several countries over the last few years, new technologies present clear risks, and the international global geopolitical situation has produced a dramatically deteriorated security environment, with the international arms control structure facing a difficult moment.

In this context, the OPCW’s future success is not guaranteed. Nations must be reminded that the taboo against using chemical weapons can only be maintained when it is defended in a sustained manner.

June 2025

The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon
By Ankit Panda
Polity Press
2025

Ankit Panda details factors contributing to the “new nuclear age,” an unprecedented shift in the current nuclear security landscape that follows two other periods. The first, from the creation of the atomic bomb through the Cold War, was marked by Soviet-U.S. competition. The second featured growing proliferation concerns in South Asia and the Korean peninsula, as well as rapid reduction of the Russian and U.S. arsenals. The book focuses on the new nuclear age, which is characterized by the effects of recent technological advancements in weapons; new players, such as North Korea; and competition among China, Russia, and the United States. Panda details the historical context leading to this era, including debates on risks associated with deterrence. There is a special focus on advancements in missile defense, cyberattack capabilities, and artificial intelligence. The book also notes recent flashpoints in nuclear security threats and advocates for a return to restraint and arms control, with a focus on effective verification. Of note is Panda’s discussion of deterrence, which he argues shows evidence of preventing nuclear escalation. But unlike many proponents of deterrence, he assesses this approach as being entangled with coercion, and existing “as a function of the terror inherent in nuclear weapons.” The book is a timely overview of the emerging nuclear security landscape, informed by the need to combat increasingly complicated risks of nuclear escalation.—LIPI SHETTY

Influence Without Arms: The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence
By Matthew Fuhrmann
Cambridge University Press
2024

Matthew Fuhrmann looks at nuclear deterrence through nuclear latency and analyzes how the capacity to build nuclear weapons can affect deterrence calculations and the move toward nuclear disarmament. He asserts that “a country’s influence would grow with shorter times to a bomb.” The author provides a complete theory of latent nuclear deterrence in two parts. First, he considers challenges that arise when using latency for influence, and then he provides potential mitigations for these challenges. Some of these challenges include delayed punishment; additional costs, such as sanctions; and regional instability. As potential solutions, he lists nuclear restraint, variable enrichment reprocessing, and using nuclear latency to mitigate other conflicts in a given region. Through 20 case studies and detailed historical records, Fuhrmann argues that nuclear latency can be used to deter adversaries. In his final chapter, the author synthesizes his findings and their potential contributions to nuclear disarmament and proliferation. His final lesson is that “weaponless deterrence may open the door to nuclear disarmament.” Fuhrmann calls for increased investigation into latent nuclear deterrence theories as they apply to fissile material production capacity, foreign perceptions of the intentions of states that are pursuing nuclear-related activities, verification, the survivability of latent nuclear capability, and parity in breakout times—LIBBY FLATOFF

June 2025

A History of Nuclear Haves and Have-Nots 

The Struggle for Abolition: Power and Legitimacy 
in Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy
By Kjølv Egeland
Routledge 
2025

Reviewed by Naomi Egel

Kjølv Egeland’s The Struggle for Abolition: Power and Legitimacy in Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy traces the history of disarmament efforts from the 1968 adoption of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to the 2021 entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). In those five decades, Egeland covers the high points of disarmament efforts such as the TPNW and the first UN Special Session on Disarmament, as well as the disappointments and unmet aspirations, from the 1975 NPT Review Conference to the third UN Special Session on Disarmament in 1988.

The word “struggle” in the book’s title aptly characterizes the history of disarmament efforts. The book shows how the dissatisfaction of non-nuclear, mostly neutral, and nonaligned states lacking progress toward disarmament and lacking recognition of their role as sovereign equals led to crises of legitimacy in multilateral disarmament diplomacy. Those crises were at times resolved through institutional reforms and greater commitments by nuclear-weapon states to future nuclear disarmament. In other instances, failures to achieve such reforms and commitments deepened divides between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states.

Egeland contends that the effectiveness of nuclear-weapon states’ efforts to ward off these challenges and reforms depended on when they are taken. They were more likely to succeed when dissatisfied non-nuclear-weapon states still viewed the “nuclear regime complex,” generally understood to be the set of international rules and agreements governing nuclear weapons, as having high legitimacy, and less likely to succeed when such non-nuclear-weapon states viewed the regime as having low legitimacy.

After introducing the concepts of nuclear order and recognition in Chapter 1, subsequent chapters each consider a time period in the development of the nuclear regime complex. Chapter 2 covers the period between 1969 and 1978, Chapter 3 examines 1979 to 2000, and Chapter 4 addresses 2001 to 2021. By taking a chronological approach to understanding disarmament diplomacy, Egeland draws the reader’s attention to underappreciated moments, initiatives, and events that shaped subsequent disarmament efforts.

For example, although the 1996 Model Nuclear Weapons Convention failed to gain traction at the time, it provided a rallying point and a basis upon which nongovernmental organizations and states later pursued the TPNW. The chronological approach to disarmament diplomacy also underscores how long many disarmament efforts have been in the works. For example, Egeland demonstrates how disarmament diplomats and advocates pursued the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the early 1960s, in the context of the development of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and in the 1990s, and in the intervening years as well.

A central theme of the book is the efforts by non-nuclear-weapon states to achieve recognition as sovereign equals by nuclear-weapon states and to have their priorities and objectives given equal weight to those of nuclear-weapon states. This echoes other scholarship that has emphasized the importance of status-seeking and the desire of smaller states to overcome international hierarchies as a motivator for state action in world politics.¹ The Struggle for Abolition underscores the need to take seriously the nonmaterial factors that shape states’ negotiating behaviors in disarmament diplomacy.

Yet this coupling of recognition and disarmament can have the consequence of underappreciating progress toward disarmament that lacked a central role for non-nuclear-weapon states. If disarmament and recognition go hand in hand, steps toward disarmament negotiated by nuclear-weapon states are unlikely to satisfy the recognition demands of certain non-nuclear-weapon states. In describing the reaction of non-nuclear-weapon states to bilateral U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Soviet arms control agreements, the book shows that states at the forefront of disarmament advocacy were disappointed and underwhelmed by the products of bilateral superpower arms control negotiations that lacked participation from non-nuclear-weapon states and that were concluded during periods of disagreement in multilateral disarmament diplomacy.

Conversely, the pairing of disarmament and recognition can lead such states to emphasize the importance of measures that had few material implications but were significant in terms of recognition. For example, in discussing the development of the NPT, Egeland concludes, “If judged as an attempt at tackling the neutral and non-aligned states’ material security dilemma vis-à-vis the nuclear-weapon states and their allies, the NPT’s disarmament language looks next to worthless.” However, “by casting the NPT as a step towards disarmament, Article VI allowed the non-nuclear-weapon states to describe themselves not simply as ‘inferior’ or ‘unequal’, but as ‘equal in waiting.’”

Likewise, in contrasting these states’ positive reaction to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II, which never entered force as a treaty, and their scorn of SALT I, which did enter into force as a formal treaty, he notes, “What had changed over the course of the second half of the 1970s, of course, was not the contents of SALT but the social environment in which nuclear diplomacy was enacted.” These different reactions to various steps toward disarmament underscore the importance of non-material factors and of recognition, in anticipating whether an action or agreement is likely to satisfy states seeking disarmament.

Although the book does not limit its focus to any specific states, neutral and nonaligned states are often at the center of the struggle for both disarmament and recognition. Sweden and Mexico appear repeatedly as strong disarmament advocates. Yet Sweden’s approach to disarmament and nuclear weapons has changed in recent years. Sweden did not vote in favor of the TPNW in 2017, did not join the TPNW, and has joined NATO since the TPNW entered into force. Although Sweden was a strong Cold War disarmament advocate, it has played a less prominent role in the post-Cold War period, especially after 2010, even before it joined NATO.

