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The Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "Sixty Years Later," will be held on November 7- 8, 2005. Below is the second in a series of analyses on proliferation milestones.
"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business…If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of fear."
With these dramatic words on June 14, 1946, Bernard Baruch, the United States representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, introduced America’s plan to avert a state of permanent nuclear terror. The Baruch Plan was revolutionary. It also failed, and his fearful prophecy proved all too accurate. As nonproliferation experts and political leaders struggle today to control the spread of nuclear technology and weaponry, revisiting the Baruch Plan can teach us much about where we have come and where we may be going. (Read More)
The 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was a disaster. It was a major missed opportunity for the United States to advance either the agenda of the Bush administration or the broader agenda against the spread of nuclear weapons. It was demoralizing for almost all of the top nonproliferation officials from around the world who had gathered for this unique conclave. (Read More)
The Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, "Sixty Years Later," will be held on November 7- 8, 2005. Below is the first in a series of analyses on proliferation milestones.
In June of 1945, the Franck Report was ignored, the moral concerns of its scientific authors over the use of nuclear weapons dismissed. Sixty years later, the report seems a prescient warning of proliferation dangers. Still largely overlooked today, it typically shows up as a few paragraphs amidst the hundreds of pages written about the Manhattan Project. Yet interestingly, the report’s warnings of a nuclear arms race and recommendations for the international control of nuclear energy resonate with contemporary concerns. The proliferation challenges of today were clearly foreseen by some of the bomb’s creators. (Read More)
Jessica Mathews plays director of national intelligence in Atlantic-sponsored war game.
We know the victors write history, but can they re-write it as well? In a U.S. pamphlet handed out at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in New York this month, officials have erased key international agreements from the historic account. Gone are any references to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and to commitments made at the 2000 NPT conference. Official disdain for these agreements seems to have turned into denial that they existed. The U.S. refusal to comply with it own obligations is a key reason why the conference may break up in disarray, setting back global efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons. (Read More)
The U.S. position at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference on toughening penalties for any state that withdraws from the treaty makes a lot of sense. It reflects the proposals of several other countries (particularly the European Union common position), and closely parallels recommendations made in the Carnegie study, Universal Compliance. If adopted, these positions could discourage additional states from following North Korea’s example and could substantially reduce the potential for withdrawing states to proceed to the production of nuclear weapons. (Read More)
In order to influence positive change in Iran, the United States must first recognize that U.S. policy toward Iran over the past twenty-six years has not worked; unilateral sanctions, denouncements, and other forms of coercion are insufficient; and the U.S. needs the cooperation of at least Europe and Russia to affect Iranian behavior.
George Perkovich testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at a hearing titled "Iran: Weapons Proliferation, Terrorism and Democracy."
Iran is threatening to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program. If it does, negotiations with the European Union will collapse and the crisis will escalate. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a military option?
ISSUE BRIEF--Iran is threatening to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program. If it does, negotiations with the European Union will collapse and the crisis will escalate. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a military option?
North Korea’s state controlled media claimed on May 11 the country had completed removal of 8,000 fuel rods from its 5 megawatt plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon. Estimates by the Institute for Science and International Security suggest the fuel elements contain between 12 and 19 kilograms of plutonium. These fuel elements will have to cool for an unknown period of time in the fuel storage pond located next to the reactor building. It is estimated that within 2-3 months, the fuel could be processed and the weapon-usable plutonium made ready for production of nuclear weapons. There is no conclusive evidence that North Korea possesses any nuclear weapons, but U.S. officials assume they have produced an unknown number of nuclear devices. (Read More)
Despite reports that North Korea may be preparing to conduct a nuclear test and may soon have access to another four weapons worth of plutonium, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and intentions remain unclear. The known facts, however, are disturbing enough to confirm that current efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear program have failed.
Earlier this year, on February 10, North Korea declared definitively that it had nuclear weapons. While not supported by new evidence, the Foreign Ministry statement enhanced the perception that North Korea is a nuclear weapon state. While responsible leaders have to assume North Korea has enough nuclear material to make a weapon, there is no clear evidence that it has produced such weapons or can deliver them reliably. (Read More)
North Korea has taken a series of actions in the past few months that in normal times would have provoked a major international crisis. Yet, the Bush administration is unconcerned about these moves that directly threaten American security and the security of key US allies South Korea and Japan. The U.S. now appears resigned to the fact that North Korea has the ability to make nuclear weapons and is not prepared to take coercive steps or otherwise to prevent it from consolidating its status as a nuclear weapon state.
North Korea has taken a series of actions in the past few months that in normal times would have provoked a major international crisis. Yet, the Bush administration is unconcerned about these moves that directly threaten American security and the security of key US allies South Korea and Japan.
As envoys from around the world meet this month in New York to review the NPT, this important security system is mired in such discord that it is in danger of crumbling.
One would think, with the end of the cold war, the global war against terrorism, and the high level of attention paid to proliferation, that NPT members would be poised to reaffirm the Treaty’s vital importance and take action to enhance it for the years ahead. Yet, it is now clear that the NPT is in crisis.
North Korea does not have a missile that can hit the United States. This is a theoretical capability, not an operational one. Nor is there any evidence, at least in open sources or leaked classified ones, that North Korea can make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a long-range missile.
In an April 29th op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Henry Sokolski and George Perkovich challenge Iran’s argument about its ‘inalienable’ right to enrich uranium under the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Citing the overall intent of the NPT to curb the spread of dangerous nuclear technology, Sokolski and Perkovich argue that the right of states to develop "peaceful nuclear energy" is not absolute and Iran’s stance that a state can legally acquire all nuclear technology up to but not including a complete nuclear weapon is a misinterpretation of the treaty.
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Acton holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Fiona Cunningham is a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in 2020-21.
Dalton is the co-director and a senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. An expert on nonproliferation and nuclear energy, his work addresses regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order.
Rose Gottemoeller is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. She also serves as the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Hibbs is a Germany-based nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. His areas of expertise are nuclear verification and safeguards, multilateral nuclear trade policy, international nuclear cooperation, and nonproliferation arrangements.
Kassenova is a nonresident fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment.
Ulrich Kühn is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the head of the arms control and emerging technologies program at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg.
Jamie Kwong is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Levite was the principal deputy director general for policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission from 2002 to 2007.
Thomas MacDonald is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Perkovich works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues; cyberconflict; and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies.
Lindsay Rand is a Stanton pre-doctoral fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Sinan Ülgen is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, where his research focuses on Turkish foreign policy, nuclear policy, cyberpolicy, and transatlantic relations.
Tristan Volpe is a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and assistant professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Fumihiko Yoshida is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tong Zhao is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program.
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