This piece originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

As we witness the increasingly detrimental effects of global climate change, the role that nuclear power could play globally to mitigate its effects continues to be debated. The series of articles featured in the Bulletin in December 2016 aired a broad spectrum of opinions, ranging in assessment of the role of nuclear power from insignificant to mandatory. In this series, we present the perspective of a new crop of nuclear professionals who collectively represent two of the world leaders in nuclear power—the United States and Russia.

These young professionals work together to exchange views and ideas as part of the U.S.-Russia Young Professionals Nuclear Forum that we created in May 2016 to encourage dialogue on critical nuclear issues of concern to both countries. As most official avenues of US-Russia cooperation on nuclear issues were being shut down in pace with the deteriorating political relations between Washington and Moscow, our objective was to turn to the younger generation, because those in it will have to live with the consequences of a world in which their countries no longer cooperate to mitigate global nuclear dangers.

In the United States, our efforts are organized within the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, although we reach out to universities and other organizations across the country. In Russia, we were fortunate to find the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), Russia’s flagship research university in nuclear engineering, to be an enthusiastic partner. Its rector, Professor Mikhail Strikhanov, has an unwavering international outlook that stresses the need for cooperation, especially in higher education and research. The young professionals are students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career professionals.

Hecker has previously written in the Bulletin about the remarkable period of post-Cold War nuclear cooperation between Russian and American nuclear weapon scientists and how the termination of that cooperation by our governments threatens our collective security. We viewed engaging young professionals from the two countries as one of the few avenues of continued cooperation. It has the potential of being particularly effective because at the forum meetings, the young Russians and Americans interact in an educational and non-adversarial environment.

The first three forum meetings focused primarily on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and countering nuclear terrorism. They featured exercises in which the young professionals worked in small groups side by side to explore solutions to vexing nuclear problems. One was a simulation conducted at Stanford in May 2018 just a few weeks before the historic Trump-Kim Singapore Summit. The other was an exercise in Moscow in October 2018 to advise their governments on a hypothetical crisis related to the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

At the Moscow forum, we also asked the young professionals to explore what the two countries could do to promote the benefits of nuclear energy around the globe, while cooperating to mitigate the associated risks.

Preparation for the forum included online lectures by senior mentors as well as lectures and discussion sessions in Moscow by both Russian and American specialists. In the nuclear power exercise, we assigned eight key questions to 24 young professionals. We divided them into eight teams, each composed of Russian and American participants. The central question was whether or not an expansion of global nuclear power is necessary to help mitigate the danger of global climate change. Individual groups examined issues of supply and demand around the globe and some of the big challenges posed by an expansion of nuclear power—those of economics, safety and security, potential proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the disposition of nuclear waste.

The young professionals conducted research prior to the meeting, deliberated and debated within their teams during the meeting, and presented their findings to the larger group and the panel of senior mentors at the end of the exercise. During the past six months they have captured the essence of their findings in the eight articles featured in this special presentation in the Bulletin.

Their findings are generally pro-nuclear, which is not surprising considering that most of them have strong educational and research backgrounds in either nuclear technologies or nuclear security. But we found that their views were primarily driven by their serious concerns about the dangers of global climate change and the urgent need to confront these dangers.

Their articles are of interest not so much in that they break new ground in these areas, particularly since many other  established experts have tried to tackle these issues for decades. They are of interest because they represent the views of some of the younger generation of professionals working together across cultural and disciplinary divides. We were struck by the following comment in one of the papers  that reflects on the perceived urgency of the task at hand: “We are the first generation that is experiencing the dramatic effects of global climate change and likely the last that can do something about it to avoid catastrophic consequences for the Earth and its people.”

We also note that the articles uniformly reveal that the young professionals across the board firmly believe that the benefits and risks of expanding nuclear power globally must be pursued and tackled in a concerted effort of major nuclear powers (especially the United States and Russia), other developed nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and all stakeholders. These younger voices stated: “The most important shift necessary to facilitate [nuclear power] expansion is an increase in international cooperation and multilateralization in the form of, for example, international reactor supply contracts, multinational enrichment conglomerates, nondiscriminatory fuel banks, and international waste repositories.”