Mexico, meanwhile, consistently has been at the forefront of disarmament diplomacy. This raises interesting questions of how stalwart certain states or other actors are in disarmament advocacy: Why do certain actors take leadership roles in disarmament advocacy and why, at some point, do they step back from those roles? If disarmament diplomacy and sovereign recognition go together, why would Sweden reverse its approach, unlike other countries? It does not appear that Sweden’s desire for recognition was fully met or that sufficient progress on disarmament was achieved. More broadly, when is disarmament diplomacy a priority for states and when does it stop being so? Understanding the prioritization of disarmament diplomacy not as a constant attribute of certain states, but as a dynamic shaped by external and internal factors, can help identify when recognition concerns are likely to be especially salient, and for which states.

Lurking through the book is the question of the extent to which disarmament diplomacy and the nuclear regime complex are a distinct negotiating space versus an area of negotiation shaped by external events. At times, the disagreements and the divide between non-nuclear-weapon states seeking disarmament and nuclear-armed states reflects the distinction between haves and have-nots in terms of nuclear weapons. At other times, Egeland and the actors he examines in his book explicitly link crises of legitimacy in the nuclear regime complex to broader divides in world politics, especially those between former colonizers and the formerly colonized, or great powers and the rest. The extent to which disarmament diplomacy is insulated from external events matters because it points to alternatively narrower or broader paths through which legitimacy can be undermined and through which recognition can be achieved.

What does the struggle for nuclear abolition look like today? As nuclear-weapon states appear uninterested in arms control limits or reductions, nuclear and non-nuclear multilateral institutions are under strain, and the NPT continues to be mired in perpetual crisis, prospects for nuclear disarmament appear dim. As a result, the nuclear regime complex appears to have very low levels of legitimacy for many non-nuclear-weapon states. At the same time, the United States and Russia appear less concerned with multilateralism and disarmament diplomacy than perhaps ever, and are reluctant to recognize non-nuclear-weapon states as equals. Domestic actors in countries such as Poland and South Korea are increasingly discussing the possibility of developing their own nuclear weapons.

Yet as Egeland shows, earlier disarmament efforts can lay the groundwork for later achievements, even if they do not succeed at first. Moreover, the nuclear regime complex has contributed to important norms, including taboos against nuclear testing and nuclear use, which have endured. Nonetheless, in a context in which the dominant nuclear-weapon states appear less influenced by international norms and less responsive to pressure from non-nuclear-weapon states, the nuclear regime complex faces serious challenges to sustain past successes, let alone make further progress.

Extensively researched, with rich archival evidence and interviews with participants in disarmament negotiations, The Struggle for Abolition is an important contribution to understanding why the nuclear regime complex has endured thus far, how it has evolved, and how cycles of legitimacy crises have shaped it. By centering the role of non-nuclear-weapon states, this book provides a valuable addition to work that has been more focused on the role of the United States in developing and sustaining the multilateral nonproliferation regime.

ENDNOTES

1. For example, Benjamin de Carvalho and Iver Neumann, eds., Small State Status Seeking: Norway’s Quest for International Standing. (London: Taylor & Francis, 2014); Vincent Pouliot, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Naomi Egel and Steven Ward, “Hierarchy, revisionism, and subordinate actors: The TPNW and the subversion of the nuclear order,” European Journal of International Relations Vol. 28, No. 4 (2022): 751-776; and Rohan Mukherjee, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

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Naomi Egel is an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs and a faculty fellow at the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia.

 

June 2025
By Raymond Jeanloz

Richard Garwin, who died last month at the age of 97, is best known for designing the 1952 Ivy Mike nuclear explosion test. It vaporized the island of Elugelab in the Eniwetok Atoll and ushered in the U.S. development and deployment of the first hydrogen bombs. Garwin was 24 at the time.

Less widely known is his tireless work in arms control and disarmament. Over more than half a century, he addressed the threats of nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, global war, conflict in space, terrorism, and bioweapons. Garwin participated in security meetings run by the Pugwash Conferences, the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts and Amaldi Global Security starting in the 1970s; served as vice chair of the Federation of American Scientists, which holds an archive of his papers; and chaired the U.S. State Department’s Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board from 1993 to 2001.

By far his longest association, however, was with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC). He was a member from 1980 to 2023 and an observer thereafter. The committee serves the United States by providing a quiet venue for discussions with foreign technical, military, and policy experts on nuclear, biological, cyber, and space security; arms control; and nonproliferation. This involved regular meetings with Russia, China and India that have been underway for decades.

