Interest in nuclear disarmament has grown rapidly in recent years. Starting with the 2007 Wall Street Journal article by four former U.S. statesmen-George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn-and followed by endorsements from similar sets of former leaders from the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Australia, and Italy, the support for global nuclear disarmament has spread. The Japanese and Australian governments announced the creation of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in June 2008. Both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama explicitly supported the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons during the 2008 election campaign. In April 2009, at the London Summit, President Barack Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev called for pragmatic U.S. and Russian steps toward nuclear disarmament, and President Obama then dramatically reaffirmed "clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" in his speech in Prague.

There is a simple explanation for these statements supporting nuclear disarmament: all states that have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are committed "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." In the United States, moreover, under Clause 2 of Article 6 of the Constitution, a treaty commitment is "the supreme Law of the Land." To af1/2rm the U.S. commitment to seek a world without nuclear weapons is therefore simply promising that the U.S. government will follow U.S. law.

A closer reading of these various declarations, however, reveals both the complexity of motives and the multiplicity of fears behind the current surge in support of nuclear disarmament. Some declarations emphasize concerns that the current behavior of nuclear-weapons states (NWS) signals to non-nuclear-weapons states (NNWS) that they, too, will need nuclear weapons in the future to meet their national security requirements. Other disarmament advocates stress the growth of global terrorism and the need to reduce the number of weapons and the amount of fissile material that could be stolen or sold to terrorist groups. Some argue that the risk of nuclear weapons accidents or launching nuclear missiles on false warning cannot be entirely eliminated, despite sustained efforts to do so, and thus believe that nuclear deterrence will inevitably fail over time, especially if large arsenals are maintained and new nuclear states, with weak command-and- control systems, emerge.

Perhaps the most widespread motivation for disarmament is the belief that future progress by the NWS to disarm will strongly influence the future willingness of the NNWS to stay within the NPT. If this is true, then the choice we face for the future is not between the current nuclear order of eight or nine NWS and a nuclear-weapons- free world. Rather, the choice we face is between moving toward a nuclear- weapons-free world or, to borrow Henry Rowen's phrase, "moving toward life in a nuclear armed crowd."

There are, of course, many critics of the nuclear disarmament vision. Some critics focus on the problems of how to prevent nuclear weapons "breakout" scenarios in a future world in which many more countries are "latent" NWS because of the spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities to meet the global demand for fuel for nuclear power reactors. Others have expressed fears that deep nuclear arms reductions will inadvertently lead to nuclear proliferation by encouraging U.S. allies currently living under "the U.S. nuclear umbrella" of extended deterrence to pursue their own nuclear weapons for national security reasons. Other critics worry about the "instability of small numbers" problem, fearing that conventional wars would break out in a nuclear disarmed world, and that this risks a rapid nuclear rearmament race by former NWS that would lead to nuclear first use and victory by the more prepared government.

Some critics of disarmament falsely complain about nonexistent proposals for U.S. unilateral disarmament. Frank Gaffney, for example, asserts that there has been "a 17 year-long unilateral U.S. nuclear freeze" and claims that President Obama "stands to transform the ‘world's only superpower' into a nuclear impotent." More serious critics focus on those problems-the growth and potential breakout of latent NWS, the future of extended deterrence, the enforcement of disarmament, and the potential instability of small numbers-that concern mutual nuclear disarmament. These legitimate concerns must be addressed in a credible manner if significant progress is to be made toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world.

To address these problems adequately, the current nuclear disarmament effort must be transformed from a debate among leaders in the NWS to a coordinated global effort of shared responsibilities between NWS and NNWS. This essay outlines a new conceptual framework that is needed to encourage NWS and NNWS to share responsibilities for designing a future nuclear-fuel-cycle regime, rethinking extended deterrence, and addressing nuclear breakout dangers while simultaneously contributing to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

In this introductory essay, we aim first to demonstrate why the question of which states will develop nuclear power in the future matters for global security. To do so, we briefly discuss the connections between nuclear power, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism risks; we present data contrasting existing nuclear-power states with potential new entrants with respect to factors influencing those risks. Second, we introduce major themes addressed by the authors in both volumes, and explain why the expansion of nuclear power, the future of nuclear weapons disarmament, and the future of the NPT and related parts of the nuclear control regime are so intertwined. Finally, we conclude with some observations about what is new and what is not new about current global nuclear challenges. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has published three important special issues of Dædalus on nuclear weapons issues in the past-in 1960, 1975, and 1991-and reflecting on the differences between the concerns and solutions discussed in those three issues and the nuclear challenges we face today is both inspiring and sobering.

The second nuclear nonproliferation conference sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Russian Academy of Sciences was held in Moscow, March 18-20, 2009. The first was held Oct. 23-25, 2002, a year after the 9/11 attacks. Much of the global security focus at that time was, understandably, on terrorism. In fact, the tragic Dubrovka Theater siege took place during the conference. A principal message of the first conference was not to forget the dangers of nuclear proliferation while the world responded to the growing potential of nuclear terrorism. The proceedings of the first conference are available on request from aedawson@stanford.edu.