We believe the readers will find the sentiments and opinions of the young Russian and American professionals interesting and encouraging. We certainly have found them eager and able to work together effectively—a lesson that the more senior professionals and the governments need to relearn.

Editor’s note: The Young Professionals Nuclear Forum cooperation is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Read the articles here:

• Nuclear Power and Global Climate Change
• What Countries Will Be the Most Important in Leading a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power—Both From the Perspective of the Supplier and the User?
• Should Nuclear Power Be Expanded Significantly Into Developing Countries?
• What Will Be Required for a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Energy?
• Resolving Safety and Security Concerns About Nuclear Power
• Why Nuclear Power Plants Cost so Much—and What Can Be Done About It
• Will Nuclear Waste Disposal Challenges Limit a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power? Part 1
• Will Nuclear Waste Disposal Challenges Limit a Significant Expansion of Global Nuclear Power? Part 2

In early May, CISAC convened the fifth Young Professional Nuclear Forum (YPNF), a program sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute (MEPhI). The program brought together a lively group of young Russians and Americans working on nuclear issues over three days.

Since 2016, the forum has alternated between Moscow and Stanford.  

By 2016, US and Russian governments closed almost every door on opportunities that previously allowed experienced nuclear professionals on both sides to cooperate with each other.  Stanford Professor Siegfried Hecker saw that at least one door - that of cooperation on the university level - was still open. He started the YPNF to foster interaction between the younger generation of Russians and Americans who study, do research, or start a career in the nuclear power or nonproliferation fields.

This year’s agenda focused on two major areas: US-Russian arms control and the future of nuclear power.

The American group included a new cohort of six incoming young professionals from Los Alamos National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, and Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non‑Proliferation. They were joined by CISAC research staff members Gaby Levikow and Elliot Serbin and current and former fellows Chantell Murphy, Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, and Cameron Tracy. The Russian group from MEPhI brought a team of 12 young professionals most of whom are pursuing their graduate degrees in nuclear physics and engineering and software engineering, along with junior professionals in international relations and nuclear fields.  The team of experts included Professor Hecker, Dr. James Toevs, Dr. Ning Li, Ambassador Steven Pifer, Professor David Holloway, Dr. Larry Brandt, Dr. Chaim Braun, Dr. Pavel Podvig, and Dr. Mona Dreicer, —all of whom provided advice and feedback during the exercise.

Participants come from loosely defined “technical” and “policy” fields, and the forum agenda has traditionally included one nuclear-power related and one policy-focused subject. Forum activities vary between lectures, expert briefings, discussions, and table-top exercises, but the small-group work during the exercises is the core form of interaction.

By design, this agenda exposes each participant to new fields, new counterparts, some fun interactive time off - and encourages a lot of cultural learning. Forum after forum, we hear back that the group work and social time are the most exciting aspects of the forum experience. Participants noted they learned, among other things, “general ideas and thoughts of American participants and their attitudes to the present American policy, new words and abbreviations … [and] a great deal about new reactor designs and their implications for nuclear energy and security policy.”  Still more participants enjoyed “learning to collaborate in groups of Americans and Russians but also between policy and technical experts on topics of both camps,” and some “got new friends.”

Encouragingly, participants requested more interaction between the bi-annual meetings and a variety of topics in yet untapped – or suspended - areas of cooperation between Russia and the US.

New work continues to emerge from the forum. Eight short articles written by the young professionals to showcase the results of the projects from the Moscow meeting in November 2017 was published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in June 2019. The next meeting will be held in Moscow this November.

Thirty years ago this week, I watched the news from Beijing and started shredding my bedding. It was the night before my college graduation, I had been studying Chinese politics, and news had broken that college students just like us had been gunned down in Tiananmen Square after weeks of peaceful and exhilarating democracy protests—carried on international TV. In the iconic square where Mao Zedong had proclaimed the People’s Republic decades before, bespectacled students from China’s best universities had camped out, putting up posters with slogans of freedom in Chinese and English. A “goddess of democracy” figure modeled after the Statue of Liberty embodied their hopes—and ours—for political liberation in China.

