Nonproliferation Review • 24.5/6

Global nuclear dangers have jumped since President Barack Obama’s 2009 Prague speech affirmed the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Today’s nuclear dangers range from growing US–Russian political–military confrontation and the virtual collapse of bilateral nuclear arms control through the greatest divisions ever within the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to North Korea’s coming capability to attack the United States with nuclear-armed missiles. The Donald J. Trump administration has maintained that nuclear weapons are essential to US security, though it has also affirmed the US commitment to the goal of nuclear abolition. Frustrated by lack of progress on nuclear disarmament and energized by concerns about the risk of use of nuclear weapons, nearly 125 countries have now negotiated a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It was signed by fifty countries when it opened for signature in September 2017. None of the nuclear-weapon states will adhere to the treaty and it will not reduce today’s nuclear dangers. The interests of all of the key protagonists—the United States and its allies, the other NPT nuclear-weapon states, and the supporters of the new Prohibition Treaty—would best be served by rebuilding habits of cooperation among them to reduce global nuclear dangers and advance the NPT’s nuclear disarmament goal. One possible rallying point would be a vision of the strategic elimination of nuclear weapons as instruments of strategy, power, and security—not their complete physical elimination—by 2045, one hundred years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Strategic elimination would have specific dimensions in terms of policy, operations, numbers, institutions and planning, and transparency verification. Priorities for action now stand out both to reduce today’s global nuclear dangers and to put in place the building blocks for strategic elimination.

Nuclear transparency is beneficial to nonproliferation. It helps non-nuclear-weapon states demonstrate their commitment to the nonproliferation regime and nuclear-weapon states account for their stockpiles. It also buttresses the safeguards process of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This article discusses the need for better transparency in nonproliferation efforts and offers a new tripartite model of nuclear transparency which emphasizes not only the states that want to prove their nonproliferation compliance through transparency, but also the audience for such transparency, and how transparency information is transferred from providers to recipients. The article discusses a range of issues concerning how such information is generated, appraised, and presented, taking into account the effect of cultural influences on different states’ transparency practices. To better synthesize various pieces of information intended to demonstrate nuclear transparency, we propose a nuclear-transparency dataset that includes nuclear-related factors as well as socio-political variables. Regression results using the dataset and responses from an expert survey show that the proposed transparency indicators provided a relatively similar assessment to the IAEA’s level of confidence about a state’s safeguards record, as stated in its 2013 safeguards report. Finally, the article proposes a direction for the development of this transparency index, as well as means by which states can improve their nuclear transparency.

Nuclear security in Russia has continued to evolve since the suspension of nearly all US–Russian nuclear-security cooperation in 2014, but the United States and the rest of the world now know much less about the directions of this evolution. This article assesses the current state of nuclear security in Russia based on an examination of key drivers of Russia’s nuclear-security system, from allocation of resources to regulatory oversight. It then outlines four scenarios for the future of evolution of nuclear security in Russia, describing potential causes, implications, and observable indicators for each scenario. It closes with recommendations designed to maximize the chance of moving onto a path of continuous improvement of nuclear security.