Garwin contributed significantly to innumerable meetings with these foreign counterparts. He was committed to documenting ideas in writing, coauthoring such CISAC reports as: Nuclear Arms Control: Background and Issues (1985); The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (1991);  Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Explosive Materials (2005). He co-wrote Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism (2002) after the September 11 attacks.

The National Academy suited him as a venue, as he could emphasize technical matters in discussions bearing on public policy. Garwin was relentless in bringing the logic of engineering and science to each conversation, including on topics that are frightening and therefore emotional. The objective was to provide evidence-based advice, applying the scientific method as vetted by expert peer review.

A focus on technical matters helps initiate arms control discussions. After all, some of the world’s most daunting challenges, such as control of nuclear arsenals, are among the consequences of scientific discovery and the resulting technologies must be understood to be contained. Science and engineering can also provide solutions for arms control, from developing monitoring technologies for verifying treaties to establishing communication channels to avoid crisis.

Garwin brought the international aspects of science to bear, with researchers comparing, competing and, when appropriate, collaborating with each other worldwide. His own scientific collaborators ranged from George Charpak (Megawars and Megatons, 2001) in France to Antonino Zichichi and his Ettore Majorana Centre in Sicily.

More generally, Garwin could appreciate the capabilities of a foreign colleague without needing to agree with the actions or motivations of that individual’s government. This spirit of international technical collaboration made him unusually effective in discussions with counterparts from Russia, China and other nations with which the United States has sustained dialogues. Garwin pointed out unjustified assumptions or flaws in colleagues’ technical analyses as readily as he acknowledged the validity of a point with which he concurred.

The interactions were no less courteous and professional than one would expect for the best of scientific meetings, even when discussions broached topics about unprecedented death and destruction.

Garwin had a special appreciation for the people of China, where he and his wife Lois traveled for more than 40 years. After his first visits in the 1970s, he engaged with scientists and military officers of China’s nuclear-weapons community through CISAC, playing a key role in the production of the English-Chinese, Chinese-English Nuclear Security Glossary (2007). This unique volume is intended to help governments and the arms control community by reducing misunderstandings of concepts and definitions.

His efforts have been appreciated in China as in the United States, with a leading Chinese counterpart writing in 2014, that “Dr. Garwin has contributed enormously to enhance communications, cooperation, and mutual trust, as well as understanding both between the peoples of the two nations and especially the scientists.”

For Garwin, the essential matter is that facts of nature exist independent of humans. Some facts are eventually discovered by humans, often without anticipation, let alone preparation. Yet it is up to humans to decide how to develop, deploy, and ultimately control the resulting technologies to the betterment of humanity.

June 2025
By Lipi Shetty

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) gave formal notice May 9 that it would prepare a nationwide, programmatic environmental impact statement on its proposed plutonium pit production plans.

According to the notice, the NNSA has identified 13 potential focal issues for inclusion in the statement, including the impacts of the generation, transportation, and disposal of radioactive waste. Two virtual public meetings were held May 27 and May 28, to gather initial feedback on the impact statement. NNSA is also accepting written public comments until July 14.

The environmental impact statement is the result of a September 2024 ruling by a U.S. district judge that the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to properly consider environmental impacts and analyze alternatives to its plutonium pit production plans announced in 2018. (See ACT, November 2024.) As a part of a rapid expansion of U.S. nuclear weapons production, the 2018 plan aims to produce 30 pits per year at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and 50 pits at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

The lawsuit, which resulted in a January 2025 settlement, was filed by the South Carolina Environmental Law Project representing the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment. (See ACT, March 2025.)

According to a Jan. 17 press release by the plaintiffs, the settlement required the NNSA to halt all production preparations at the Savannah River Site until completion of the environmental impact statement within two and half years.

In a joint statement May 9, the plaintiffs highlighted the centrality of the plutonium pit production effort to the broader U.S. nuclear modernization plan and urged the public to engage in the commenting process.