On my campus back then were just a handful of students majoring in East Asian studies. Learning of the brutal crackdown in Beijing, we somehow found one another, gathered our friends, and stayed up making hundreds of white armbands for classmates to wear at commencement the next day. Grappling with the cold realities of the “real world” we were about to enter, we didn’t know what else to do. So we tore sheets and cried for what might have been.

The June 4, 1989, massacre was a horrifying spectacle that the Chinese government has sought to erase from national memory ever since. But, 30 years later, contemplating what might have been is more important than ever. In hindsight, Tiananmen Square serves as a continuing reminder about just how much China has defied, and continues to defy, the odds and predictions of experts. The fact is that generations of American policy makers, political scientists, and economists have gotten China wrong more often than they’ve gotten China right. In domestic politics, economic development, and foreign policy, China has charted a surprising path that flies in the face of professional prognostications, general theories about anything, and the experience of other nations.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

Karl Eikenberry, director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, spoke with "Bloomberg Markets: Asia" about the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China. Video of his interview—conducted on the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley China Summit in Beijing—is posted below.

This article originally appeared in the American Ambassadors Review (Spring 2019).

For nearly five decades, Washington and Moscow have engaged in negotiations to manage their nuclear competition. Those negotiations produced a string of acronyms—SALT, INF, START—for arms control agreements that strengthened strategic stability, reduced bloated nuclear arsenals and had a positive impact on the broader bilateral relationship.

That is changing. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is headed for demise. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) has less than two years to run, and the administration of Donald Trump has yet to engage on Russian suggestions to extend it. Bilateral strategic stability talks have not been held in 18 months.

On its current path, the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control regime likely will come to an end in 2021. That will make for a strategic relationship that is less stable, less secure and less predictable and will further complicate an already troubled bilateral relationship.

Fifty Years of Arms Control

Bilateral nuclear arms control talks between Washington and Moscow began in 1969 with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). They resulted from a growing understanding that negotiated limits on the superpowers’ nuclear arms competition served the interests of both. Over the next five decades, arms control treaties and unilateral force decisions led the sides to reduce their active arsenals to 4,000-4,500 nuclear weapons each—down from a U.S. peak of more than 30,000 in the 1960s and a Soviet/Russian peak that exceeded 40,000 in the 1970s.

Early treaties such as the 1972 Interim Offensive Agreement and the 1979 SALT II Treaty (which never entered into force but whose limits were observed into the mid-1980s) merely slowed the growth of nuclear arsenals. Later treaties had a more dramatic impact. The 1987 INF Treaty banned the entire class of U.S. and Soviet land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The 1991 START Treaty required the sides to reduce their accountable strategic nuclear warheads by some 40 percent while cutting strategic missile launchers and bombers by about 30 percent.

Arms control agreements often had a beneficial impact on the broader relationship. SALT helped advance détente in the early 1970s; progress on INF and START spurred an improvement in the overall U.S.-Soviet relationship in the late 1980s; and the relatively quick conclusion of New START gave a positive impulse to the Obama administration’s reset with Russia, even though the reset proved short-lived.

Today, the U.S.-Russian relationship has hit its lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Arms control, or the looming collapse of arms control, rather than helping, may contribute to a further deterioration of relations.

The Demise of the INF Treaty

The INF Treaty is on a death course. Russia violated the treaty by developing and deploying the 9M729, a prohibited intermediate-range cruise missile. Neither the Obama nor the Trump administration employed an effective strategy to persuade Moscow to return to compliance.

On October 20, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States would terminate the treaty, surprising allies and administration officials alike. NATO subsequently backed the U.S. decision, though European officials privately grumbled about a fait accompli. In early February, U.S. officials stated that they had suspended U.S. treaty obligations and given Russia the required six months’ notice of the U.S. intention to withdraw from the agreement. Russia then suspended its treaty obligations.

The United States could not remain forever in a treaty that Russia has violated. However, the way the Trump administration handled its departure amounted to diplomatic malpractice. Washington will get blamed for the treaty’s end.

