ABSTRACT

In October 1957, Poland proposed the Rapacki Plan for the denuclearisation of Central Europe. While North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members attacked the initiative, Canada viewed it as a means to ease Cold War tensions. Although Canada joined with its allies to reject the Plan, it embarked on a quest for counterproposals to restrain NATO nuclear sharing and reduce the chances of nuclear war. Canada’s efforts alarmed Western allies and helped lead to a second Rapacki Plan. Overall, this article details Canada’s struggle to assert itself as a middle power and provides a robust example of Western interest in the Rapacki Plan.

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The U.S. and Russia on Wednesday extended the only remaining treaty that limits the deployment of nuclear weapons. But did the agreement go far enough? Rose Gottemoeller, a distinguished lecturer at Stanford University who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during the Obama administration, joins Nick Schifrin to discuss the New START treaty.

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A consensus has grown in Washington that the next nuclear arms negotiation with Moscow should aim to limit all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, not just deployed strategic ones. That would raise challenging issues. Moscow may insist that it would put non-strategic weapons on the table only if Washington addresses issues of concern to Russia, particularly, missile defense. 

If that is the case, the Joe Biden administration should consider whether the benefits to the United States and allied security of limiting all nuclear weapons, including non-strategic nuclear arms, would justify accepting some constraints on missile defense. There are reasons to consider such a trade-off. Refusing to discuss missile defense could mean forgoing limits on non-strategic nuclear weapons and provide an impetus to others to increase their strategic offensive forces. 

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Arms control offers a tool to enhance U.S. security. After extending the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the Biden administration should seek to engage Russia in negotiation of a follow-on agreement and use that to draw third-country forces into the arms control process. It should also weigh how to handle other issues that can affect nuclear relations.

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    For nearly five decades, nuclear arms control has been an exclusive enterprise between Washington and Moscow. The resulting agreements have provided significant constraints on the U.S.-Soviet (later, U.S.-Russian) nuclear relationship while mandating substantial reductions in their arsenals. However, since the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which reduced U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces to levels not seen since the 1960s, no further progress has been made. Instead, the nuclear arms control regime appears to have broken down, leading some to conclude that the era of negotiated arms limitations has passed.

    The U.S. government has decisions to make: is it prepared to accept a world in which nuclear weapons go unconstrained, or do the reasons that led Washington to pursue limits on nuclear arms for more than 40 years remain valid? If the latter, U.S. officials will face a broad set of issues. Formal agreements can no longer entail just constraining U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces; they invariably will have to address related issues, including non-strategic nuclear arms, the nuclear forces of other countries, and perhaps missile defense. These questions will confront the U.S. government with a range of tough choices, such as whether to accept some limits on missile defense in order to secure limits on non-strategic nuclear weapons, and how hard to press for constraints on China’s modest nuclear arsenal. This article explores those issues and choices.

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"We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.” These words are from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which was published in 1955 and therefore, as the Bulletin celebrates 75^th year, is celebrating its 65^th.  It was one of the first explicit calls for nuclear disarmament.

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Many people have asked me how a former secretary of defense could support the abolition of nuclear weapons. This paper is a partial answer to that question, in the form of a personal history of how my thinking on nuclear weapons has evolved from Hiroshima to the present time.

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Brussels Sprouts · How Should Biden Deal with Moscow? with Rose Gottemoeller and David J. Kramer

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Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity over the late summer and early fall, the United States and Russia have yet to seal a deal on extending the New START treaty limiting their strategic nuclear arsenals. Absent an agreement, the treaty will expire on February 5, 2021. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin recently sent a proposal to NATO calling for a "moratorium" on deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe – systems that would have been banned by the now defunct US-Russia INF treaty.

Watch webinar at The Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Sig Hecker is one of the world’s foremost nuclear security and policy experts and has for decades served as a go-to source for journalists writing about nuclear affairs. An emeritus fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hecker has a long history of working to foster cooperation on nuclear issues between US and Russian scientists and their governments. He has visited North Korea and toured various of its nuclear facilities multiple times and is at work on a book about that country.

Read the rest at  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists