This transcript was generated using AI automation and may contain minor formatting or transcription errors. Please refer to the original audio to verify specific quotes or context.

Evan Sankey: Good morning, and welcome to the Cato Institute. My name is Evan Sankey. I’m a policy analyst with our Defense and Foreign Policy Studies program. It is our honor to host you for a day of discussion and exchange about the present and future of US policies to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. In the spring of 1963, President Kennedy said he was haunted by the feeling that the number of nuclear powers might grow from four to 15, 20, or 25 by the end of the 1970s, and that this constituted the greatest possible danger and hazard to the United States.

60 years later, this fear has not materialized. The number of nuclear-armed countries has ticked up only slowly to nine, a number held in check by many factors, including expense, threat perceptions, but also by the use of American power by generations of US presidents and policymakers to cajole, threaten, and punish friends and foes alike to forgo the nuclear option. This mission became a consensus feature of US grand strategy, strongly influ- influencing our decisions about alliances, overseas military deployments, our nuclear posture, and whether to wage wars of choice. But growing resource strains on US grand strategy and the growth in both our major political parties of constituencies favoring military restraint compel us to ask whether policymakers should or will continue to regard the nonproliferation mission as an absolute imperative of US foreign policy. Today, we’re pleased to welcome nine distinguished experts to the Cato Institute to, to share their views and insights about these topics.

Our first morning panel will address the effectiveness of US efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to US adversaries. The second will look at the challenge of friendly nuclear proliferation. And after lunch, our third panel, panel will ask how US nonproliferation policies interact with our nuclear posture and employment strategy. And with that, I turn the floor over to, to our first panel. Justin Logan, the director of our Defense and Foreign Policy Studies program, will be the moderator.

Over to you, Justin.

Justin Logan: Thanks very much, Evan, for that kind introduction and useful setup. You stole one of my Kennedy quotes. I will forgive you for doing so. My name’s Justin Logan. I’m the director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies here at Cato.

But I do have to acknowledge that this is very much an Evan Sankey, Ben Giltner production. They’ve put a lot of work, into pulling it together, and I’m grateful to them and in their debt for their having done it. So our task this morning to kick things off is this question of, US policy toward adversarial proliferation, prospective, notional, or otherwise. And it’s a shame there’s nothing in the news that should cause this to be of interest, to a general audience, but we’ll have to make do with what we have. We’re gonna have three panelists to discuss these, questions, this morning.

The third is imminently, I think, being mic’d up. So I’ll, I’ll just kick off by talking about, it was interesting Evan, mentioned this question of, Kennedy’s predictions. And the panelists here will be rolling their eyes at having dug these up once again. But in 1960, Kennedy, feared that there would be 10, then 15, then 20 nuclear weapon states by 1964, right? So it’s kind of a scary prospect.

But then by 1963, he had to update that to say, “Well, hang on, by 1970, unless we’re successful, there may be 10 instead of four, and by 1975, 15 or 20.” So there’s always been this sort of fear that we’re at some imminent, cascade or tipping point or point of no return, or dominoes fall- nuclear dominoes falling is another thing that’s come up. And yet, as Evan pointed out, we still remain at nine nuclear weapon states in the international system. Also, as Evan pointed out, what determined that? Well, it’s overdetermined, right? We have a series of rules and restrictions, laws, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the additional protocol, the US military in some cases, US diplomacy in other cases.

So as much as I, crack wise, and I may still, about the rules-based liberal international order, there are these institutions and, and pro- proliferation has been overpredicted, for decades. So we’re gonna talk about all those variables in the discussion kicking things off this morning. I’ll introduce the panelists, and then we’ll have a sort of structured conversation where I’ve already tipped my hand and let them know some of the questions that they’re gonna hear, but we’ll have a discussion of these questions. The first panelist is, James Acton, who holds the Jessica T. Matthews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on a range of nuclear policy issues, including the impact of emerging technologies on nu- nuclear strategy.

I’m truncating these bios severely. They’re much more prestigious than my vocal cords can churn out this morning. His PhD is in theoretical physics from Cambridge. Bob Peters, who I assume– I’ve always called you Bob. I hope you like to go by Bob.

Bob Peters: Yes.

Justin Logan: That’s what I’ve been calling you for a long time, is the acting director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation. Previously, he served in a variety of national security positions, in and around the government, including at DTRA, at NDU, and at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is a graduate of Miami University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. And hopefully, presently, being mic’d up right now is, Richard Nephew, who’s a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA, as the kids call it. He’s a leading expert on sanctions, nonproliferation, and policy on Iran.

He previously served as deputy special envoy for Iran at the State Department, under the Biden administration, and also worked in the Obama administration on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and he holds both a BA and MA in security policy studies from GW. So Bob, I wanted to start off with you, put you on the hot seat here, right out of the gate. And it seems to me that, you know, even in recent months, but certainly in recent years, um- There’s been an evolution and, and perhaps, differing opinions in conservative circles on these questions of nucle- nuclear nonproliferation, right? I g- can remember back as far as the six-party talks, regarding North Korea’s nuclear program, to the attacks on, Syrian nuclear facilities and of course, Iran policy from 10, 12, 14, 16 years ago, to the present. And, you know, a lot of people would say, “Well, you know, the, the conservative position has been sort of like diplomatic maximalism backed up by the threat of force.” And that’s as reductionist as it sounds.

But I wanted to ask you, are conservatives still sort of primarily focused on that counterproliferation, if you like, that sort of approach to it, or, or maximalism in diplomatic negotiations? Or is there, do you see a shift on where conservatives are getting at these questions?

Bob Peters: Yeah, thanks, Justin, and, and first of all, thanks for, for having me. It’s great to be here at Cato and what a lovely building you all have here, so, so thanks again.

Justin Logan: Thank you.

Bob Peters: First of all, I don’t speak for all conservatives. I don’t think anyone can, given that the conservative movement is, is within, you know, has about three or four warring camps within it at any given time. But generally I, I, I think what you can say is that, you know, by and large there’s a common view that, that we’re pro-arms control, and I, I think that President Trump has made that clear. I mean, it’s well known that he’s had an allergy to things nuclear for about four decades. Perfectly understandable, but, that arms control must be multilateral.

I mean, I think this idea that, that we should have bilateral arms control that excludes China in particular is kind of a dead letter amongst most conservatives. Again, with the caveat this, that this is not all conservatives. But I think there’s this at the same time a recognition that that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. I think generally speaking, most conservatives like can say this is probably not gonna be a reality for the next 10 years, and so we’re gonna be existing outside of a framework that existed from about 1970 until the expiration of a new start. You know, can we still engage in maximalist pressure?

Yes, we can, and I think we should, but I think there’s a recognition that that type of pressure is probably gonna, gonna be less effective as we go forward, and that’s by and large innate, a response to the fact that the world is increasingly going into two separate camps. So you’ve got the status quo camp, that’s largely the West and then the, the democracies in the Pacific led by the United States. And then there’s the revisionist camp that’s led by Beijing with their, with their, with their partners in, in Moscow and Pyongyang and, and Tehran. Our ability to put pressure on those regimes is not gonna be that effective, and so I think that there is probably an increasing recognition that if we really do wanna stop proliferation, it’s gonna have to come down to a kinetic action. So leave it there for now.

Justin Logan: Got it. No, that’s, that covers the waterfront and it’s, it was a very unfair question.

Bob Peters: You were fair to say it was unfair.

Justin Logan: And we’ll, no, no doubt this will continue to come up, in the discussion this morning. I wanted to move to James to talk about if I don’t wanna reduce. I’ve reduced all morning. I’ll keep reducing things, but if we will, the other side of the sort of general nonproliferation debate, has focused on and succeeded in some ways, with what I talked about in the opening, these sort of, lash- international restrictions, the NPT. We came up with the additional protocol, which was an amendment to the NPT that, sort of, imposed on the Iranian question.

And I wanted to ask you a similar question about sort of, again, not to say there are sides in a debate, but there kind of are sides in the debate. Where is the center of gravity, if you will, in what I would call the sort of, traditional NPT-focused nonproliferation nuclear policy right now? You, you’ve worked on technological change and how technology is changing some of these questions. Can you talk a little bit about how you see that landscape?

James Acton: Sure, and it, it’s great to be here. You know, Bob emphasized by saying that he didn’t speak on behalf of all conservatives. I wanna emphasize that I absolutely do speak on behalf of all liberals. And, and, and, and anybody who contradicts me from my side of the debate is wrong. No.

In- That was, that was a joke, right. No, I, I look, I would say, at least for me, there is, I’m increasingly concerned about proliferation going forward. I actually think the most likely, most potential proliferators are US allies. The most serious one, Iran, is a US adversary, and, you know, you, you’re gonna be discussing allies later in the day, and I’m not gonna get onto that now, but just suffice to say that, you know, I, I, I think the proliferation problem is, is as much about allies as it is about adversaries. But I, you know, I do subscribe to the idea that we have, or at least had, a rules-based nuclear order, that states were willing to do stuff such as impose sanctions that they wouldn’t have otherwise done because of the economics and bilateral costs because they viewed nonproliferation as a global good, as a common interest.

They also refrained from doing stuff like supplying sensitive technology that otherwise they would like to have supplied for economic and bilateral reasons out of the belief that, nonproliferation was this global good. This was partly normative. I think there is this kind of w- kind of hand-wavy, normative element to it. I also think there was a very hard-nosed interest calculation that went into this, and neither do I think this was purely diplomatic. I think the threat of force was an important component within this broader regime.

And I would see three changes, which I’m gonna outline very briefly, that I think really do threaten the nuclear order today. Now, as Justin said very fairly, there’s been doomist predictions about nonproliferation for a while, and, you know, maybe you can invite me back in 15 years- and we can, we can, we c- we can reassess whether, whether, whether I’m being overly too much of a doomer right now. But the first thing is, I think the attack on Iran was deeply problematic from the per- from the standpoint of the regime. Because it demonstrated that actually underground enrichment programs are really hard to destroy. And so the threat of force, which I do think was an important component of the nonproliferation regime, is now a less effective threat going forward.

It also demonstrated that we, the United States, are not willing to bear that large costs, because we’re very sensitive to oil prices. Secondly, I think there are very, I think, potential proliferators, who are adversaries, have very legitimate reasons to ask the question, “If we enter into a deal with the United States, will the United States uphold its side of the deal?” Regardless of whether you think the JCPOA was a good deal or a bad deal. Hint, it was an extremely good deal- as current events demonstrate. But even if you disagree with me on that, I think one has to concede that signing a deal and then walking away from it makes it harder to sign future deals that the other side is gonna believe we’re gonna abide by. I also think that bombing Iran twice while negotiating with them further underscored this dynamic.

And then thirdly, I think there is growing, on the part of the United States here, double standards. There’s, nonpro regime has always had double standard, and I wanna claim it was this kind of purer than pure thing historically and has now got all polluted. But I do think the problem of saying we’re gonna treat our allies and our adversaries differently is a growing problem. I think the India deal in 2003 under George W. Bush is a good example of this.

The AUKUS deal under Joe Biden is a good example of this. The South Korea deal for South Korea to get nuclear-powered submarines under President Trump is a good example. The perennial discussions we hear about some kind of deal with Saudi, to give Saudi enrichment technology. And I, you know, I think there’s, this creates various normative regime-type problems. If we’re going to supply our allies with sensitive technology, I think our adversaries are gonna supply their friends, who are often our, also our adversaries, with sensitive technology.

I think it becomes a lot harder to, you know, for example, if Australia’s gonna remove nuclear material from safeguards, and, you know, I’m not terribly worried about Australian proliferation at all, I think it becomes much harder to normalize a diplomatic coalition to do things like sanctions if Iran moves nuclear material from safeguards. So I think this double standard is not just a, kind of isn’t it unfair type whine. I think it does create real concrete problems for enforcing the nonproliferation regime in a robust way going forward. Now, I certainly don’t wanna claim that the United States in any way is the sole cause of problems in the nonpro regime. It’s clearly not.

But I focus on the United States because, you know, most of us here are Americans. That, that’s the government that to the extent we can influence anybody, is the government we primarily seek to influence, so that’s why I focus on the United States. But as I say, I do think there are good reasons today to really question whether the regime, that I think has worked fairly well, you know, has, is, is, i- is now under unprecedented strain and threat.

Justin Logan: Oh, that’s, that’s very good, and it, it d- set us up, for the question that I wanted to pose, to Richard, which was, you know, you teased this question, James, to a certain extent about, sanctions being a tool here. And i- i- the question whether the regime can endure. Richard, I wanted to ask you, your, sort of professional career public service has focused at this intersection of economic coercion and nonproliferation, I think it’s fair to say. And there are increasing debates about whether it’s, you know, a, a potential challenges to the dollar, all these sort of ripple effect questions about the use of US, if you will, economic coercion sanctions, to try to be, you know, part of the stick, if you like, on the other end of nonproliferation policy. Do you, do you share any of those worries, and if so, which?

Or do you think that the basic shape of US nonprolifer- nonproliferation policy as being backed by sanctions to that extent can endure for the policy relevant future?

Richard Nephew: No, thanks for the question, and thanks for your forbearance, as I clearly was dealing with scheduling issues.

Justin Logan: It’s a good thing we timed this the way we did with-

Richard Nephew: Perfectly done we were. I think part of the problem with the question is it to some extent looks backwards from the r- most recent deal we have and looks forwards to a world in which the US doesn’t have economic preponderance and makes an assumption you couldn’t do this thing again because you’ll never have such preponderance. And, and I think there are reasons to question both of those assumptions there. It’s absolutely true we had economic preponderance and we’re therefore able to apply it to address this one particular problem, that being Iranian proliferation. But it’s not, I don’t think, definitively true that, that’s the only way in which economic pressure could’ve been used as a way of putting pressure on the Iranians.

It’s not, I think, absolutely true that the United States is gonna lose the ability to have pressure on, future foreign nuclear programs or other proliferation programs for that matter. But it’s just that we will unlikely have this level of capability in the future to act as unilaterally as we did-

Justin Logan: Yeah to be able to shape what we wanted the outcome to be as much on our own.