There was a smarter way. First, U.S. officials should have informed their European counterparts in early 2018 that the United States would have no choice in 12–24 months but to leave the treaty if Russia did not correct its violation and urge them to apply political heat on the Kremlin, including at the highest level. Russia’s intermediate-range missiles cannot reach the United States; they threaten Europe and Asia.

Second, the U.S. military should have deployed conventionally armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles to the European region to show that the Russian violation would not go unchallenged.

Third, NATO should have begun a study of long-term countermeasures, with one option being deployment in Europe of a conventionally armed U.S. intermediate-range ballistic missile. While the Alliance likely could not have found consensus to adopt that option, discussing it would have reminded military leaders in Moscow how much they disliked the U.S. Pershing II, whose deployment in West Germany in the 1980s proved key to securing the INF Treaty.

Fourth, U.S. officials should have indicated to their Russian counterparts that, if they addressed U.S. concerns about the 9M729 violation, the United States would consider ways to address Russian concerns that the Aegis Ashore missile defense facility in Romania could launch offensive missiles.

Would such steps have brought Russia back into compliance? Perhaps not, but they certainly would have increased the odds. Even if they did not succeed, they would have positioned Washington far better with its allies and put it in a stronger position to lay blame for the treaty’s end where it belonged—on Russia.

In the actual event, the Trump administration hardly tried. In January, Russian officials offered to exhibit the 9M729 to U.S. experts. U.S. officials could have taken that proposal and insisted on procedures for a meaningful exhibition. Instead, they flat out turned it down.

Much of the problem on the American side may lie with National Security Advisor John Bolton. He generally disdains arms control agreements as constraining U.S. capabilities and options (which is true, but they also constrain Russian capabilities and options). He had previously called for U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty.

Exhibitions of the 9M729 and Aegis Ashore facility could have opened a path to resolve each side’s compliance concerns, but Moscow and Washington have not shown the needed political will. It looks like the treaty will meet its demise in August.

Questions about the Future of New START

In contrast to the INF Treaty, Russia has complied with the limits of the 2010 New START Treaty, which required reductions by each country to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers by February 2018. The United States also met the limits, though Russian officials question the adequacy of measures the U.S. military took to remove some strategic systems from treaty accountability.

New START by its terms will expire in February 2021, though the treaty allows extension for up to five years. Russian officials have proposed discussion of extension. In 2017, Trump administration officials said they would first have to complete the new nuclear posture review and see whether Russia met the February 2018 limits. Both of those boxes were checked more than a year ago. U.S. officials now say they are studying the question and see no rush.

New START extension should be a no-brainer. First, it would extend to 2026 the limits on Russian strategic forces and provide a mechanism to address new nuclear systems that the Russian military has under development. Second, extension would not affect U.S. strategic modernization plans, which the Pentagon designed to fit within New START’s limits. Third, extension would continue the flow of information that the U.S. military and intelligence community receive about Russian strategic forces from data exchanges, notifications and on-site inspections. That information lets the U.S. military make smarter decisions about how to equip and operate U.S. strategic forces.

When asked about extension, however, Bolton has raised two alternatives: renegotiation of New START or a treaty modeled on the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Neither holds much promise.

Renegotiation would allow Washington to try to improve New START, perhaps with additional verification measures or expanded limits to capture nuclear weapons not now covered by the treaty. But Moscow would seek changes as well, starting with limits on missile defense and conventional strike systems, both of which are anathema to the Trump administration. Renegotiation would take a long time and have, at best, an uncertain prospect of success.

As for the SORT model, SORT limited just warheads (though with no verification measures); it did not constrain strategic missiles and bombers. While Moscow accepted such an agreement in 2002, Russian officials since 2008 have made clear that a strategic arms control agreement must limit missiles and bombers, as does New START.

Bolton opposed New START when the Senate discussed its ratification back in 2010. Neither Secretary of State Mike Pompeo nor Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan seem to be advocates for the treaty. Although extension would be very much in the U.S. interest, the Trump administration appears inclined to let it expire.