Comments on the scope of the programmatic environmental impact statement can be emailed to [email protected] or mailed to National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Pit Production Modernization, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20585. The NNSA expects it will issue the draft impact statement in one year and will issue the final report and record decision within two years.

June 2025
By Sizuka Kuramitsu, Lipi Shetty, and Daryl G. Kimball

The third and final preparatory committee meeting ahead of the 2026 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended May 9 with little room for optimism for agreement on a consensus outcome document next year.

The review process is designed to bring together the 191 NPT states-parties to formally review compliance with and implementation of the treaty’s three pillars of disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

According to diplomatic sources who spoke with Arms Control Today, the two-week-long preparatory meeting came close to consensus on a draft package of proposals for strengthening the review process, but disputes among some NPT nuclear-armed states, including China, emerged on the final day.

The impasse over strengthening the review process scuttled any further efforts to reach an agreement on a separate draft package of substantive recommendations for the Review Conference, which the president of the meeting, Harold Agyeman of Ghana, circulated for consideration.

In his opening statement, Agyeman emphasized that the NPT is under stress. “Today, we stand at a crossroads, and the credibility of the treaty, which for 50 [years] has served as the cornerstone of global non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament efforts, is challenged, within a context where predictability is required more than ever,” he said April 28.

“As we therefore complete the final lap towards the 2026 Review Conference, my appeal to states-parties is simple. Time is running out on us and we must be ready to see the bigger picture, to put aside our national differences and work collectively towards the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons that preserves the human civilisation.”

Although the vast majority of states did seek to find common ground, differences among the NPT’s nuclear-armed states continued to dog the discussions and stymie progress.

During the two week preparatory committee meeting, states-parties voiced various concerns about existing and emerging threats to the treaty, including the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the global nuclear order; China’s nuclear weapons build-up; the forward deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe; Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus; threats to the global nuclear test moratorium; and the failure of the five NPT nuclear-armed states to engage in negotiations on disarmament, which is a central obligation under 
Article VI of the treaty.

As states agreed at the 2000 Review Conference, the third preparatory committee should take stock of the two previous preparatory committee meetings and “make every effort to produce a consensus report containing recommendations” for the following year’s review conference. But as was the case in the past, the states-parties could not produce substantive recommendations for the next year’s conference by consensus.

As at previous preparatory committee meetings, a group of 48 states issued a joint statement to condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine including the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and nuclear sharing with Belarus. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia’s irresponsible and threatening nuclear rhetoric as well as its posture of strategic intimidation, including its announced deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus,” read the joint statement.

In keeping with recent U.S. abstentions in other fora on the subject since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the United States did not join the statement condemning Russia.

The United States, represented by a less senior delegation than in years past, reiterated Trump’s statements expressing a readiness to talk with China and Russia on “denuclearization.” The statements also sought to contrast the U.S. record on its relative transparency regarding its nuclear arsenals and nuclear posture with that of China.

Referring to Trump, Paul Watzlavick, the recently appointed head of the U.S. delegation, said April 29: “He has made clear his desire to address the threat posed by Russia and China’s nuclear arsenals.”

“In sharp contrast to China’s opaque nuclear weapons build-up, the United States has been remarkably transparent, releasing the number of weapons in our stockpile twice in the last four years. However, for too long U.S. leadership and transparency have not been met with reciprocity by China and Russia,” Watzlavick said.

The closing session on May 9 opened with several joint statements, including one delivered by Ireland on behalf of 49 states-parties on the importance of strengthening transparency and accountability measures.

Referring to the fast approaching expiration of the last remaining treaty limiting the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), Austria also took to the floor to deliver a joint statement on behalf of 24 states calling on the United States and Russia to re-engage on nuclear disarmament and to refrain from increasing the size of their deployed strategic arsenals after New START expires on Feb. 6, 2026.

Underscoring the importance of disarmament under current high tensions, it is “urgent to preserve and achieve further reduction and limitations of deployed strategic nuclear arsenals,” the joint statement said.

It also called “for the urgent commencement of negotiations for a successor agreement and … for a return to full and mutual compliance with the limits set by the treaty until such time as a successor pact is concluded in order to secure the achievements of the New START Treaty before its expiry and to achieve further progress on the limits on and reduction of deployed strategic nuclear arsenals.”