Richard Nephew: Yeah. So we’re going to have to do things with a little less. And I think there are reasons to look at this in recent history and to, to make those kind of calculations because if you look back to the 1980s, for instance, when we were trying to persuade Pakistan, for instance, not to go down, the nuclear path, you know, the sanctions that we were putting in place, while they had some impact, they clearly were not sufficient to s- weigh Pakistani nuclear decision-making or Indian n- nuclear decision-making thereafter in 1998. Um- If you had fast-forward and put the US economic position in place in 1984, for instance, would it have necessarily been the same? If we’d had the same tools at the time, would it have been the same?

And I think the difference is that at a moment in time which we wanted to try and work the international economy to get to our national security objective, we just were supremely economically powerful in those 2000s and early 2010 period, where we could exert a lot of pressure. I think the problem that I look forward to is at this point, we have now indexed that not as being a high water mark in which we could have done an awful lot, but now as the standard.

Justin Logan: Baseline.

Richard Nephew: And I think this goes to the point about whether or not a better deal was gonna be possible when Trump exited the JCPOA. I think you can absolutely look at the North Korea case, where we’ve now said, “Well, we did it here, so therefore we ought to be able to do it again.” And I think the answer to all this is all these things are contingent on the moment in time. They’re contingent on the capabilities you have. And so as our relative economic position does start to recede, as we are not We may still be a top dog, but not necessarily the supreme top dog where no one is able to challenge us, we are going to still have national security priorities that we’re going to want to advance, and we’re still gonna have economic tools and, partnerships that we can work, but they will not be as effective. And the problem is, is that US foreign policy decision-making has not caught up to that reality.

And so that means to me not that we’re not gonna be able to do it, but that we’re potentially going to have to accept more compromise than we are usually willing to accept. And that’s gonna be our challenge.

Justin Logan: Right. I wanted to stick with you both to, follow up on that question and to ask another one. I mean, to me, you know, you’re quite right to point out the, the unique moment in time position of the United States in the global economy is one huge factor, but also adversarial workarounds are a huge factor-

Richard Nephew: Right with which you’re intimately familiar, of course.

Justin Logan: So it’s almost like an arms race, right, where we’re trying to apply a certain level of pressure, and they’re trying to get out from underneath that. So I wanted to press you to talk a little bit about how you see the landscape of sort of red teaming it, if you like, the ability to sort of slip out from under these things, not just because of the weight of the United States, if you like, is decreased, but because the adversary’s clever, and they figure out how to get, out from underneath the pain. So that’s the follow-up. And then I also wanted to ask a little bit, we, we got, like, I don’t know, 16 or 17 minutes in before the word Iran was uttered. Let’s just go there.

And I wanted to talk a little bit about the recent Iran conflict and the ongoing decades-long Iran conflict. And, i- in preparing for this, I was going back and rereading some of your work and, you know, you had a sort of, sort of pessimistic, I would say, view in J- January 2025. Y- by your reading, you know, Iran was, if not at the precipice, approaching the precipice, pretty close to the precipice, of getting the, the implements that it would need to produce a nuclear weapon, and that the Trump administration, should really put its shoulder into diplomacy, but if that failed, be prepared to back it up, with the prospect of military power. And then more recently, in the, in the sort of not yet the wake, but during the current conflict, you worried that to the extent, comprehensive sanctions relief or big sanctions relief was part of a settlement with Iran, that would potentially, breathe life into a regime that might be, perspectively tottering. I, I wanted to sort of give you first cut at, after you do the arms racing adversarial cleverness, bit, what you think has gone right, what you think has gone wrong, and net it out, in a short, very short- reductive answer.

Richard Nephew: Wow. I mean, so for the first one, I’ll just say, thanks very much. Everyone should buy my book- The Art of Sanction. N- no, I mean, I Look, I, I think you’re, you’re pointing to something that is just an intrinsic reality, not just of sanctions policy, but of all foreign policy dynamics, which is adversaries get a vote, and unless you’re in a position to completely, you know, achieve, you know, comprehensive victory on day one, you’re going to have to respond to the, the push and pull. And I think the, the, a problem with US foreign policy, but I would again argue that this is a broader foreign policy challenge, is that you can never really be sure, is our strategy not working because we’re not doing it well enough, or is our strategy not working because it was based on flawed assumptions, or is our strategy not working because the adversary is pushing back?

And I think i- in any of those scenarios, the, the correct answer is to be engaged in a continuous evaluation process, trying to decide whether or not something has a reasonable and plausible chance of succeeding if you change your tactics, or do you have to go back to your baseline strategy?

Justin Logan: Yeah.

Richard Nephew: And, you know, it’s, it’s without a doubt that the Iranians have adapted their approach to our sanctions policy over the years. I mean, they weren’t using front companies in the beginning. Now they are. They’ve even gone beyond that. You know, for a long time, the Iranians were doing, you know, transactions through the normal banking system.

They stopped doing that with our sanctions. They moved to more of a hawala system. I mean, this is the adaptation that you should expect, and, and I don’t think here it’s any different. On the, on the issue of, of stuff I’ve written, so look, I, I think one, one thing that I believe that all academic articles need to have, or think pa- think tank pieces need to have now, is a given that section, right? You know, do I think in January 2025 that it was reasonable to contemplate military action against Iran?

Yeah, absolutely. But that’s because we were at suboptimal plan 12.

Justin Logan: Yeah.

Richard Nephew: Right? You know, at, at that point, we had made so many bad decisions, starting with the decision to exit the JCPOA in the first place, that we’re now kind of stuck with, okay, given that we are here, what do we do now? And my, my sense at the time was that the Iranian breakout time had dwindled so low that at, if you did not achieve a diplomatic success and get to something akin to a JCPOA, you were gonna be, running a real risk of Iranian proliferation being not just theoretical, but, but, you know, actual. And, and I still think that that would have pretty catastrophic implications for both the region and beyond as part of the non-proliferation system. We could debate that and other points, but that is the reason why, to my mind, it made sense to contemplate that in the context of robust diplomatic effort, being willing to go back into a JCPOA structure, working with international partners, all those sorts of things.

Well, okay, now fast-forward a year. Given that we’ve had two rounds of strikes-

Justin Logan: Right the IRGC now is as firmly in charge as they are

Richard Nephew: , look, now we’re in a position of w- what do we think the possibility is of Iranian proliferation, and what do we think the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons? To me, I think they’ve gone up, and I think they’ve gone up as a result of all the strategic, uh- missteps that we have made and the choices that the Iranians themselves have made, too. And this is where I get to the point about, you know, giving the IRGC-led system now a lifeline. My, my in- very significant worry is the MOU, let, let’s all call it the Versailles MOU, please. The Versailles MOU has, you know, given the, the Iranians an awful lot of, of income stream that they should probably be able to expect to have in perpetuity.

That will help them manage the crises that they’re under without changing the underlying strategic realities. Which I think then gives us a lot of pause, I would hope, in terms of how we think both about our overall strategy issues and, and how we are developing our objectives and how we try and achieve them, and our willingness to adapt based on what we have done in the past. And, and I think, you know, my big risk that I see now is not just that other actors are going to see from this a lack of sticktuitiveness, as, as James is speaking to, but I think more, more importantly, they’re going to see that, proliferation in the first instance was the right answer-

Justin Logan: Right that the, the correct decision was all the way back in 2003 to press forward, not to stop.

Richard Nephew: Right. You can’t trust these people. That’s the, yeah, yeah, right, the implication there.

Richard Nephew: On their side, that is.

Justin Logan: Right. I’m, I’m trying to channel.

Justin Logan: James, I wanted to start working our way back, in this direction, eh, with a g- general similar question. A- and there are obviously lots of non-nuclear issues in the US-Iran- strategy policy space. You’re a nukes guy. So I, I wanted to ask you to talk to the extent you want, and feel free not to bracket away non-nuclear issues. You’re welcome to jump on those as well.

But, but on the nuclear case, you know, Richard just laid out something. I saw you nodding your head at various times. What, what do you think has gone right and gone wrong? And, and I think there is probably so- some consensus on withdrawing from the JCPOA might have been, had some ripple effects that were unpleasant for us. But what do you think the implications are for nuclear nonproliferation from wherever you see this going at present?

Right? We have, as, as was pointed out, strikes last June, strikes starting February 28th of this year, all these questions of trust that are- Yeah sort of structural to a Neanderthal realist like me, right? It’s, it’s very hard to trust a country like the United States ’cause it’s so powerful and it can just renege on its word. W- w- to the extent you can see the ripples starting to form and emanate out, w- how would you identify them?

James Acton: Sure. Let me highlight three ripple effects. The first one is the link between attempted regime change and proliferation. However you feel individually about what happened to Saddam, what happened to Gaddafi, what happened to Khomeini senior, I think it’s, there’s a pretty clear message that if you don’t have nukes and you lose a war to the United States, or even in the case of Iran if you win a war against the United States, you can end up dead. So, you know, I, I, I, I think policies of regime change or leader change fuel proliferation.

Secondly, I am deeply concerned. I- my argument again- my primary argument against military force in Iran has always been that it would never work, and I think that’s been borne out by what has just happened in Iran. Now, I wanna emphasize, if I was President Acton, which is constitutionally not gonna happen- I would not take the threat of military action off the table. I do think it is a useful threat to have, and I do think it worried the Iranians a lot. But the problem is, if you have a dispersed, deeply hardened underground program, we have now demonstrated that it can survive US airstrikes.

Richard Nephew: Mm-hmm.

James Acton: Not unscathed, but Iran has been left with large quantities of highly enriched uranium. They are not buried under rubble. They are in tunnels that survived, that were sealed by Iran because covering tunnels in sand is a really effective way of preventing bombing from collapsing the tunnel entrances, ’cause literally it’s like pounding sand. So, you know, the idea that Iran lacks the, the country that dug the tunnels lacks the technology to dig out the tunnels that they buried when we’ve already seen them do it last fall is, like, head-spinning to me. There are now no inspections in Iran other than, you know, the reactors that are not of particular proliferation concern.

I see no evidence that the large quantities of centrifuges that Iran were being monitored under the JCPOA and now lo- no longer being monitored, they almost certainly survived. Iran has large quantities of expertise. And perhaps most worryingly, Iran now knows, as does every other proliferator, how dig- how deep they have to dig to avoid the most penetrating US non-nuclear weapons. There is a reason we didn’t actually bomb the tunnels at Isfahan, because they were too deep. We bombed the tunnel entrances, but the tunnels remained uncollapsed.

We didn’t even try, to the best of my knowledge, to destroy the facility at Pickax Mountain. So now every country out there knows exactly how to defeat a US air campaign. All of this, I think, makes the threat of military force less effective going forward. And finally, this war has demonstrated this was not You know, I, I’ve said this a few times publicly now. War is not a video game.

You don’t win a war by accumulating points. You know, you destroyed the ayatollah, 10,000 points. You destroyed this facility, 1,000 points, right? We scored 400 million points, and the Iranians scored merely a million, right? That, that’s not how wars are decided.

This war was about the infliction of pain. We inflicted pain on Iran. They inflicted even more pain on us economically by closing the Strait of Hormuz. That was why we ended up with a bad deal at the end of the day, not primarily because the administration’s not very good at negotiating, but because, as President Trump himself said repeatedly, he wasn’t gonna go back to war because the cost of that war was so painful that our threat to go back to war if we, if there was no deal, was a lot less credible than the Iranian threat to go back to war if there was no deal. That’s why, you know, this narrative that we won the war and lost the peace is wrong.

We lost the war and we lost the peace, and generally when you lose wars, you lose peace. And again, I think this demonstrates to other potential proliferators going forward that if they’re engaged in a military conflict with us and they find some way of raising oil prices, and a number of potential proliferators are not all that far from the Middle East, then, you know, they can, they can ensure that this war just becomes too costly for us to fight. So the good news here is, as I’ve said already, almost all pot- potential proliferators going forward are US allies. I think we’re in a terrible situation with Iran n- right now. I totally agree with Richard’s analysis that the likelihood of Iran getting nukes is now significantly higher than it was two years ago.

But what I would say is a number of potential proliferators, I think, are not necessarily long-term lasting friends, and that part of the reason we should care about proliferation to allies is that allies can change into adversaries. And, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran being the absolute classic example of that.

Justin Logan: Fair enough. I wanted to work, continue working back in this direction. But I assume, hope you have a somewhat different take, on the Iran policy. But to, sort of to set it up, it’s, it’s fair to say, I think, and, and, and objectively true, that there’s been a lot of volatility in Trump’s Iran policy, right? It built up to February 28th, with the strikes last June.

And, eff- efforts, I will say, at diplomacy led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. But now, Trump has sort of, moved from initially talking about regime change, urging the Iranian people to rise up, it’s the greatest chance in generation for them to do so, by saying that the new crop of leaders in Iran are actually the bros. We love those guys. They’re good guys. And, and sort of, you know, talking about we, we can do business with them, they’re responsible people, and pushing this MOU and the prospect of a broader deal covering a whole host of issues between our countries and other parties in the region, in a really short period of time.

And so, y- you know, the, the Trump administration has, you know, engaged in a pretty big, pretty costly war. It’s now taking a lot of heat for its efforts at diplomacy. What is your take on the prospects for a kind of enduring peace? Maybe if not even some grand denouement, but just a sort of stable equilibrium coming out of this that looks all right.

Bob Peters: Yeah. So, I mean, you, you picked up that I may have some disagreements with- with, with Richard and James, and I’ll touch on that a bit. But, I mean, I’m not even sure that having, whether or not we have an enduring peace with Iran, I’m not concerned w- with that. And I’m not even sure that that’s in American interest that we have an enduring peace with Iran. I would say what’s in the interest of the United States is ensuring that the Islamic Republic, does not pose a threat to the United States or our regional partners.

And I don’t even know how long the Islamic Republic will continue to exist. I think it’s gonna be measured in months to years, not years to decades. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I would guess. And I disagree with some of what James and, and Richard said as the sta- the status of the nuclear program. I’m happy to talk about that.

But from, from my vantage point, I think we set the program back roughly 20 years. I think it’s gonna take them roughly 20 years to get back to where they were pre-2025. Their economy is in ruins. We’ve killed a number of scientists. We’ve killed significant aspects of the program itself.

Can they rebuild some of those? Yeah, if they’ve got the resources. Can they dig out some of those facilities? Yeah, they can. But if that means that we need to go back and continue to kill Iranian leaders and IRGC commanders and scientists and destroy sites of concern, we can keep doing that all the live long day.

I prefer to do that with gravity bombs, not long-range precision fires or deep penetrating strike capabilities, ’cause I wanna maintain those to deter, if necessary, defeat Chinese aggression. But, you know, I look at this as a place in which we can continue to inflict pain and cost on Iran so long as we need to. And, and James, you said a couple times that we lost the war. I take your point that war is not a video game. I’m not sure anyone has made that argument that it is.

But when you look at how much we have affected the Iranian regime, and this idea that, well, now the IRGC is in charge and the hardliners are in charge. Well, hardliners have been in charge since 1979. I’m, I’m not sure that we’re gonna see any meaningful change in behavior. What we are gonna see is a change in capabilities. When you talk about we suffered more economic cost than the Iranian regime, I don’t see that as being possible.

I mean, I filled up my gas tank last night. It was only about 30 cents more a gallon than it was before the war began. That’s about 9% more. The Iranian economy before Epic Fury was not in a great place to begin with. I don’t see it as being in a stronger place now, given the amount of rebuilding they’re gonna have to do.

Now, the MOU, which is not the final agreement, it’s an MOU. Supposedly, a final agreement will come out 60 days from now or whenever. We don’t know what that’s gonna look like. Maybe it’ll give more money to the Iranians, maybe it won’t If I’ve learned anything from watching Trump ’47, it’s don’t bank on what he says now to still be viable 60 days down the line. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

But Richard, what I would say to you when you said that the, the lesson is if you, you know, if you want to keep your regime, go for nuclear weapons, what I would say is, I think if you see Epic Fury as a counter-proliferation effort, you’re engaging in a category error in that I think if the October 7th attacks had not happened, we would not have seen Midnight Hammer or, or Epic Fury. I think if the protests that erupted in December through January, that killed between 20 to 40,000 Iranians, however m- many people you wanna count it, if that hadn’t happened, you would not have seen Epic Fury. Everything that I’ve heard is that the nature of the regime is what triggered Epic Fury, and the attacks in particular of October 7th deeply affected the president. And I’ve talked to multiple people, and they’ve said if those attacks had not happened, if the killing of the protesters had not happened, we would never have gotten Epic Fury. You’d have seen this president continue to try to engage in negotiations, much like we saw in 2018 with North Korea.

Maybe they very well have failed like they did with North Korea, but we would not have gotten to the slope of kinetic action.

Justin Logan: So.

Bob Peters: I have 50 thoughts of my own, and I’m gonna do what I never do, which is not share them with anybody.

Justin Logan: Did– I don’t know whether, Yeah, James, you have a two-finger there.

James Acton: Yeah, I Look, I, I think this is so important, this issue of analyzing the effects of the war, and I wanna disagree with Bob on three points. Actually, I wanna start by agreeing with him. I think Bob is absolutely right that it could take the Iranians 20 years to build back a program of the size it was previously. The problem is they don’t need a program of that size to build the bomb.

Bob Peters: Right. The program they had previously was massively oversized for proliferation.

James Acton: It- It– Don’t get me wrong, it was partly geared towards proliferation, but it was a se- It was also scaled for fuel production. You know, if with the amount of HEU they have, a very small underground centrifuge facility is now entirely adequate for building the bomb. Secondly, Bob argues we can keep going back. I think that’s wrong, because I think it’s now clear that deep, hardened underground facilities, we can’t touch. You know, there was a reason we destroyed a whole bunch of stuff in last June’s war.

And in this year’s war, there were very few strikes against nuclear facilities. Not none, but very few, and that’s largely because what we hadn’t destroyed last June, we now can’t destroy ’cause it’s too deep. And at the end of the day, if you’re dealing with underground facilities, once you get below, you know, whatever it is, 100 meters, give or take, non-nuclear weapons simply cannot destroy those facilities. My implication here, I wanna be very clear, is not that I think we’re going to use nuclear weapons. It’s that we’re not gonna destroy those facilities.

And then thirdly, I’m not arguing the United States incurred more economic costs than Iran. I’m arguing that we incurred more economic costs than we were willing to bear.

Bob Peters: Right. And, you know, when it comes to gas prices, look, Bob and I both earn good money. It’s not a problem for me that I pay more at the pump. But, you know, we all know that inflation brought down, or was a major reason that brought down the Biden administration, and many Americans who are on much lower incomes are really hurt by rising gas prices. And, you know, there was, you know, based on every piece of media reporting we’ve had, you had a Republican party that was begging the president to stop this war because they believed it would be disastrous to their, hopes in the midterms.

I think they got the analysis spot, the political, economic analysis there spot on. There’s a famous quote in nuclear, context about suffering that mentions, “If we have to eat grass, we will, we will see this through.” And so I think it’s a question of, how much suffering either side is willing to

Justin Logan: Richard, did you have a two-finger on this also?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, and I, and I don’t wanna pile on, but I mean, I, I, I will say two things. One, if, if we believe that the IRI only has weeks or months, this MOU is making sure it’s more months to years. The, the simple reality is that the Iranians are going to get disproportionate economic benefits over what they got in the JPOA, which is the appropriate equivalent to the MOU, to the tune of something between $4 and $6 billion a month in oil sales as long as the MOU’s in place. And while it might be plausible that the United States could undertake additional military action at the end of 60 days, I actually think the president is signaling all over the place a disinclination to do so. And, and here I’m not talking about the words he’s actually using in his Tru- Su- Truth, Truth Social posts.

Here I’m talking about when he makes those posts, what does he do? And what he has done persistently since April is said something very extravagant and then said a couple hours later, “Great news, everybody. The Iranians conceded. Now I get what I want, and so I don’t have to do this.” And I think that is marking out a disinclination to act. That will directly impact his decision at that end of 60 days with regard to the MOU and whether or not it’s extended.

And if it is extended ad infinitum at $4 to $6 billion a pop, you can absolutely count on the Iranians having more than enough money to rebuild what parts of the program they haven’t. And the last thing I’ll just say on the, the category error part about what happened with Epic Fury and whether or not we’d have had it without January, that may or may not be true. If it were true, it’s inconsistent with the president’s rhetoric, which is absolutely focused on the CP elements, whether we’re talking about the nuclear program or the missile program. And point of fact, the people who killed all of those protesters in January are absolutely unequivocally the only power center in Iran right now. So if he cared about what happened in January, he has a very funny way of showing it to those much less radical people who are now in charge.

Justin Logan: We have seated the field. Everyone is, on the edge of their seats, no doubt, which is a good time to turn to the question and answer period. The online people can pose questions on Facebook, YouTube, and X using the hashtag CatoFP. So go ahead and do that. We’re gonna take some of the questions from in-person, some of them from online.

If you’re in person, it says here, “Please speak clearly and directly into the microphone,” which I would’ve thought would be self-evident, but it must not be, so everybody in the room and online can hear the question. And please announce your name and any affiliation. Ask smart questions. There’s tons of them out there. You’re smart people.

The gentleman right down here in the front row, or not the front row, almost the front row.

Peter Humphrey: Hi, I’m Peter Humphrey. I’m an intelligence analyst and a former diplomat. My great fear is that with a working, Chinese design in hand, Iran will not have to test. Their test may be on Tel Aviv, and I don’t know how to keep an eye on that and, and watch that very carefully. Right.

S- my question is, can you name some proliferation targets? R- Iraq’s come to mind, of course, and maybe Saudi Arabia, but I can’t think of any others. Thank you.

Justin Logan: I don’t know if I qui- the, the, the question of whether Iran would need to test, I suspect they would. Does anybody, have a Let’s go to, I think I saw, we’ll take another one. Is that Sahar? I can’t see. Yes, it is Sahar.

Right there.

Sahar Khan: Hi, thank you. Hi. I’m Sahar Khan. I’m a non-resident fellow, at the Institute of Global Affairs and former Cato person. So I had a question about, conventional weapons.

Of course, we sort of have ideas of what this means. You know, there are very few states who want nuclear weapons, but I wanted to ask all three of you what your thoughts are on what the Iran war indicates about conventional weapons and modernization. And when we think about proliferation, of course it means nuclear, but, I’m just curious because more and more states are developing, really dangerous conventional weapons that could potentially do a lot of damage, as we’ve seen. Thank you.

Justin Logan: Thoughts on the conventional deterrence, I guess.

James Acton: I mean, I’m happy to jump in. A, a couple thoughts. I mean, so first just on the, whether or not Iran would need to test, again, I, I’m not sure whether or not they would ever need to test depending on what they’re attempting to test. I think the question is whether or not they would wish to test and, and I think this goes to a question of how they are approaching the underlying strategic logic of hedging versus now being more of a declaratory state. So I, I’m, I guess, I think it’s an important question, but I’m less motivated by it ’cause my inbuilt assumption is that the Iranians would prefer to have that test in order to, to stabilize deterrence, but that may be, wrong.

On the conventional weapons piece, to me, I think what the conflict shows is, is, very similar to what the Ukraine, and Russia war shows, which is drones and the importance of drone warfare going forward, the adaptability of drone warfare, the integration of drone warfare and, and strategic intelligence to be able to target. I think to me that, and the, the, the, cheap nature of drone production with the high consequence of getting a successful strike, that’s what adds up to me to be, fairly anxiety-producing as opposed to more kind of traditional conventional arms, but that’s just me.

Bob Peters: Yeah. For, so from my Look, I, I’m not a conventional weapons guy, but there are three things, kind of looking at this from my vantage point, that I noticed about conventional weapons in the war. The first one is the effectiveness of point missile defenses. You know, full credit, if you’re defending small areas, point missile defenses are really impressive these days. No bones about it.

Secondly, this war illustrated both the, and t- taken together with the last one as well, the abilities and limitations of conventional bunker busters. Going back to last June’s war, the Pentagon briefing that explained how the attack on, Fordow was done, the underground enrichment plant, I mean, it was Battle of Yavin from Star Wars stuff, right? I mean, it was dropping the photon torpedoes down the ch- I mean, like, like almost literally. So on the one hand, it was an as- like, I thought this war was a terrible idea, but, like, you watch it and you’re like, “This is amazing.” but you know, the fact on the one hand, the destruction of Fordow, genuinely impressive, but as I’ve already said, the limitations of that technology is demonstrated by the deep underground facilities we didn’t destroy. And thirdly, I think there’s fascinating lessons about the ability to, and limitations of hunting mobile missiles.

You know, US and Israeli operations proved very effective at hunting down Iranian mobile missiles after they had left their garrisons.

Richard Nephew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Peters: Iran proved very good at keeping those missiles inside underground facilities alive, at constantly reopening those underground facilities and getting them through and sustaining after, you know, the Iranian fire rate dropped pretty dramatically after the first few days, but then it remained pretty much constant. So, you know, I, I think those are three aspects of the conventional warfare that I think are, were noticeable from my perspective. I, I, I broadly agree with both, with both James and, and Richard. I, I think that when you, when we think about, I mean, for me, when I think about deterrence, I actually think far more about conventional capabilities than nuclear capabilities, which is why I advocate for we need more Virginia submarines, we need more destroyers, we need more, bombers, we need more, long-range precision fires that are air-launched and sea-launched and so forth. I, I think the only way to do that without bak- without- breaking the bank is to do this high-low mix with, with drones and autonomous systems, whether you’re talking about CCAs or what we’ve seen on the ground in, in Ukraine, mixed with things like LRASMs and TLAMs and so forth.

I- I think the missile defense aspect y- yet again has proved just how good it is when it comes to point defense- but even beyond point defense. I mean, what, what, what we’ve seen THAAD can do is pretty darn im- impressive- and often goes beyond even just point defense.

Justin Logan: Good but expensive and in short supply.

Bob Peters: Um- correct. Yes.

Justin Logan: Let’s see. Other questions. There was somebody right there. So-

Audience Member: Right there. So, so, well, on your, on your part, my understanding is that’s the next panel, right, is talking about, additional countries that potentially are gonna proliferate, including on the allies-

Justin Logan: Friendly proliferation and the menace of- friendly proliferation.

Audience Member: Yeah. For adversary proliferation?

Justin Logan: That’s, this is the adversary proliferation.

Audience Member: Right. Okay. Thanks.

Justin Logan: Right there, there’s a lady in the back area with her hand up, conveniently.

Abby: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Abby. I’m a sophomore studying political science with a focus on international relations, and I had a question about how the develop- the potential development of independent nuclear weapons by Europe could possibly affect the war in Ukraine. Would it hasten it?

Would it hasten the end of it, or would it exacerbate it?

Justin Logan: That’s, that’s an excellent question for the next panel- which is on the prospect of proliferation to y- current US allies, not adversaries. So if you will, sorry for being the jerk who says it, but will you ask that exact same question- in an hour and 20 minutes?

Abby: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Thank you very much.

Justin Logan: Gentleman right here.

Andrew Yeo: Hi. Andrew Yeo, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of politics at Catholic University. James, I wanna go back to your comment about mixing regime change and proliferation or non-proliferation because I’m really struck by the fact that, not, you know, I’m a North K- I’ve been following North Korea for a while, but both in North Korea and Iran, y- you have this underlying, intent or perhaps ambition in the US, to promote regime change at various points in time, but at the same time you’re trying to negotiate with an adversary, to ask them to give up nuclear weapons, and so it gets back to this fundamental question of trust. Seeing now that Iran has, been struck once last year, Midnight Hammer, and then again Epic Fury, where do you see negotiations happening? Why would the Iranians trust the US at all?

And given that fact, you know, how do we move towards, denuclearization now? Thanks.

James Acton: I don’t think they will trust us. I mean, like, you know, part, part of the reason why I’m worried about whether, you know, about whether there will Like, firstly, I think it’s, unfortunately unlikely there will ever be a final deal with Iran, and secondly, if there is, I worry that it would be one that is, concedes an awful lot to the Iranians. But I think, you know, the basic point you make, I think, is just spot on, that, you know, even after the war and signing an agreement respecting Iran’s, I forget the exact wording of article on- or paragraph one of the m- of the Versailles Memorandum, but, you know, respecting Iran’s territorial integrity and not, pledging not to interfere in internal affairs, you know, President Trump is making threats against Iran again. And, you know, if I’m Iranian, I’m sitting there and being like, “We cannot, any kind of an agreement that we reach, we cannot trust that it will be durable.” And, you know, to my mind, I mean, I’ve written about what I think in a final agreement with Iran should look like. Like, I think we’ve got the memorandum now.