No Strategic Stability Talks

U.S. and Russian officials in the past have held strategic stability talks to take a broad look at developments that affect their strategic relationship. Such talks are useful, particularly when new developments, such as those in the cyber and space domains, emerge and when Russian nuclear doctrine has provoked concern in Washington and led to changes in the U.S. nuclear posture. Even if strategic stability talks do not spin off specific negotiations, they provide a venue for the sides to exchange views and better understand the concerns of the other.

During the Trump administration, a one-day session of strategic stability talks took place in September 2017. As of March 2019, it has not agreed to a second meeting.

An Unsettling Future

For most of the five decades of U.S.-Soviet/Russian arms control negotiations, the American side took the lead. Moscow often struck a pose not of disinterest, but of less interest—likely for bargaining purposes. That is no longer the case. The Kremlin now faces a White House that attaches as little priority to reducing arms as it does—perhaps less. The U.S. President evinces no understanding of arms control, while his national security advisor apparently seeks to end it.

With the INF Treaty all but dead, New START’s fate uncertain after 2021 and no sign of new initiatives on either side, arms control as practiced for some 50 years may be coming to an end or, at a minimum, to a pause. That occurs at a time when Russia and the United States have significant nuclear modernization programs underway. While the bulk of those programs aim primarily to replace old weapons with new ones, the sides are also developing nuclear capabilities that neither previously had in its arsenal. Economic constraints may limit an all-out arms race, but the strategic nuclear relationship seems headed for uncharted territory.

The end of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control regime would have wider impacts. If the two nuclear superpowers no longer are reducing—and no longer limiting—their nuclear arms, what credibility will they have to insist that other countries, such as North Korea, forgo nuclear weapons or that third countries sanction proliferating states? Will China decide to adjust its nuclear posture and move from its current modest stockpile of under 300 weapons toward a larger and more diverse arsenal?

The current course will lead to a less stable and secure world. The United States and Russia will be less able to predict future developments on the other side and thus will have to make expensive worst-case assumptions. It will make for a more complex and dangerous relationship. Perhaps then they will recall the lessons of the 1960s and 1980s that arms control, however imperfect, can offer a useful tool for managing great power competition.

This article originally appeared at Brookings.

April 5 marks the 10th anniversary of the speech in which Barack Obama laid out his vision for a world without nuclear weapons. It did not gain traction. Instead, the United States and Russia are developing new nuclear capabilities, while the nuclear arms control regime is on course to expire in 2021. The result will be a world that is less stable, less secure, and less predictable.

A WORTHWHILE VISION

Just 10 weeks after his inauguration, President Obama’s first trip to Europe took him to Prague. Speaking in Hradcany Square, Obama voiced his deep interest in reducing nuclear arms, including a “commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He added that reaching that goal would require time, and that, as long as nuclear arms existed, the United States would maintain a “safe, secure and effective” nuclear arsenal.

Obama’s critics mocked him as naïve and idealistic. Achieving a world without nuclear arms would require, at a minimum, that nations conclude that they could protect their vital interests without nuclear arms; that new and very intrusive verification mechanisms were developed and agreed; and that an enforcement mechanism against any cheating state have real teeth—daunting challenges, to be sure. That said, a world in which nuclear arms were reliably and verifiably eliminated would be very much in the U.S. interest.

Nuclear war today poses the one existential threat to the United States. In a non-nuclear world, America would enjoy the advantages of geography (the protection afforded by two wide oceans and friendly neighbors in Canada and Mexico), the world’s most powerful conventional forces, and an unrivaled network of allies. Deterrence would not end; U.S. conventional forces could threaten enormous costs to any would-be adversary menacing America or its allies.

A big problem arises, however, in trying to persuade other states to accept a non-nuclear world. The balance of advantages and disadvantages that would make such a world so attractive for the United States would seem very different to other countries, such as Russia.

EVENTS TOOK A DIFFERENT COURSE

In any event, matters took a different course than Obama had hoped. Following signature of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in April 2010, he called for negotiations with Russia to further reduce strategic nuclear weapons and bring in non-strategic nuclear weapons. That raised the possibility that, for the first time ever, the two countries might negotiate limits on their entire nuclear arsenals.