Since 2002, the Libyan nuclear program and the AQ Khan network have been exposed; the Iranian covert uranium enrichment program has been discovered and found to have made significant technical progress; North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and tested a nuclear device; and Syria has built a plutonium-producing reactor.

March 2009 was a propitious time to hold the second conference. US-Russian relations have deteriorated in recent years, reaching their nadir in August of 2008 with the invasion of Georgia. Now a new American administration is determined to "reset" relations between the two former superpowers. There are some reasons for cautious optimism leading toward a possible turning point in US-Russian relations. Cooperation on nuclear matters is crucial in this context and the events of the past seven years have demonstrated that such partnerships are necessary to make the world a safer place.

CISAC's Lew Franklin and his coauthor, Nick Hansen, contributed the latter half of a two-part article discussing the Korean peninsula's space programme competition. The beginning of their section of the article is highlighted in the attached document.

(Excerpt) South Korea's space programme has not developed in isolation. As Seoul has moved through guided missile development, satellite production and soon an SLV launch, North Korea has pursued a similar path towards the prestigious goal of the first indigenous Korean satellite launch.

Although more rapid, North Korea's programme has been less successful. Three SLV launches have failed to place a satellite into orbit, despite official claims to the contrary. The most recent launch, of the Unha-2 SLV on 5 April, failed in the third stage and fell into the Pacific Ocean, failing to place the Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite into orbit.

Much media attention surrounding these launches has concentrated on the possibility of such technology being used for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Unha-2, with its relatively large first stage draws suspicion of a long-predicted ICBM, but the absence of a militarized launcher or re-entry vehicle/warhead testing programme suggests that this vehicle and both launch pads are primarily for satellite launches at this time, with the added benefit of dual-use military rocket technology spin-off. Analysis of commercial high-resolution satellite imagery, North Korean-released video of two of its three launches and public announcements on space activities suggests that North Korea is currently focused on SLV and satellite development; Pyongyang remains eager to pursue a space programme for the nationalistic, commercial and military benefits, probably including military space.

A confluence of events has presented the Russian Federation and the United States with an unusual opportunity to transform their relationship.

The unfortunate reality is that trust is at an exceedingly low level between the elites and publics of both nations. Building that trust requires a leap of faith that they can work together on the most difficult issues. The determination to drive such trust-building on a vexing issue was behind the decision of senior Americans and Russians brought together by the EastWest Institute in 2007 to explore if collaboration was possible on the issue of Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear program. Following a tough yet civil private debate in Moscow, the participants - including on the American side General (ret.) James L. Jones, Ambassador Henry Crumpton, and General (ret.) Lance Lord, and a senior Russian delegation led by Presidential Representative Ambassador Anatoly Safonov - agreed that EWI should convene leading scientists from both states to take up the Iran issue and make it the subject of the fi rst JTA - Joint Threat Assessment. It would be an attempt to see if the top scientists and experts of the two states could agree on the nature of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program. Our debate in Moscow demonstrated that there was no easy agreement on Iran's intentions. A great cloud of ‘smoke' hung over the policy communities of both nations - a mixing of emotions and unsubstantiated reports with facts and policies. There was no dialogue. Instead the issue generated independent monologues fraught with suspicion and distrust. The decision to move forward with a JTA was a risky one. There was no assurance that it could be done.

Indeed, most outside experts told us that the task was impossible. Relations between Russia and the United States had deteriorated to a nadir not seen in decades. Among the major causes for the severe decline were the rushed ballistic missile defense agreements between the United States and Poland and between the United States and the Czech Republic to deploy assets in these European countries to counter a potential Iranian nuclear and missile threat. The United States government viewed this as a defensive move. Was Iran developing a capacity to hit Europe? How long would it take? The Russian government countered that the ballistic missile defense deployment near its borders was surely directed against Russia - an offensive move. Russian leaders and experts dismissed the idea that Iran currently possessed an offensive ballistic missile program capable of striking Europe. The sixteen Americans and Russians who sat around that Track 2 table back in 2007 in Moscow could have stopped at that impasse - but they did not. They agreed that the heart of the issue did not start with either the United States or with Russia but rather with the need to decipher the threat - what were Iran's technical capabilities? Could the two sides analyze and come to an agreement on the nature of the threat through a joint threat assessment?

Russia and the United States have been in dispute over the timeframe involved for Iran to acquire nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles, on the means needed to prevent that from happening, and - in the worst case that it cannot be prevented - the military operational responses available to both sides to defend against Iran's potential use of nuclear armed missiles. It was agreed that only after capabilities are ascertained can productive political conversations about motives and policy responses follow. Therein lay the mandate for the two teams of scientists, who worked independently and in a series of joint meetings that more often than not lasted well into the night.

Though the Iranian nuclear program has been the subject of detailed forensic public analyses, much less detailed attention has been paid, in public at least, to the Iranian missile program. Claims and counterclaims abound and defy easy understanding by the non-specialist. This report aims to fi ll that gap by providing a detailed examination of Iranian nuclear and missile capabilities. When might Iran be capable of deploying nuclear warheads? Assuming that Iran can develop that capability, would the proposed missile defenses be able intercept Iranian missiles? What are the possibilities of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this area? These are the vital questions that this report examines and makes its assessments.