I think we should try and build on it. I think we should negotiate with them in good faith. You know, I would prefer a detailed memorandum that’s, a, a detailed final agreement with good verification that’s more permissive to Iran, that gives Iran more benefits. But that doesn’t actually solve the fundamental problem that you point to, which is that, you know, any Iranian leaders looking at this agreement have to ask themselves very seriously whether the United States will abide by that agreement. And, you know, this is why I think the US, you know, this is a broader conversation than just, Iran, but there is a number of agreements in which our counterparty was complying with that agreement that we chose to exit.

We have the right to do so, for example, in the case of the ABM Treaty. In the JCPOA, there was no exit clause because we didn’t want the Iranians to be able to exit the agreement, and then we chose to exit the agreement, which I view as deeply problematic, when the IC was assessing that Iran was complying with that agreement. But I think, you know, I think that at the end of the day, I don’t have a good answer to this problem. I think it’s, it’s very hard not just for Iran, but for any adversary right now to have any confidence that the United States will abide by an agreement that we sign, and I think that is, it’s a huge problem for non-proliferation. I think it’s a new, a huge problem for our foreign policy writ large, frankly.

I mean, it wouldn’t be a good nuke panel if somebody didn’t quote Schelling. Nobody has so far- so I will. You know, the, the, in, in threats there should be implicit an assurance, right?

Richard Nephew: Right. So Schelling uses the, the, the, the, the threat, “Stop or I’ll shoot,” which logically implies, “If you do stop, I won’t shoot,” right? And if you think about it in that sense, to what extent can we credibly assure any prospective party if they do stop, we won’t shoot?

James Acton: I mean, I think that’s the There’s national-

Richard Nephew: Can, can I, can I just follow-

Justin Logan: Please.

Richard Nephew: Well, especially, I got another question. Just finally, I, I do wanna say though, I think that there is, there is a distinction there between regime change and not fulfilling the terms of your agreements, right? I Fundamentally, the Iranians never believed that we had a new- Great relationship with them in 2015. There was an intrinsic amount of distrust that was still put- felt by both sides to one another, and the entire reason why we had to write 150-odd pages in the JCPOA was because of fundamental amounts of distrust that existed between the two sides. And, I think the Iranians were prepared to look past whether or not we’re, you know, enemies forever, in order to get to a constructive, pragmatic deal the same way that we were prepared to do so as well.

And I think you can still find a way to get to people’s pragmatism, which is I think is what’s being demonstrated in the MOU. I think the problem that we had in ’21, we were trying to get back into the JCPOA, and what I think the Trump administration’s gonna find now is that it’s not It’s taken as given that we are adversaries. Now it’s taken as given that we won’t even abide by things that we agreed to five minutes ago, and I actually think that right now the reinterpretation of the MOU is a massive problem. When the Vice President of the United States goes out and says the MOU says things that it does not say, it signals to the Iranians that this doesn’t matter. None of this matters.

And if you’re the Iranians, you sit back and say, “Okay. Well, we’re just gonna exploit this to maximum advantage until the Americans once again cheat on us again, and when they’ve done that, we at least will have prepared ourselves.” That to me is the more dangerous implication of JCPOA exit in this entire saga. It’s not the regime change piece, although I take on, on faith the fact that that has an impact. I think it’s even more on the specifics we’re not able or willing to comply, and we are developing a reputation as someone that is incredibly capricious in that. And that I think is more dangerous to us than whether or not we’re permanent adversaries.

Justin Logan: Thanks. Either I, I think I’ve screwed up the online questions, so I apologize to the online people because, I’m not making it work, so blame me, please. There w- let’s take two Well, we Holy moly, now you’ve all, everyone cropped up. Escalation. Let’s take Yeah, the escalation, that’s right.

A cascade fell. Let’s start with the lady in the back and then work our way up at least to three, ’cause we’re getting to the end. We’re gonna have to be extremely concise here, gentlemen.

Kendra: Thank you so much. My name is Kendra. I recently graduated from American with my MPP, and I did research last summer about intelligence services and corruption at the University of Cambridge. I wanted to ask a question thinking about our adversaries. They have a lot of internal corruption within their system, so I was curious about the role, of the- when we consider our adversaries’ internal corruptions when we’re thinking about the US grand sta- strategy on nuclear pr- proliferation.

So how are we considering that factor when thinking about our strategy? Thank you.

Justin Logan: Would you pass it right up to the lady right in front of you who had We’ll take three all, all in a row here. Thank you. Please.

Chloe Irwin: Yes. Hi, my name is Chloe Irwin. I am a recent graduate of Liberty University and a current intelligence analyst, intern. And my question for you is, given the ongoing, war and events with Iran, we obviously know that they are a state sponsor of terror, have, multiple proxies around the MENA region, around the world, and so given our discussion on proliferation, I guess my question is, is there a nexus between counterproliferation strategy and counterterrorism strategy? And what would that look like moving forward with US foreign and defense policy?

Thank you.

Justin Logan: And would you pass it up to the gentleman right Sorry. Thank you.

Eric Bordenkircher: Eric Bordenkircher, UCLA research fellow. Kinda speaking along the lines of nexus, and also kind of gra- grand strategy here, this question, I think falls between panels but at the same time I think is relevant. I’m coming at this f- more from a Middle East perspective than a nuclear perspective, but do these negotiations with Iran, have an impact or are I should s- maybe say it differently. Is the administration thinking about negotiations with Saudi Arabia while it’s negotiating with Iran? Does y- you know, it, ’cause with this nuclear cooperation agreement that’s been brought up in Congress and, you know, concerns about that, and inevitably this situation in Iran has to have some repercussions there.

Yeah. So is that taken into consideration when we’re negotiating?

Justin Logan: Great. Those are all good. Iranian corruption vis-à-vis a deal, Iranian support for terrorism vis-à-vis a deal, and r- ripple effects, interaction effects inside the region vis-à-vis a deal. Anybody? Please.

James Acton: Let me, let me deal with the corruption and terrorism questions together and try and answer that, just that very briefly. I think we as the United States have to have a clear sense of priority and decide what we care about most. I say that because with the JCPOA, there was a criticism that the JCPOA didn’t deal with terrorism, didn’t deal with regional proxies, didn’t do much on the ballistic missile program, and therefore, you know, and it gave Iran sanctions relief that Iran could put towards nefarious purposes. And at some level that was true, but it’s also the case that, you know, to my mind, the nuclear threat from Iran was where the United States’ most fundamental interests was, were engaged. And I think it was a good idea to stabilize the nuclear issue in return for sanctions relief even if we don’t like what Iran may do with some of that sanctions relief.

And this administration has reached exactly the same conclusion, right? The president who criticized the JCPOA ’cause it didn’t deal with ballistic missiles, ’cause it didn’t deal with terrorism is, didn’t deal with regional proxies, is now saying Iran has the right to a ballistic missile program. And I think the same thing is true with corruption as well. Like, I don’t like the fact there’s corruption in Iran, but, like, we as the United States, I think that is not our core national interest here. So the bottom line is, I think we should identify our core national interest here as non-pro, and we should act accordingly even if it means that other interests are- deprioritized, put by the wayside-

Justin Logan: Yeah to put this very bluntly.

Bob Peters: Please. For the counterproliferation, counterterrorism nexus, I mean, that’s something that, you know, people have been thinking about for 25 years. What I’d say is that within the region today, the terror problem is l- is significantly less than it’s been for quite a while. I mean, we, the Houthis have been relatively quiet since 2025. Hamas, there’s still some of those guys that need to be killed.

Hezbollah is a problem, and they’re so deeply entrenched in Lebanon, I don’t know how we get them unentrenched. I, I, I think Iranian support’s probably gonna go down, but, you know, w- we’re gonna probably keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last quarter century, is basically mowing the grass. I know that’s a term that’s not popular, but I think that’s the reality of what we have done, and so I’m gonna guess something that we’re gonna continue to do. When it comes to negotiations with Saudis, look, I mean, I referenced the warring camps within the conservative movement earlier. I think on this issue, there’s kind of two camps.

One is we need to think about working with partners within the region and really try to support them, potentially with nuclear energy as well as conventional arms and so forth. And then there are those who say, “I’m done with the Middle East. I do not wanna be involved. We have no actual partners or allies there outside of Israel. Just walk away from it all.” So, and that fight is not yet over.

Justin Logan: Richard, concluding thoughts on these?

Richard Nephew: Yeah, just real quick. I, I’ll part ways a little bit with James here on the corruption issue, ’cause I think one of the problems that we’ve got within the internal Iranian system is the, the degree to which there’s corruption, you also have the risk of that fueling proliferation if actors inside the IRGC system, for instance, decide to make a bunch of money off of the, sale of materials or something similar. So I think one of the problems with corruption, even in adversary states, is it potentially can contribute to additional bad outcomes that you wouldn’t necessarily want. Doesn’t mean you don’t prioritize-

<Justin Logan: Right but it’s an element there.

Richard Nephew: And the last thing I’ll say with regard to the CT CP nexus, you know, look, I think one of the things that, that does extend throughout all of this is the use of sanctions and other tools to try and address some of those concerns. Even within the context of the MoU and the license that was granted, there are still pieces there that say you can’t do business with Hezbollah and similar. I think the problem that you have with less comprehensive sanctions regimes, as the MoU is gonna create, it’s just harder to do. And it’s harder to try and execute them while you’ve got, some areas of, of trade that are allowed, some levels of banking activity are allowed, and some that aren’t. And so it is going to increase the difficulty factor of doing some of our CT work if some of our CP work is no longer prioritized in, in the sanctions enforcement realm.

Justin Logan: It’s a very good point. We are going to take a break of about 15 minutes before the potential, allied proliferation or friendly proliferation panel, which will be moderated by Evan Sanki. There’s gonna be, I think, coffee or something outside, but for now, please join me in thanking the panelists for what was a rollicking discussion.

This transcript was generated using AI automation and may contain minor formatting or transcription errors. Please refer to the original audio to verify specific quotes or context.

Evan Sankey: All right, everybody, we’re gonna get started shortly here. If you could take your seats, please. Thank you. We’re about to get started with the second panel here. Thank you. So this morning, we heard from an excellent panel about challenges associated with proliferation to US adversaries going forward. Now we’re gonna talk about friends. A core purpose of US alliances and partnerships is to disincentivize friendly nations from developing their own nuclear arsenals. Beyond that, US policymakers employ a range of carrots-and-sticks, multilateral treaties, extended deterrence promises and consultations, troop deployments, nuclear sharing, first-use nuclear strategies, threats of abandonment, and restrictions on transfers of nuclear technologies. But these policies are costly, and US guarantees have inherent credibility problems. Why should an ally believe the US would threaten nuclear use except in the case of an attack on a US homeland?

Recent developments exacerbate this confidence gap. The continued erosion of global norms against the use of force, the decline of US conventional military advantages, especially in Asia, and the volatility of US domestic politics. The nuclear option is now a matter of internal political debate in several close US allies, including South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Poland. And serious debate about whether nuclear proliferation might sometimes serve US interests has gathered steam in Washington, hopefully including on this very panel.

Joining us to discuss the friendly proliferation debate are three distinguished scholars of nuclear policy issues. Astrid—Astrid Chevreuil is a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She’s a career diplomat with the French Foreign Service, having most recently served in the Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament Department at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Her research focuses on European security, transatlantic relations, French defense policy, and nuclear issues, and she is the author of the excellent new CSIS report, Friendly Proliferation: Assessing US Perceptions on Proliferation Among Allies and Partners.

Jennifer Lind is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses on the US alliance system in Asia, Japanese security policy, nuclear dynamics on the Korean Peninsula, metrics of geopolitical power, and Chinese political economy. Her latest book is Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny. She’s also the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, as well as co-author of the excellent international relations blog Blue Blaze, which I strongly recommend. And she’s the co-author with Daryl Press of a piece published just yesterday in Foreign Affairs titled The Broken Nuclear Umbrella: What Comes After Extended Deterrence?

And joining us in the room is Eric Brewer. He is deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Nuclear Material Security Program, where he leads work on nuclear nonproliferation, deterrence, and strategic stability. Before joining the Nuclear Threat Initiative, he served as director for counterproliferation on the National Security Council and as deputy national intelligence officer for weapons of mass destruction and proliferation at the National Intelligence Council. His research focuses on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, managing proliferation risks, and evaluating how nonproliferation goals fit within broader US strategic objectives. His work has been published in The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and many others.

So to frame our discussion here, Eric, I’d like to start by asking you—what is the rationale for our current policy? You were a member of a recent Carnegie NTI Belfer Task Force, which concluded, in part, that preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons is central to US national security and should remain a top priority. The United States should consistently and vigorously oppose proliferation to any state. Tell us why that is, what US interests are at stake, and what are the costs that the United States is trying to avoid?

Eric Brewer: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Evan, and one quick correction. I was not a member of the task force. I don’t wanna associate myself with that. I was on the staff—

Evan Sankey: Oh, I see. My mistake.

Eric Brewer: —of the task force. But, no, it’s okay. So, you know, I think in answering this question, I think it’s important to kind of go back a bit, right, and recognize that since, you know, roughly the mid-1960s, the United States has had kind of a blanket nonproliferation policy, right? We’ve aimed to prevent proliferation to allies and adversaries alike, and that has largely been true across Democratic and Republican administrations, although I think it’s fair to say certain presidents leaned more into that than others. But I think a big reason that we’ve done that is not for normative reasons per se but because we judged it was in our national security interest not to allow proliferation to either adversaries or allies.

And I think there’s a number of rationales that underpin that, right? And I think those were true in the mid-1960s, and I think for the most part, they’re still true today. So those are things like, you know, allies may not be allies in perpetuity; that allied proliferation could potentially induce arms races wherever it occurs, right? You can imagine if South Korea acquires nuclear weapons, what that might do to North Korea’s calculus or China’s calculus. Because, you know, more nuclear weapons in the hands of more states inherently increases the risk of nuclear war, either accidentally, through miscalculation, or on purpose.