Moscow chose not to engage in further bilateral negotiations—in part because Washington proved unready to discuss limits on missile defense or conventional strike systems. The Russians also sought a multilateral negotiation, though they have never offered a proposal or explained how one treaty could limit forces as disparate as those of the United States and Russia (4000 to 4500 nuclear weapons each) and China and France (less than 300 each). A Washington Naval Treaty-type agreement assigning unequal limits to its adherents presumably would be unwelcome in Beijing, Paris, and other capitals. 

Today, Russia and the United States have launched major nuclear force modernization programs. These programs focus largely on replacing old systems. Weapons systems age out and need replacement. Both sides, however, also plan to add new capabilities, including exotic strategic weapons and low-yield nuclear arms. One likely and unfortunate result: The threshold for employment of nuclear weapons will be lower.

While U.S. and Russian nuclear modernization proceeds, the regime that limits U.S. and Russian nuclear arms has begun to break down. Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by deploying a prohibited cruise missile. Neither the Obama nor the Trump administration came up with an effective strategy to bring Moscow back into compliance, and it appears that President Trump barely tried, perhaps reflecting the influence of National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has long expressed skepticism about any agreements that constrain U.S. military forces. The INF Treaty will expire this August when the United States withdraws.

The end of the INF Treaty will leave New START, which caps the sides’ strategic missiles and bombers as well as their deployed strategic warheads, as the sole remaining nuclear arms control agreement. Unlike the INF Treaty, both sides have complied with New START’s limits, but it has less than two years to run before it expires.

New START’s terms allow for an extension of up to five years. Moscow historically has wanted some bounds on U.S. strategic forces. The Russians broached the idea of extension in early 2017 and have raised it several times since then. Extension should be a no-brainer for Washington: It would cap Russian strategic forces until 2026 while forcing no change in U.S. modernization plans, since the Pentagon designed those plans to fit within New START. Extension would also continue the flow of information that the United States receives about Russian strategic forces from New START’s verification measures. Unfortunately, Trump’s grasp of these questions appears weak, and Bolton does not appear a fan of New START.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

The two nuclear superpowers thus will likely find themselves in 2021 in a situation that they have not faced for decades—a world with no constraints on nuclear force numbers. For the United States, that world will prove less stable and less secure as new nuclear capabilities undermine the strategic balance and threaten America. It will prove less predictable, as the data exchanges, notifications, and on-site inspections provided by New START cease. And it will almost certainly prove more costly, as the Pentagon has to make worst-case assumptions.

True, achieving Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons now seems unrealistic. But we could use some presidential commitment to controlling those weapons.

Congress’s annual worldwide-threat hearings are usually scary affairs, during which intelligence-agency leaders run down all the dangers confronting the United States. This year’s January assessment was especially worrisome, because the minds of American citizens were listed as key battlegrounds for geopolitical conflict for the first time. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways,” wrote Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats went on to suggest that Russia’s 2016 election interference is only the beginning, with new tactics and deep fakes probably coming soon, and the bad guys learning from experience.

Deception, of course, has a long history in statecraft and warfare. The Greeks used it to win at the Battle of Salamis in the fifth century b.c. The Allies won the Second World War in Europe with a surprise landing at Normandy—which hinged on an elaborate plan to convince Hitler that the invasion would be elsewhere. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviets engaged in extensive “active measure” operations, using front organizations, propaganda, and forged American documents to peddle half-truths, distortions, and outright lies in the hope of swaying opinion abroad.

But what makes people susceptible to deception? A colleague and I recently launched the two-year Information Warfare Working Group at Stanford. Our first assignment was to read up on psychology research, which drove home how vulnerable we all are to wishful thinking and manipulation.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

This piece originally appeared at Brookings.

The Trump administration has finished off the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty mortally wounded by Russia’s deployment of a banned intermediate-range missile. That leaves the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) as the sole agreement limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

New START has less than two years to run. At the February 15-16 Munich Security Conference, a senior Russian official reiterated Moscow’s readiness to extend the treaty. The administration, however, continues its odd reluctance to take up that offer. House Democrats should use their power of the purse on the issue.