The 2026 NPT Review Conference is set for April 27 to May 22 in New York and will be chaired by Vietnam. The last time an NPT review conference adopted a substantive outcome document by consensus was in 2010.

June 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans for a sweeping overhaul and downsizing of the State Department, including reducing U.S.-based staff by 15 percent and closing or consolidating more than 100 bureaus overseas.

“We cannot win the battle for the 21st century with bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources,” Rubio said April 22 in a department-wide email obtained by the Associated Press. He said the reorganization aimed to “meet the immense challenges of the 21st century and put America First.”

Overall, Rubio’s plan calls for reducing the number of bureaus and offices from 734 to 602 through consolidation or elimination, according to a department fact sheet.

In addition to structural “efficiencies,” the proposed organizational chart would make several major functional changes, including eliminating the most senior department position dedicated to human rights and civilian security, abolishing the equity and global accountability offices, and further dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The plan also calls for another reorganization of the bureaus overseen by the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security that deal with nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament, which have been reshuffled four times since the late-1990s.

Rubio’s plan would fold the International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau (ISN) and the Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability Bureau (ADS), formerly the Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Bureau (AVC), into a single bureau with one assistant secretary instead of two.

The newly combined Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Stability Bureau would become one of five bureaus (instead of the current three) under the Office of the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. The other four new bureaus would be: International Narcotics and Law Enforcement; Political-Military Affairs; Counterterrorism; and Emerging Threats.

According to current and former U.S. officials, the consolidation of the ADS and ISN bureaus likely will reduce the capacity of the department and the government as a whole to deal with the broad range of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament challenges.

By expanding the scope of the issues for which the undersecretary of state for international security and arms control would be responsible and eliminating one of the two assistant secretaries, there will be less time and fewer senior officials available to deal with these critical issues.

In addition, U.S. officials note that potential staffing cuts and retirements could diminish the specialized expertise that senior decision-makers at the State Department and other executive branch agencies depend on to formulate and implement policy on nuclear, chemical, biological, and conventional arms control and nonproliferation matters, civilian nuclear cooperation, space security, security assistance programs, and conventional arms trade policy.

The Trump administration has nominated Thomas DiNanno to be the new undersecretary of state for international security and arms control. The Senate has not yet voted on his confirmation for the post.

The Rubio proposal would further downsize the number of personnel responsible for a wide range of nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament matters and is part of a longer-term trend underway since the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, first established in 1961 as an independent entity during the Kennedy administration, was folded into the State Department in 1999 during the Clinton administration. (See ACT, April 1997.) This ACDA merger led to the creation of the position of undersecretary for arms control and international security.

In 2005, the Bush administration merged the arms control and nonproliferation bureaus into the current ISN bureau. In addition, the verification and compliance bureau was expanded to include implementation. (See ACT, October 2005.)

In 2010, the Obama administration renamed the Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI) to become the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance (AVC) and a number of offices in the ISN bureau were moved into the AVC. The ISN and Political-Military Affairs bureaus remained unchanged. At the time, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposed the idea of combining the arms control and verification functions within a single bureau. (See ACT, November 2010.)

The latest proposed State Department changes have not yet been completed and Congress may decide to weigh in, but the department is moving forward with the plan.

It is not yet clear how the proposed reorganization will align with the results of the 180-day review of U.S. treaties and funding of international organizations that was mandated by a presidential executive order issued February 4.

The order directs that the secretary of state “conduct a review of all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, and all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party, to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether such organizations, conventions, or treaties can be reformed.”

The review is to include “recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties.”

On May 2, the Trump administration also released an outline of its fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress that calls for a $1.7 billion reduction in assessed and voluntary contributions to international organizations.

It states that “the budget pauses most assessed and voluntary contributions to UN and other international organizations, including the UN regular budget” in order “to preserve maximum negotiating leverage.”

Rubio, who was named acting national security advisor following the dismissal of Michael Waltz in April, has also moved to downsize significantly the National Security Council.