I think, if we’re being honest too, there’s also a belief that allies with nuclear weapons would force the United States to yield a degree of control over that ally and make it harder to manage crises, right? You know, it’s kind of obvious to say, but we can certainly control our own nuclear weapons. It’s much harder to control the nuclear weapons of an allied state. And so there’s a risk that we could get sucked into a crisis or a conflict that we would otherwise prefer to remain outside of or to manage differently.

And I think another big reason is that the process of proliferation itself is dangerous, right? We often focus on kind of once we get on the backside of proliferation, if an ally has nuclear weapons, what are the risks or what are the consequences? But the process of proliferation, which is not a switch, right—it’s not one decision, it’s a thousand different decisions—that very process could easily implicate US security interests, including our security commitments to allies and partners. You can imagine an ally pursuing nuclear weapons and that causing an adversary to try to take action to stop it, either kinetically or through other coercive measures such as sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

And so I think, you know, there’s a number of concerns that we’ve had historically, and I think if you look at the world today, those concerns still bear out, right? The world is a more complex security environment. We have more nuclear weapon states today than we had in the 1960s. And so I think, if you look at this list of reasons, one could say they were overblown, right? Like, a lot of these things never came to pass, but I think the reason is because the United States spent significant effort and time building the international tools, building our own unilateral toolkit, building sort of the nonproliferation regime and the international system to manage them. And so I think if you look at, again, where we are today, the rationale for pursuing and maintaining that same system stands.

Evan Sankey: Thank you. I think it is fair to say that the perspective laid out in the NTI Carnegie Belfer report is still the consensus, but as our co-panelist Astrid Chevreuil found in a recent study, things are changing. Astrid, I was hoping you could walk us through some of your conclusions. You write, “The taboo surrounding friendly proliferation is eroding, giving way to a more open discourse and even public advocacy in some academic circles.” Please tell us a bit about your findings.

Astrid Chevreuil: Thank you very much, and thank you for having me. I’m very glad to be able to present these findings. So one thing that was really striking, when I interviewed 42 experts on nuclear issues, grand strategy, and regional issues, was that all of them told me that it was overwhelmingly discussed in their circles. Even the term is not something that I heard before, and I was really surprised as a European in a think tank in DC to hear this term in the first place when I started. That’s why I decided to do this study, to objectify also this perception. And so all of them told me that it was a discussed contingency to talk about friendly proliferation.

Nonetheless, the main finding really concurs with what Eric said and the findings also of this other report: the consensus still holds, and it’s a minority who advocates for it. Half of the cohort, so 20 people out of the 40 who I interviewed, remain strictly opposed to friendly proliferation, and even the vast majority, 30 people out of 40, emphasize that they don’t believe in a formal shift in official policy of the US for a ton of reasons that I think Eric explained very well. You know, for military reasons, diplomatic, legal reasons, economic reasons as well, that would be very difficult to really measure.

And I also found that there was a divide inside the US expert community on how they perceived friendly proliferation. Basically, what I found is that the more people know about the political, legal, even technical issues related to nuclear issues, the less likely they are to find that friendly proliferation is appealing, because probably they see a lot of constraints to it. But grand strategists and regionalists sometimes were more open to the idea. For the grand strategists, it’s because they see the world in terms of balance of power, and it can seem appealing. It can be an appealing solution to solve some of the complex balances of power between the US, Russia, and China these days. And for regionalists, it’s more a question of strategic empathy, if I may say. They understand the rationale of the allies who might contemplate having nuclear weapons for regional security reasons or doubts about the strength of the alliances they belong to.

Nonetheless, I think that also one of the findings that was interesting is that these different circles don’t interact a lot between them. They work in silos, so they talk past each other. People who are pro-friendly proliferation talk among themselves, within a minority, and people from the mainstream consensus also don’t interact a lot with people who think that friendly proliferation is a good idea. And it causes some problems, in particular in the perception of allied countries, where the discussion is sometimes not very well framed. And so it gives an idea or a perception of confusion inside the US strategy community, an idea of more permissiveness maybe for some of these countries. And so that’s what’s dangerous at the moment, is that there is not really a consensus or at least an image of consensus in the US strategy community for these allies.

Evan Sankey: Astrid, one of your most interesting findings, I think, had to do with the distinction between active and passive types of friendly proliferation. And I think you found that even among the minority of US scholars who are friendly proliferation curious, the way in which they were curious was in terms of the US perhaps stepping back in some cases, rather than actively assisting a friendly country in getting nuclear weapons. Is that right?

Astrid Chevreuil: Yes, that’s right. And it’s also because most of the people who advocate for friendly proliferation or show more openness are from groups of restrainers or conservatives who call themselves realists, whatever that means exactly. But for the restrainers, they prioritize usually recentering the US interest on core, you know, Western Hemisphere or a few theaters, and usually for them, it means placing that priority at the top of the list, and nonproliferation then becomes a second or a lesser important priority for US security. But the idea was really for these people to reduce, in the first place, US engagement abroad without really taking into account the negative impact of friendly proliferation. They didn’t really want to see it. They preferred to actually have this sort of silent acquiescence of the US if some allies were willing to proliferate because it could lead the US to walk away from these theaters. But that was not an optimum solution.

Evan Sankey: Jennifer, in the past few years, I think starting in 2021 or ‘2, you have argued that the US should accept that some of its allies will go nuclear. Yesterday, in Foreign Affairs, you wrote, “US allies are vulnerable, and they are right to take concrete steps to reduce the real dangers they face, whether that means developing their own nuclear deterrent or making other moves that violate outdated US prohibitions. Washington should support them, along whichever path they choose for protection.” And you go on to argue the US should offer nuclear sharing arrangements or in extremis consent to them developing independent nuclear deterrence. Walk us through your case, because you are, I think, the most articulate analyst making these sorts of arguments.

Jennifer Lind: Well, I think my co-author would dispute that, but I appreciate it. Thank you. First of all, thank you so much for having me. This conference is just terrific and this topic that we’re talking about right now, we’re increasingly seeing in the news, and so it just underscores how important it is. So, yeah, I had a very timely release of our article yesterday. The essential argument that I make with Daryl Press, my colleague at Dartmouth and husband, co-author, is that the US nuclear umbrella that we’re talking about was really created for a very different era, whose conditions have changed significantly. So for example, during the Cold War, when this was created, this promise that the United States would put its cities on the line for its allies’ security was just barely credible. We know there was a lot of controversy about it, but it was just barely credible because of the truly global stakes during the Cold War. So Washington knew that if the Soviets gained control of Germany, of Western Europe and so on, this would mean Soviet control of Eurasia, which was unacceptable in the eyes of US leaders in terms of a core security threat.

So today things are different. Conflicts are much more regional in nature. There’s not this threat of global Soviet domination or global anyone domination. And so, for example, a war in Eastern Europe is essentially about the borders of Russia, borders of Russian influence, not about the global balance of power. So that’s a key thing, which is the change in stakes that we’ve looked at.

And then secondarily, it’s the Trump administration’s national security approach, which is one of course of America First. And America First directly contradicts a pledge to wage nuclear war on behalf of your allies, to put your cities at the risk of the adversary’s missiles. So those are the two key things that have changed and we argue have weakened deterrence toward our adversaries and have led a lot of allies to be very concerned as well.

So, in this situation, we don’t argue that here’s the right path. You know, we’re not advocating that the allies get nuclear weapons and so on, but we’re saying, “We get it.” Things have changed so much, the US has changed so much. Their core security is on the line, and they may indeed make this decision, and so the United States needs to think about how to support them.

Eric Brewer: Can I jump in on that?

Evan Sankey: Absolutely.

Eric Brewer: So just to add to what’s been said already, I think all of us can certainly put ourselves in the shoes of our allies and can imagine why they might be contemplating going down the nuclear weapons pathway. But I think as we talk about these conversations that are happening in allied capitals, oftentimes we refer to allied debates about whether or not to pursue nuclear weapons. At least in my view when I look at this, I think it’s important that we draw some distinctions, right? There’s some places where these debates are genuinely taking place, and they’re very serious—I think South Korea is certainly one of them. But there’s other places where I think it would be kind of a stretch to call them debates, right? I think in some cases, you know, you might have a couple of politicians kind of ruminating publicly about, you know, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to have nuclear weapons?” And so I think it’s important to kind of draw those distinctions because I’m not sure—and look, I’ll be the first to say, I’m worried about ally proliferation. I agree with the last panel that I think this is kind of where the primary proliferation threats are emerging. But I’m not sure we have a ton of allies kind of pounding on our door, demanding to develop nuclear weapons.

And I think related to that, I think we also wanna keep in mind the barriers that exist to nuclear weapons development, right? I think a lot of the allies that we’re talking about, I think all of them are members of the NPT, right? So they would have to withdraw from that treaty or potentially violate it. And there’s, you know, domestic constituencies within a lot of these countries that are anti-nuclear weapons that are gonna bear on these decisions. I think aside from Japan and maybe Germany through its involvement in Euratom, I don’t think any of them have enrichment reprocessing capabilities, which are obviously kind of the two main pathways to producing material for a bomb. And so, even if they were to desire nuclear weapons, we’re looking at, I think, years or decades of a process underway.

Evan Sankey: But nonetheless, there are some allies, like Japan, like Germany, that could probably go pretty fast. And you know, you brought up in your initial remarks, Eric, that there’s a whole set of things—there’s a gray area between not having nuclear weapons and having nuclear weapons. It’s often talked about in the academic community as like a switch being flipped, but there’s like an interregnum period that could be very destabilizing. Given the rising appeal of friendly proliferation to would-be proliferators and shifts in US interests, possible shifts in US grand strategy, should the US start to prepare itself for a decision by one of its friends to develop nuclear weapons? I mean, should we make preparations other than just blanket opposition to it?

Eric Brewer: Well, I would say we should certainly start to think through what the implications of that would be for US interests. But I think related to that, we should also think through how to best prevent it, right? I think it’s a little bit of an oversimplification just to say it’s a blanket no, no, no, right? As the last panel talked about, I think the United States has developed kind of one way of dealing with proliferation over the past several decades because the primary proliferation threat has been rogue states, right? Like, that’s kind of how we all think about proliferation when we think about it. And I think as they kind of argued, and I would agree with it, we’ve kind of approached this, and I would argue somewhat in a bipartisan way, where the basic strategy is to heap on piles of pressure combined with diplomacy until they decide to sort of choose a different pathway, right?

I’m not sure that’s really the solution set that’s gonna work with allies and partners, right? ‘Cause you can’t—I mean, I guess you could maximum pressure an ally, but I don’t think that’s really the pathway that we would wanna go down, nor do I think it’s a particularly credible one. So I think there’s, and maybe we’ll get into this later, a number of different steps the United States can take to dissuade allies from going down that pathway.

Evan Sankey: One of the features of this debate is the distinction between particularism and universalism. It strikes me that Jennifer’s argument here is that there are particular cases, that there’s a particular backdrop to certain regional problems, like in, say, the Baltics or the Korean Peninsula, where the United States might want to make an exception. And you know, given the broader strains on US grand strategy, we have growing resource constraints, we have rising debate in both of our political parties about first-order issues of what our interests are in the first place. It strikes me that there might be certain cases, and that we have had friendly proliferation in the past. We have three close US partners that possess nuclear weapons; this did not lead to a cascade. You might say it didn’t lead to a cascade because of all the other policies we put in place to prevent the cascade. But nonetheless, there’s a certain aspect to the character of the nine nuclear-weapons-possessing countries that kind of favors US interests, I think. Like, it is better for US interests than not that there are independent nuclear deterrents in Europe. And I wonder whether that same kind of logic might apply to other places. Jennifer seems to think it does in the case of the Korean Peninsula.

Jennifer, you and Daryl Press came up with a very interesting formula for the Baltics or Poland, which I hope you’ll talk about a bit later. But just the idea that thinking in terms of this as a case-by-case problem—which if you look at the history is sort of what we’ve done in the past, we’ve made exceptions before—might also make sense in the future. I mean, you write in your article that there were times in the Cold War, in your 2021 Washington Quarterly article, where we put other interests above friendly nonproliferation and even adversary nonproliferation. Might we do that again? This question over here? Yes.

Eric Brewer: Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, again, drawing on that article, like I think it’s certainly true that in some cases in the Cold War we did put other interests ahead of nonproliferation, right? And in this environment, we have a ton of different national security goals, multiple objectives, and nonproliferation is one of those, and we’re gonna have to kind of figure out how all these weave together. But I wouldn’t quite say that the Cold War was broadly characterized by nonproliferation being put on the back burner compared to other interests. Because, again, I think Pakistan is a pretty clear case of where that happened, but if you zoom out, you could argue in many ways the Cold War demonstrated the willingness of the United States and the Soviet Union to actually subjugate competition to cooperation on nonproliferation, right? I think you look at the fact that both were willing to work together to establish the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, work together to form the NPT, basically kind of like collude in the shadows to prevent their own allies from developing nuclear weapons.

So I think there’s a track record of cooperation there. That’s not the world we live in today, right? We’re in a very different place today. I think there’s been some pretty significant backsliding on the part of Russia, and certainly China, when it comes to nonproliferation practices, although we of course all agree in theory that proliferation is bad. I think we really sort of lack an agreement on what that means in practice. But I don’t think that means that we sort of chase them down that pathway of making exceptions to existing rules and policies and standards.

And I think this notion of controlling for proliferation or sort of selective proliferation, I fear, is flawed, right? Because I think we can certainly all understand why if South Korea develops nuclear weapons why it would be hard for us to tell Japan no in that case, but I think really the bigger issue is that if the United States makes the decision to selectively allow proliferation, even in one case, I think that fundamentally undercuts our role as the kind of the architect and the guarantor of the nonproliferation system that we’ve developed over time. I think it’s gonna make it much, much harder to rally the international community to cooperate on preventing any cases of proliferation, even adversary proliferation. I think you’ve basically in that case given Russia and China a green light to do the same with their friends and allies. And I worry, quite honestly, that could be the unraveling of the NPT, given the role that the United States has played in creating a lot of the norms and standards and institutions that I think have worked quite well to our advantage.

Evan Sankey: Jennifer, in your early career, your work focused on Japanese security policy. You wrote an excellent paper on buck-passing in Japanese security policy. And as I understand it, you have argued that the common argument you hear that Japan would immediately follow a South Korean nuclear breakout isn’t—that basically we shouldn’t take that at face value. Could you talk us through your thoughts about how Japan would react to South Korea getting nuclear weapons?