WHY EXTENSION MAKES SENSE

Signed in 2010, New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 700 strategic ballistic missiles and bombers, and no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. Those limits took full effect in February 2018. Both sides have complied, although technical questions have arisen. Russian officials question the way in which the U.S. military converted some launchers so that they would not count.

By its terms, New START runs until February 5, 2021. It can be extended for up to five years by simple agreement between the U.S. and Russian presidents.

When asked about extension in 2017, administration officials said they would wait to complete the nuclear posture review and to see if the Russians met the New START limits. Both of those boxes were checked more than a year ago. Administration officials now say they are studying extension but see no need to rush.

New START extension is in the U.S. interest.

First, extension would constrain Russian strategic nuclear forces until 2026. It makes little sense to let the treaty lapse in 2021, when Russia has hot production lines churning out new missiles, submarines, and bombers.

Second, New START extension would not impact U.S. strategic modernization plans. They are sized to fit within New START’s limits. Moreover, the United States will not start producing significant numbers of replacement missiles, submarines, and bombers until the second half of the 2020s.

Third, extension would continue the flow of information that the sides share with each other about their strategic forces. That comes from data exchanges, notifications, on-site inspections and other verification measures, all of which end if New START lapses. Making up for that loss of information would require a costly investment in new national technical means such as reconnaissance satellites.

WHY WE SHOULD WORRY

Extension should be a no-brainer. However, in a White House that operates on its own facts and at times with an indecipherable logic, extension is not a given.

President Trump does not seem to understand much about nuclear arms control. During his first telephone conversation with President Putin, Trump reportedly dismissed New START as a bad deal done by his predecessor. He has taken delight in undoing the accomplishments of President Obama (witness the Iran nuclear accord).

National Security Advisor Bolton shows disdain for arms control and has criticized New START. One of its faults, according to Mr. Bolton: It provides for equal limits on the United States and Russia. He felt the treaty should allow the U.S. military to have more. (U.S. diplomats would have had an interesting time trying to negotiate that.) Asked about New START extension, Mr. Bolton notes two alternatives: renegotiation and a new treaty modeled on the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

Renegotiation would allow U.S. officials to try to improve New START, perhaps with more intrusive verification measures, or even broadening the agreement to cover non-strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow, however, would seek changes as well, such as constraints on missile defenses—anathema to Washington.

Renegotiation would prove difficult, take considerable time, and have at best uncertain prospects for success. A wiser course would extend New START and then seek a renegotiation or a new follow-on treaty.

As for SORT, negotiated by Mr. Bolton, it limited deployed warheads only. Mr. Putin accepted that in 2002, but Russian officials have long since made clear that limits should apply to warheads and delivery vehicles, as they do in New START.

SORT, moreover, was “sort of” arms control. Lacking agreed definitions, counting rules or monitoring measures, it was unverifiable. In doing their own counts on the honor system, the U.S. and Russian militaries may not have even counted the same things.

Neither Secretary of State Pompeo nor Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has shown interest in championing New START. The uniformed military leadership argued the treaty’s value in the past, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford recently has hedged.

While ratification of a treaty requires consent from two-thirds of the Senate, the president alone can decide to leave a treaty. The Trump administration did not consult with either Congress or allies on withdrawal before Trump announced his intention to pull out of the treaty last October.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS TO THE RESCUE?

While the Trump administration shows little interest in arms control, it does want funding to modernize U.S. strategic forces. Democrats should recognize that and force the White House’s hand.

The U.S. strategic triad is aging. Ballistic missile submarines are the leg of the triad most in need of urgent replacement. They should be funded. Replacing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or building the B-21 bomber, however, are less urgent needs. As they work on the appropriations for the 2020 defense budget, House Democrats should make clear to the White House and the Pentagon that money for ICBM modernization or the B-21 would need to be paired with extension of New START. That will get attention.

Retaining a strategic triad makes sense (though the need for 400 deployed ICBMs is debatable). Retaining New START makes sense as well. House Democrats should simply insist on a trade.