Jennifer Lind: Yeah. I think it’s far from an automatic reaction. You’ve brought up the idea of nuclear cascades, and that is, of course, something that we should be worried about and thinking about, and if there are potential proliferators, we should be thinking about what would be the possible cascades that could follow. In Asia, if we are talking about South Korea perhaps moving to acquire nuclear weapons, then many people do talk about Japan as the domino to fall. I think that there’s some reasons for thinking that. Partly that Japan is, of course, observing the same changes in U.S. policy and in the geopolitical environment that South Korea is, and so perhaps it’s feeling some of those same pressures. Although I would argue Japan is, because of the kind of counter-China orientation of the United States these days, I think Japan is actually in very close stead with the United States, probably more so than any country. So I think actually the alliance relations between the U.S. and Tokyo are quite good.

Japan, of course, has the legacy of absorbing two nuclear attacks by the United States, which created a very strong anti-nuclear movement within the country. There were also subsequent events such as the Lucky Dragon incident when U.S. nuclear testing in the South Pacific irradiated Japanese fishermen. There’s of course the 311 disaster in Fukushima. So there’s a very strong anti-nuclear sentiment there. On the other end of the spectrum, Japan does have basically many tons of plutonium. It has the engineering capability, the scientific capability, and can be seen in many ways as pretty far down the continuum, at least technically.

But again, the Japanese public are so very not interested in this at this moment, which is a very, very striking contrast with South Korea. And also, I think that the nuclear threat that they face is quite different. North Korea is fundamentally targeting South Korea, and the Japanese do feel a North Korean threat, but definitely not as intently. And so, I really do think that this would be a momentous decision for Tokyo. It’s not an automatic one, and I think Eric’s laid out lots of the reasons why. This is not just like, “We’ll flip a switch and go nuclear.” This involves international treaties, domestic politics, complicated industrial and, you know, fissile material kit, right? I mean, there’s so many considerations here. It’s expensive at a time where Japan is already kind of straining to meet the burdens of conventional rearmament. So I think, again, for all of the talk of cascades, we really need to not just identify where the potential cascades might be, but to think through, is it really— do we think that would be in that country’s interest? Do we really think that that’s a route they would go?

Evan Sankey: One of the most interesting developments in US foreign policy in the past few years has been our willingness to relax restrictions on transferring nuclear-powered technology to some of our allies. So for example, the AUKUS pillar one program to transfer nuclear-powered submarines to Australia in the future. And just this past year, the decision by the White House to—unclear exactly what we’re gonna transfer to South Korea, but give them the technology or the permission for them to build nuclear-powered submarines of their own. This has been noticed in Japan. You know, the Japanese defense minister has said that they’re also interested in nuclear-powered submarines. Astrid, this was a section of your recent paper asking about what the US policy community thinks are the motivations for these kind of changes. What have you heard? Do—does the US policy community think that this is a step back from US nonproliferation commitments, or that there might be some sort of slippery slope? Tell us about your conclusions regarding that.

Astrid Chevreuil: Thank you. Well, one of the questions I asked during the study to understand the perceptions of US experts was, how did they interpret the US-ROK submarine deal? And I found that there were very different interpretations ranging from people who believed it was a very high risk of proliferation because they believed that the deal had a very important nuclear component, to people who believed that it was completely impossible because it was actually a deal that would be very hard to put into practice and that they didn’t believe it was a threat to the nuclear norm. And my goal was not to find a decisive answer to this question, but more to understand the perceptions. And so the perception was that the US stance on civil transfer was shallower for these experts, and so it was for allies.

But I think it also relates to this grand bargain that we’re talking about from the start, this idea that US extended deterrence and in particular just security guarantees from nuclear weapon states—and that goes also for the US but also the UK and France in Europe, for instance—the security guarantees that they provide to their allies and partners are one commitment that is supposed to have a mirroring commitment from the non-nuclear weapon states, which is, “I will not proliferate, and I will also have access, in restrictive ways, but access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” And I think we see the pieces of the puzzle moving.

But maybe one thing I wanted to mention following what has been said, especially regarding the acuteness and the fact that discussions in allied countries are dynamic on these issues but are not revealing an actual intent to go for an indigenous nuclear program in most cases. In Europe, for instance, the threat of going nuclear is used mostly by Poland and Germany, also in Nordic countries sometimes you have some experts, also a minority, advocating for it. But usually they use it as a bargaining chip to gain more security guarantees from the US, and not actually show that they’re willing to go down that perilous route of proliferation, which would be very costly for them. And we’ve mentioned the cost for the US, but also for allies it would be very costly to proliferate and to become a friendly proliferator.

At the military level, for the US we see this risk of control of escalation in a lot of contingencies, but for allies who don’t really have the nuclear literacy, if I may call it like this, it’s very dangerous to imagine that they would have to choose how to do, what to do in case of, for instance, a hybrid scenario or how they would just frame their doctrine. So there’s this military unknown that is very dangerous. It would also likely cause entanglement for the US, or deterrence failure in worst-case scenarios. In terms of diplomatic and legal issues, it has been mentioned by Eric that it would probably be the end of the NPT if you have this sort of double standard between selective allies and another stance towards adversaries. But also, for allies who would be willing to go nuclear, that would probably mean, at least at the beginning, being banned from the international community, and so the reputational costs would be huge.

And eventually in economic terms—you’ve mentioned it as well before, Jennifer—a lot of allied countries struggle to invest in conventional capabilities that are the ones that they need the most at the moment, in particular, I think in Europe. And so extended deterrence provides known gains for them in terms of stability, while friendly proliferation would likely have very negative impacts, especially in the window of vulnerability of building up even this movement of hedging that you talked about too, when they would try to get to this capability. Even those who are advanced, you don’t do this overnight. We sometimes hear, “Oh, now with ChatGPT you can build a nuclear bomb,” but it’s not true. Like, getting to an act—and that’s one of the reasons why Iran didn’t get one overnight too. So I think that’s also something to put back in the debate because the questions that it raises for the US are also questions that it raises for allies alike.

Eric Brewer: Can I jump in?

Evan Sankey: Go ahead.

Eric Brewer: So I just wanted to—I think, Astrid, you made some really good points there on sort of the conventional forces piece of this, and Jennifer, you as well. And I just think, personally, I am all for enabling allied conventional capabilities, right? I think if we’re gonna say no to nuclear weapons, we have to say yes to conventional capabilities. And so I think I just wanna sort of put a marker there.

But I think on this notion of civil nuclear energy, I wanted to come back to that for a second, right? I think this is one of those issues where I think there is a significant risk that if we open the door to enrichment and reprocessing in some of these countries who are considering this capability—Saudi Arabia being one of them, South Korea being another—I worry that that’s gonna be a very difficult door to close. And again, the concern is that those are kind of the key capabilities that countries can use to develop nuclear weapons. And so I think, you know, I do worry about some of the directions that US policy is trending in this moment. And I also fear, sort of getting back to this, how do we look at the debate taking place within the United States on these issues? I’m not sure everybody quite recognizes the connection of those capabilities to nuclear weapons. I think for some they sort of say, “Well, they’re our allies. Like, why can’t they have them?” Right? Like, or, “Why can’t we give them all the civil nuclear energy technology?” And so I worry about the details of what makes nonproliferation work getting lost in some of these broader debates about our relationship with allies.

Evan Sankey: Are—are you also worried, in addition to civil nuclear, are you also worried about the military applications of nuclear reactors to nuclear-powered submarines, for example, the AUKUS or the South Korea deal? Are you worried?

Eric Brewer: So, I mean, my concern about the submarine deal in the case of South Korea is that, again, based on, I think, some of the reports we’ve seen, it’s an open question whether or not the fuel for that submarine is gonna be produced and enriched in South Korea. I think that is the concern there. I’m a little less concerned about AUKUS because it doesn’t deal with it in that same way.

I will say, on the positive side of civil nuclear energy, I actually do see a significant opportunity for the United States in civil nuclear energy because I think we’re seeing a pretty significant increase in that technology across the world. And I think historically, looking back, the United States used its position in the civil nuclear energy market as a leader in that space to be able to insist on pretty strong nonproliferation conditions in the transfer of those technologies to its partners. And I think there’s a strong case to be made that it would be wise to invest in trying to recoup some of that leadership capability in this new interest in nuclear energy, and be able to sort of write the new rules of the road, so to speak, when it comes to the nonproliferation and security conditions around the export of these technologies.

And I would add, doing that has benefits not just for nonproliferation, right? That cuts across a variety of different interests. We’re talking about how these interests intersect when it comes to ally proliferation. That has benefits for strategic competition; that has benefits for energy security. And so I think there’s a lot of value to be had in pursuing that type of an approach.

Evan Sankey: Jennifer, one of the strengths of your Foreign Affairs piece yesterday is that you drew out the extent to which at least some of our current extended deterrence commitments are very dangerous bluffs, and that at the end of the day, these are promises to put American cities at risk on behalf of a country which is not the United States. For any of you—this is to the whole panel, I guess whoever wants to jump in first—how do you assess the risks of extended deterrence going forward? Like, are they—you know, obviously we have not had a nuclear war so far, but is Jennifer right that the risks are rising in such a way that not just our allies, but also us should think more urgently about whether an alternative policy framework is needed in order to secure the United States itself? Does anybody wanna jump in?

Jennifer Lind: Can I jump in? Yeah, sure.

Evan Sankey: Go ahead.

Jennifer Lind: Yeah, I just wanna clarify, building on what you said, that that is really the core assumption here, which is that the nuclear umbrella, as the title says, is broken, is really strained. So it brings us back to why are we having this conversation today, a conversation that none of us wanna have. We don’t want our allies to get nuclear weapons. We don’t want nuclear weapons to spread. But why is this conversation being kind of put before us? And it’s because of the conditions that I mentioned and how they’ve changed over time. This has led to deterrence being weaker, and so our allies are feeling it and our adversaries are watching these same trends, too. And so if extended deterrence is weakening, deterrence is weakening in these key places at a time when the North Korean threat to South Korea is growing because of strides that they’re making in North Korea and their nuclear program, and at a time in Europe when the Russians have grown more aggressive.

And so our allies are feeling that they have an increased security threat, a core security threat that is not being met. And so I just wanted to remind us that that’s what’s in their minds. And so while we’d prefer that they just said everything’s fine, ultimately it’s not gonna be up to us. We can influence things; we have influenced things. But if a country, a sovereign country, decides its core existential security interests are at risk, it’s its own decision whether or not it’s going to acquire nuclear weapons. So this whole conversation and US foreign policy conversations about this in general tend to say, “What do we think about this? Oh, I don’t like this. We shouldn’t encourage this.” But remember, it might not be up to us.

Eric Brewer: Happy to jump in. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Jennifer said, right? I mean, I think fundamentally, of course, the decision is gonna rest in the hands of our allies. I mean, I don’t think that means we don’t have an interest in trying to shape those decisions and to shape their calculation. And I would completely agree, right? I mean, I share the concerns that allies have about US extended deterrence and about US reliability broadly; I think is where a lot of that concern lies. But I’m not sure ending extended deterrence is the solution to that problem, right?

I think, looking back at some recent examples, the Washington Declaration that the United States did—I think it was in 2023, somebody correct me if that’s wrong, under the Biden administration with South Korea, right? I think that potentially shows an example of a useful approach of how to handle these allied concerns which again, I think are very real, right? In that it set up specific types of mechanisms, specific consultative bodies where the United States and South Korea could come together, share information, do more joint planning, continue to revisit how all of this is working and how all of this is functioning, and to do that in a way that was very strongly rooted in South Korea’s commitment to not pursuing nuclear weapons. Is that gonna solve South Korea’s concerns? Well, has it solved South Korea’s concerns totally? Probably not. Is it gonna solve them forever and ever and ever? Of course not. But I’m not sure we can sort of put the task on ourselves to solve those problems forever and ever and ever. They are recurring to various degrees, and so I do think that that’s one example of a type of approach that could potentially help down the road. Of course, those have to be tailored for various situations for various reasons.

I also would say that I don’t think we should assume that if allies get nuclear weapons, our extended deterrence mission would end, right? I don’t think that’s an assumption we should make. It certainly could—there could be an administration that says, “Fine, you’re on your own.” I’m not sure that’s gonna be the case. And so I’d say, if you don’t like the cost of extended deterrence or if you’re skeptical of those costs, I’m not sure allied proliferation is a good solution for those. Yeah.

Evan Sankey: Go ahead, Astrid.

Astrid Chevreuil: If I may add—just two sentences because I agree with what has been said before. But I think also if you take the perspective of allies, it would mean that you trade a proven collective security guarantee for, you know, an isolated, contested nuclear capacity that you don’t really know how to use. And so that’s something also to take into account for allies; I think that’s something they have on their mind.

But in the recommendation section of my report, one of the things I really tried to do is actually to propose recommendations that are both for the US and the allies to think about this bargain together, this bargain of extended deterrence and nonproliferation. And in my view, in a lot of capitals, allied capitals, this idea of an indigenous program is entertained because they have lost sight of the fact that there is a link between the two still. Even though I agree with what you say, Eric, that that could exist maybe in practice, but I think in theory and to prevent friendly proliferation from happening, I think we should actually have a more formalized linkage between extended deterrence and nonproliferation, and being very clear about the fact that the operational viability of extended deterrence—it’s like the political commitment, all the technicality also that’s around extended deterrence—would probably dissolve for the ally who decides to choose the nuclear path. Which is I think something that is missing in the conversation now because we took it for granted for a long time, because we didn’t need to discuss that. But now that there is a heightened tension on this trade-off—and I think Jennifer’s article shows that—I think now we should make it clearer and maybe have an explicit declaratory policy against friendly proliferation that would show the link between the two actually.

Evan Sankey: All right. Thank you. We’re gonna use our last almost 10 minutes for Q&A. We will be taking questions both from online and in person. The online audience may join the conversation and submit questions directly on the event page, Facebook, YouTube, and on X. We have microphones in the room. Please speak clearly and directly into the microphone, announce your name and affiliation, and please phrase your question in the form of a concise question. Yes, ma’am. Right there. Yep.

Maria Razborova: Thank you for the panel. My name is Maria Razborova. I am a junior at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and my question is about the role of Russian nuclear threat credibility. And so given that Putin has been repeatedly using nuclear rhetoric, which has mostly seemed to fail in achieving political objectives of deterrence, how does this impact the credibility of Russian nuclear threatening, and how does this in turn impact whether the European allies are seeing this credibility as a reason to proliferate?

Evan Sankey: All right. Effect of Russian nuclear threats on friendly proliferation. Astrid wants to go. Astrid.

Astrid Chevreuil: Oh, yeah. Thank you. I wasn’t sure if we were taking several questions, that’s why I didn’t say anything.

Evan Sankey: Go ahead.

Astrid Chevreuil: Well, it’s definitely a part of the conversation in Europe, trying to figure out what were the effects of the Russian rhetoric. But I think one main concern for Europeans is actually that this use of the coercive nuclear rhetoric is what has helped Russia also try to dissuade the support of Ukraine during the conflict. It has failed in a lot of instances, but it’s still a very effective mean, in particular for public opinions in Europe. And it has actually put the nuclear topic back on the table for a lot of Europeans, and all the debates that we were mentioning previously about indigenous nuclear programs often stem from this fear of Russian nuclear rhetoric and even sometimes the idea that Russia is acting as an axis with other adversarial powers. It doesn’t mean though that it’s encouraging Europeans to go down that path because they see the Russian arsenal, they see the balance with the US, and they frame their thinking in terms of “we should keep extended deterrence because so far this is what has worked to repel Russian coercive actions and use on the ground.” So I think it actually goes in the direction of supporting extended deterrence instead of friendly proliferation.

Evan Sankey: Yes, sir.

Steven Snyder: Steven Snyder. Assuming for the sake of argument that Israel has a nuclear deterrent, how likely is the US to be able to control their use of it? And if the US cannot, what would be the implications of that?

Evan Sankey: Israeli nuclear deterrent and US foreign policy.

Eric Brewer: I’ll take a stab. Sure. So assuming Israel has a nuclear arsenal, I mean, I think the United States has very low likelihood of influencing their decision to use that on any given incident. Although I would say, I think one thing that the most recent conflict in the Middle East shows is that when the United States government—when the US president and others—weighs in with Israeli leaders, that matters. That does have an influence on their calculation, right? And I would go back to under the Biden administration, I think the US government’s attempts to dissuade Israel from responding more strongly to some of Iran’s attacks on Israel, I think that had a role in influencing Israel’s calculation. Fast-forward to the Trump administration, I also think the perception and ultimately the willingness of Trump to give a green light to Israel to strike Iran also influenced their calculation. So I think there’s obviously some opportunity for that influence to happen.

Evan Sankey: Yes, ma’am.

Sarah Khan: Hi. Thank you. This is a great panel. My question is more about the debate surrounding friendly proliferation.

Evan Sankey: Your name and affiliation.

Sarah Khan: Oh, sorry. I’m Sarah Khan, and I’m with the Institute of Global Affairs. My question has more to do with if friendly proliferation happens, what exactly, what kind of procedures would have to take place? All three of you have mentioned treaties and arrangements, et cetera. Are we talking about control over the nuclear fuel cycle or fissile material? And say we’re in a world where there’s an ally that would like to proliferate, how could the US—

Evan Sankey: Have control over that proliferation.

Sarah Khan: —and I mean sort of taking a step beyond the “please don’t proliferate.” Say that, Jennifer, to your point, a sovereign country, if they wanna do it, they’ll do it. So what kind of actions can the US take over the nuclear fuel cycle to maintain control over that proliferation? Thank you.

Evan Sankey: Sounds like a question for you.

Eric Brewer: Happy to take on that one. Just to clarify, you were saying, like, what steps can the United States take to prevent ally proliferation, or if it happens?

Sarah Khan: Well, so I guess sort of both. My question is more about fissile material production, ’cause that seems to be the key element, right, in becoming a nuclear weapon state, or at least the first step of it. So I guess my question is what kind of steps is the US thinking in terms of its allies in these debates that we’re having about weakened extended deterrence? And to Astrid’s point of perhaps we need more institutionalization of what is extended deterrence and how does it interact with nonproliferation, what kind of—you know, I guess I’m asking you to look into the crystal ball of fissile material production and control.

Eric Brewer: Yeah. Thanks for the question. I’ll tackle the nuclear material production and maybe perhaps expand it a little bit, right? I mean, I think, again, the United States has a set of conditions by law that govern the transfer of civil nuclear technology, right? And those oftentimes contain restrictions on what that country can do with that material, with or without US permission. And so that’s something that’s baked into a lot of agreements, and there’s oftentimes where those agreements go further, and countries accept additional restrictions on what they can do with that material, and that’s obviously been the goal in a lot of cases, right? But we haven’t always reached that goal in all of our civil nuclear cooperation agreements.

I think, looking a little further down the road, sanctions is obviously a tool that the United States could potentially use to either dissuade an ally or punish after the fact that it happens. I think when we think about sanctions, a lot of us think about, like going back to the last panel, Iran sanctions, right? And we see these sort of executive orders coming out of the White House. But there’s also sanctions that are on the books by law when it comes to nuclear proliferation. And some of those—I think it’s the Glenn Amendment and it’s the Arms Export Control Act—that would impose some pretty severe consequences on any country, including allies, if they were, for example, to test a nuclear device. Those consequences, they have no waivers, right? There’s no waivers to those provisions. So, you know, if you didn’t want to enforce those, a new law would presumably have to be passed. So that’s, I think, something that would come into play in the future if an ally were to proliferate.

And I think, you know, when it comes to ally proliferation risks, there’s a tendency, when it’s if it’s not a severe case—right, if the ally isn’t bolting for the bomb—to try to handle this behind the scenes and to try to work things out as best as possible, diplomatically, sort of out of the spotlight. And I think if you look back, that was the approach the United States took to South Korea and Taiwan, at least initially, in the 1970s and the 1980s. So I think there’s a case to be made that that’s sort of a preferable pathway, and you only need to go get sort of some of the more public steps or some of the more severe kind of pressure mechanisms if things go in a direction that we don’t want.

And I would finally add on the civil nuclear energy front, one of the tools that the United States has in the toolkit is that if an ally were to break its commitments to the United States using US nuclear technology, the United States can request the return of that technology, right? And that would really endanger that country’s civil nuclear energy goals.

Evan Sankey: We are at time, so I’d like to thank Astrid, Jennifer, and Eric for joining us today to talk about this challenging topic. We will now take a 45-minute break for lunch. Please join us back here at 1:05 PM for our final panel on US nuclear forces, moderated by Ben Giltner, our policy analyst in our Defense and Foreign Policy Studies program. For those of you in the room, lunch will be served up the spiral staircase, in the second floor George Yeager Conference Center. And again, we look forward to seeing you all back here at 1:05. Thank you.

This transcript was generated using AI automation and may contain minor formatting or transcription errors. Please refer to the original audio to verify specific quotes or context.

Benjamin Giltner: In this panel, I wanna discuss with all three panelists, things like the type of nuclear weapons, the number of nuclear weapons the US should possess, the cost of nuclear weapons, mainly through modernization, how much should the US be willing to pay for these weapons. And then finally, the tension between crisis stability and/​or reassurance to allies because as, Evan and the other panelists brought up at panel two, a– the US has this nuclear umbrella to prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons, to preventing our allies from getting, these nuclear weapons. So without further ado, I’d like to go ahead and introduce all our panelists here. We’ll start off with Dr. Austin Long.

Austin is a senior nuclear fellow at MIT’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy and a leading scholar of nuclear strategy and deterrence. He previously served in senior positions on the joint staff, was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an associate professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Austin’s work has appeared in well-renowned spaces like International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Texas National Security Review, and many others. He’s also the author of the book The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the United States and the United Kingdom. He’s also co-edited the book Managing US Nuclear Op-Operations in the Twenty-First Century.

Austin received his BS from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech, and a PhD in political science from MIT. We then have John Wolfsthal, who is a fellow for US nuclear policy at Pax Sapiens, and serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. And up until May twenty twenty-five, he was the member of the US Department of State’s International Security Advisory Board. Prior to Pax Sapiens, he was a director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists. He previously served as special assistant to President Obama for national security affairs, and as senior director for arms control and non-proliferation at the National Security Council.

John is the co-author of the book Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction, and he has authored numerous op-eds and articles on nuclear weapons policy. John received his BA in political science from Emory University. And then we have Valerie Stewart, who is the chief executive officer of the Council on Strategic Risks, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Affairs. From twenty twenty-two to twenty twenty-five, Valerie served as assistant secretary of state for arms control, deterrence, and stability at the US Department of State, where she oversaw US policy on nuclear arms control, risk, and reduction.

Valerie served as a special assistant to President Biden and a senior director for arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation at the National Security Council. She holds a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School. And with that, thank you all for being here. It’s greatly appreciated. So I’d like to kind of go in the order that introduced you all, so I’ll address the first question to Austin.

And this one kind of just gets to the, you know, heart, I guess, of this panel. But what would you say is the relationship between US non-proliferation goals and its force posture? And if you could, I know at some point in this panel it’s probably gonna be br-brought up, but just for our, our audience, could you briefly define, like, what damage limitation is? Because that more or less is what our nuclear strategy is as of now.

Austin Long: That’s certainly a piece of it. So the– and the last panel, I think, was very good on this. Yeah. The relationship between US nuclear force posture and non-proliferation objectives is really this question of extending deterrence to allies, right? It’s part of the set of agreements, t- both tacit and formal, that underpin all of the non-proliferation objectives that I think the last panel talked to, quite well.

And so you heard, I think from Jenny Lind, this point about how credible is it that the United States will put its own cities, its own homeland at risk, for allies. And part of how we’ve designed our force structure over the decades is to make that, that promise, to an extent, it’s not really a promise in the sense of a guarantee, but it’s a commitment, commitment to allies credible. And so that involves not just the ability to use nuclear weapons in a limited fashion, which we developed in the ’60s, ’70s, and beyond, but also the ability to hold adversary nuclear arsenals at risk to be able to limit the damage that adversaries can inflict to the United States. And that’s been a variable over time. Early in the Cold War, it was pretty clear we had a, a huge advantage in the ability to limit damage to the United States.

Certainly that was the view of a lot of the decision makers during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That changed over time. But that objective of being able to, to limit damage to the United States and its allies, it’s not just, you know, our own, our own cities we’re trying to limit damage to, has been a major component of US nuclear strategy. But again, not the only element.

Benjamin Giltner: John or Mallory, would you like to, share your input or thoughts on this?

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah. Maybe just to broaden the frame a little bit, there’s been a lot of consistency in the formal US nuclear strategy dating back– multiple presidents, dating back, uh- easily through, I would say, Johnson, probably even before that, that the United States has nuclear weapons for three reasons. To deter, enemy attack against us or our allies or our strategic interests, to reassure our allies, and if deterrence were to fail, to limit the damage that could be done to the United States and its allies and interests. And the question then becomes one of, are these goals all, possible in parallel, or are there tension between them? And I think what you’re seeing, and, I’ll suggest, here, we’re here, I should say thank you for having us here, but we’re here in part because there is a new debate that has engaged about the extent to which the United States needs to add nuclear weapons to its arsenal in order to be able to improve its ability to limit damage to the United States and our allies as a goal in and of itself.

That that is important to deter, that that is important to reassure. And there are debates about that, and there are trade-offs between the ability to do that and whether or not you are participating in fueling or responding appropriately or inappropriately to the risk of arms racing, of arms race instability, of crisis management. Those are all, I think, very reasonable debates and discussions to be having, but one that, quite frankly, the United States hasn’t had for 30-plus years. Most of the people that are engaged in them read about them in the history books. And we probably need to brush off our understanding and, and, appreciation for how we managed these things in the past.

Mallory Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I think, everything that, the panelist has said is completely correct. The question really is how we go forward in an arena in which some of the fundamental assumptions that we’ve had for decades are shifting, right? There’s some changes in our, closest alliances. There’s some changes in the reliance on international law in so many of our global and, you know, diplomatic settings. And so, you know, definitely agreeing with John that, the, there’s been more commonality than difference in our nuclear policy over the past several decades.

Is there a reason to change now? Is there a motivation to change now? Is it credible to take a different approach, given the changing that we see in the international order? Or do we stay the course and try to minimize some of the drivers of instability, such as arms racing and other, necessary results from a certain nuclear policies? And I think that’s a- an open question that we should be talking about.

I’m glad we are on this panel.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, absolutely. Before, because I definitely wanna get into, arms control and arms racing, ’cause that, you know, is very much connected to our panel today. But, first, John, you brought up numbers. I’d like to get your thoughts, and also Austin and Mallory’s thoughts on this. But, currently the US has about 3,700 nuclear warheads in total, about 1,770 of those are deployed.

I guess a question that, you know, everyone wants to know is how much is enough? It’s the classic question from the Cold War and up till now. So, how much do you say is enough? Like, obviously, can’t give an exact number on this, but, you know, there’s debates generally if the US needs more, less, keep about the same. J- what are your thoughts?

Jon Wolfsthal: Sure. It, it, again, it depends on what it is you’re trying to achieve. And so, the, there’s nothing magical about the number or a particular number, unless you’re McNamara, in which case you like nice, round numbers. It’s an old nuclear joke, sorry. So we have roughly 1,700 nuclear weapons, and I don’t think there’s anybody who doubts, or let me put it positively, no one believes that Russia or China is about to embark on a major military attack on the United States or its allies because they doubt our physical capability to respond and to destroy them with nuclear weapons.

So in that sense, we have plenty of nuclear weapons to deter. Now, the question is, do you have enough nuclear weapons to reassure our allies? I would argue, not being a big fan of the current administration’s approach, that, in my mathematical expertise, I’ve put forward the, the calculation that deterrence equals capability times credibility. And if either capability or credibility is zero, deterrence is zero. Right now, our credibility for our allies and deterring our adversaries is as close to zero as you can get until you know it’s zero.

So it wouldn’t matter to me if we doubled our nuclear weapons. We’re not going to increase our credibility to our allies or our adversaries based on numbers. I think you can do things with conventional weapons. I think you can do things with alliance management. But I don’t think there’s anything numerically you can or need to be doing right now to reassure.

The question, then, I think, gets to this issue of is damage limitation a necessity for reassuring or for deterring? I think there’s some evidence that our ally– our adversaries do really care about those calculations. I think there’s also a lot of evidence that says right now we’re fully capable of handling the entirety of the Russian nuclear and strategic complex with the arsenal we have. There’s more than enough to handle the Chinese nuclear s- complex and strategic complex. The question is, do we need to cover both Russia and China simultaneously?

There’s a lot of debate about that. I don’t see anything in the nature of the Chinese and Russian relationship that amounts to a joint suicide pact. But planners are– It is their job to think if we have a war with both, do we have enough nuclear weapons to cover both? And then the question becomes, if the answer’s no, what is the consequence of building more? In terms of the amount of money, in terms of slowing down the already existing modernization programs that we’ve decided are in our interest, like the submarine program, like the bomber program, and what does it mean in terms of our ability to provide the other forms of reassurance, economic?

Our economic power and vitality is a big part of our, alliance management and reassurance policy. So I, I ca- that’s a cop-out to say I can’t give you an answer. I currently don’t support adding more nuclear weapons to the US arsenal. I don’t think that would be where my priority is. My priority is let’s do the things we’ve committed to, that we say are important, on submarines, on bombers.

The ICBM, I think, you know, we’ve obviously found wiggle room, because the modernization program’s taking a lot longer. We can maintain our ICBMs in current force longer than we previously thought. I’d rather do those things well and modernize our conventional capability before I would prioritize more nuclear weapons. And I’m going on too long, but I’ll just say a point about that. The previous panel talked about the consequence of the Iran war.

One of the things we’ve realized is that we don’t have the conventional munitions, either offensively or defensively, to fight a small war in Iran and be able to handle our defense commitments in Europe or in Asia Pacific. If we can’t do that, then no amount of nuclear modernization’s gonna matter because we’ve gotta be able to conventionally reassure and conventionally deter before we get into the nuclear calculation. And so if we’ve got extra dollars to spend, let’s increase our defense production on interceptors. Let’s increase our defense production on munitions that are most likely going to be the capabilities that reassure our allies and deter our adversaries.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, you bring up, a good point, which is that, you know, the US has this damage limitation strategy to reassure its allies, and it seems like you’re questioning that to some degree. I, I- correct me-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah, no, I, I- if I’m wrong there I don’t question We clearly go to our allies and have these conversations and say, “Don’t worry. If things go horribly wrong, we will blow the, that country off the face of the map- Yeah and you don’t have to worry about it.” And they say, “Well, will a couple get through?” And we have to say, “Well, okay, a couple might get through, but we’re building missile defense. You know, we’re gonna do everything we can.” There is no absolute state of reassurance. One of the areas where people think we disagree, and I actually think most people, reasonable people, do agree, is we want to reassure our allies so they don’t need to build nuclear weapons, and so they s- remain closely aligned with the United States. We’re looking for ways to do that.

Sometimes we do that with the defense community and say, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna have these defense capabilities for you.” Sometimes we talk to the nuclear community and say, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna have these nuclear capabilities.” Most of the time we’re talking to the politicians and the alliance managers and say, “Don’t worry, we’re with you no matter what.” And then, of course, all of our businesses are saying, “Well, we couldn’t live without you if we tried,” right? You know, “We’re, we’re all in on South Korea because you make most of our chips. You know, we’re all in on you, Saudi Arabia, because, you know, Europe needs your oil.” Like, we, we demonstrate that. So I, I don’t think it’s a question of whether I support it or don’t. It is a factor, but there are lots of factors, and how they all balance each other is, is how policy gets made.

Benjamin Giltner: To that point, Austin, I’d like to pose this question to you, but John kind of brought this up in that, you know, w- with, our reassurance to allies, this can, to some degree, create, instability, with, our adversaries, where, you know, with, things like a damage limitation strategy, they might be, you know, more willing to, launch on warning during a crisis, or at, at the very least be more on edge. So my question to you is that, is, is there a way that the United States can reassure its allies and s- attempt to the best of its ability maintain this crisis stability? Is there a, a way to balance both of them?

Austin Long: I think there is conceptually. It’s really hard in practice. So if you look at some of the work in the late Cold War, some of which was actually done by scholars affiliated with Cato, but also with the RAND Corporation, there is a trade-off between instability, adversaries believe you might use nuclear weapons first and perhaps even on a large scale, and their, their fear to attack in this sort of strange Levian sense, right? You want them to have some discomfort. You don’t want perfect stability where they think there’s no chance the United States will ever use nuclear weapons first, because then that creates the sort of world in which they feel like they can create all sorts of mischief, this sort of stability-instability paradox, and mischief in this case, we were worried in the Cold War, could include a conventional invasion of Western Europe.

So this is perfect stability, probably not good for extended deterrence. Perfect instability, for reasons you’ve articulated, that an adversary feels like for whatever reason they have to use nuclear weapons first and probably on a large scale very early in a crisis, that’s probably not good either. There’s probably a sweet spot. Conceptually, there clearly is a sweet spot, this idea of optimum instability, enough that an adversary doesn’t feel pressure to use early and, and large in a crisis, but at the same time discomforting enough to them that they actually will not even initiate a crisis. So this isn’t even about shaping crisis alone.

It’s about keeping adversaries from even doing anything to enter into a crisis. So conceptually, that’s the sort of point you wanna reach, and the US has done a lot to shape its force structure in ways to, to sort of create this optimum instability. Most of our nuclear forces, certainly day to day, you know, are in a survivable mode, right? We have ICBMs that potentially are not survivable in a large scale attack, but we keep lots of boats at sea. If we generate in a crisis, we have more boats at sea.

Most of our capability, certainly in the current configuration, lives in a b- a mode that doesn’t invite adversary attack. So we’ve done a lot in terms of our force structure to try and get to that point. Whether we’ve succeeded or not is maybe a different question.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, to, so to loop back, to, i‑in keeping in line with kind of this crisis a‑instability, we also get the question of arms control, which I’d like to pose to Valerie, because, one thing that gets overlooked in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which again, this is, all tied in with this conference, is that, Article 6 aims to have nuclear arm countries at the very least pursue arms control, preferably disarm. Valerie, obviously that’s not, happening, at least as of late. You know, we have new start that expired, as well as the, INF treaty. So my question to you is, to what degree or would you say that US nuclear strategy and doctrine is an obstacle to, achieving arms control and achieving, you know, this Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? ‘Cause this is a point that countries like Iran and others are, you know, continue to bring up, “Well, why should we, you know, not pursue the bomb when the US, you know, continues to build up and maintain its arsenal?”

Mallory Stewart: Yeah. It’s an interesting question, going back to the earlier conversation, since we have so much consistency in our nuclear policy, and yet with that consistency, we’ve been able to engage in arms control discussions. I don’t think n‑the nuclear policy alone is either limiting, those arms control discussions or promoting those arms control discussions necessarily. It often comes down to, you know, the politics, the diplomacy efforts, the, you know, the policies of the particular administrations, what the perception of risk and threat is, between the countries. Certainly having, you know, the Schelling balance between, adequate deterrence and defense capacities to drive, potential adversaries to the negotiating table is a necessary aspect, and that’s why I think even in this morning’s conversation, you have that Schelling balance of arms control and defense and deterrence to be able to, go forward with these principles.

But given, again, the, the stated nuclear policy, and I will say there hasn’t been a new NPR, but, nuclear posture review, but the NPRs through the, previous several administrations have been fairly consistent. I don’t think the nuclear policy itself limits arms control. I just think there has to be an engagement in the obligations, that, that we all committed to under the, you know, under, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and there has to be a commit-commitment to understanding why, risk reduction, arms control, and non-proliferation are in our own national security interest. And I think that’s where you see the up and down. You see the up and down in the engagement in an arms control discussion, or maybe just a risk reduction discussion in general.

Can we reduce the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation before we even get to an arms control point? Can we at least try to stabilize some of the miscalculation potential between ourselves and our, and our, greatest adversaries? And, and that’s where you see the up and down motivation for arms control. You know, certain administrations appreciating the value of that risk reduction and other administrations thinking that the, the benefit of a deterrence, a model that doesn’t include risk reduction as some of its, strength, as, as a benefit, versus pursuing some risk reduction in, in that deterrence context. And I, I think that’s, that’s the up and down we’ve seen.

I think that’s the up and down we’ll continue to see, and I think a large part of this does rely on, where our allies are, where they feel comfortable, and where our adversaries are rattling chains, and where we ourselves potentially are going forward with chain rattling in, in some of the deterrence posturing.

Jon Wolfsthal: If, if I can just add on here-

Benjamin Giltner: Of course

Jon Wolfsthal: I think an, an observation that keeps coming back to my mind, I’ve been doing this now since, the mid-1980s, and I think the biggest change has been, there was a, a recognition among the old guard that I came up under that worked through the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s that these things were integrated with each other. Nuclear strategy, deterrence, reassurance, arms control, risk reduction, were all part of the same process to achieve a stable world where the United States could manage its relationships, prosper, and win, right? Win the Cold War, win the economic battle, the competition of, models, for governance. Over really since the late 1990s, even though there were intellectual arguments and it’s not like they all got along in the ’50s, they all, argued and then had martinis, is, you now have these camps, and the camps don’t believe the other side are relevant. You know, you don’t need deterrence anymore.

All you need is arms control. You can’t do arms control unless it’s multilateral, or unless we have the conditions where we can dominate. And in fact, the world doesn’t work that way. Presidents don’t think that way. Leading politicians shouldn’t think that way.

What are you trying to achieve? You’re trying to create a condition of stability and deterrence so that you can go about the business of America, which is often business, and other people would say other things as well. Pick your choice. Democracy promotion, you know, whatever. But until you agree that you’ve got these different tools and that they all work in different contexts and you use them well, you’re really operating with one arm tied behind your back, and I think that’s the challenge we see today, where, you know, when I tell my students that the– most often in the intellectual debates in the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency were unified in support of arms control measures, and the State Department, was opposed, along with parts of the White House.

They’re like, “What do you mean?” Like, first of all, what was the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency? They don’t remember what that was. And they’re like, “Why would DOD support arms control?” And it’s because it was a way of achieving limitations on your adversary, without having to go to war with them, and it was able to a- avoid some of the things that drove instability. Now, in the trenches, most people get that, and, you know, Austin and I and Mallory have worked together, and we, we, we can do that pretty well, but intellectually and ideologically, we’re, we’re being forced to these extremes, which I think make it harder for us to make good policy.

Mallory Stewart: And I would just two-finger on that, ’cause I absolutely agree. I think the acknowledgement of risk reduction, all things risk reduction, being a crucial part of a balanced deterrence approach that protects ourselves and our allies, has been lost somewhere. But it kind of rides along with a diminishment in appreciation for diplomacy, a diminishment in appreciation for multilateralism. And I think, unfortunately, even international law is declining in some of the policy approaches that, you know, disfavor risk reduction, diplomacy, and, and, and arms control. And I think that’s unfortunate, because, for many, many decades, you know, that, that element of diplomacy, multilateralism, risk reduction, arms control, and nonproliferation was seen as crucial to maintaining national security equivalent, to our defense capacities.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah. With, with, John, I’m glad you brought up, the 1980s, ’cause I have a question related to that, and this is just to the general panel. It also deals with this arms control issue, but, there’s obviously the Trump administration’s Golden Dome. I guess my question for you all is, how is this driving Or maybe not driving, but, contributing to, you know, uneasiness or some instability among our adversaries? ‘Cause both Russia and China have ex- like, you know, expressed some concerns about this.

You know, the Congressional Budget Office put out an estimate that this is gonna cost, like, over a trillion dollars, I believe within, you know, the next couple years. So what are your all thoughts on this?

Austin Long: Oh, everybody’s gonna look at me? Okay. I’m, I’m just taking up all the oxygen. I thought I’d share. Yeah.

Look, a lot depends. I mean, you referenced the ’80s. We had the Strategic Defense Initiative-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yes

Austin Long: In the 1980s. That certainly created unease in the Soviets, but not panic. So I mean, I think it’s a set of capabilities that, y- you know, we have some limited mis- national missile defense today. We’ve had some for 20 years now. You know, in terms of cost, a lot depends on what we actually deploy, how we deploy it, et cetera.

So I think if the general question is should strategic defenses as well as strategic offensive capabilities be part of the mix of tools, to John’s point, that the United States has, I think absolutely. Beyond that, you get into the eaches of where’s your best investment, et cetera. But I, I It does not discomfit me that our adversaries are uneasy about our capabilities. I think that’s a positive good for deterrence. The question is, how uneasy?

What complications does that create? Is there a better tool? How does it work with other tools? Those are, I think, the important questions.

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah. It, it Look, I don’t think China is increasing the number of nuclear weapons that it has because they’re worried about Golden Dome. I think they’re worried that they wanna have the ability to have at the minimum a second strike retaliatory capability so that the United States can’t coerce them or attack them, and they would lose their deterrent. Will Golden Dome make that situation better or worse? I think it’s likely to tell the Chinese, “Whatever we’re building to may not be enough, and we need to keep those production lines hot, and if necessary, we need to keep building up,” which then complicates the challenge of damage limitation, which then says, “Okay, well, we are in an arms race.” You know, they’re gonna keep building up.

We need to build up in order to cover our damage limitation strategy. Golden Dome is never going to be highly effective or cost-effective at the margins in dealing with conventional not conventional, ballistic missile threats. And even if it were, there are lots of unconventional delivery means that adversaries can use, so it, it’s, it’s not a wise investment in my belief. I think we should be investing in point defenses, regional defenses, mobile defenses. I think there are lots of things you can do that help, improve our, our defense, operational strategy.

But we just have to recognize that these things are not cost-free in terms of the dynamic. Now, if we don’t care about arms racing, if money is no object, if the consensus is we shouldn’t live in a world where China or Russia have second strike retaliatory capabilities, that that’s no longer necessary for deterrence, then okay, fine, let’s have that conversation. But I think that’s one of the challenges that we’ve moved away from, is while we never all agreed that it was a good thing, we recognized that there was a situation where we couldn’t disarm Russia, and they couldn’t disarm us, and that contributed to us, neither side attacking each other. Is that the basis for security going forward? Some people would say it, whether we like it or not, it is.

Some people say, “I don’t like it. I wanna change that.” But there are real implications for those two answers, and we haven’t done a very good job in the public policy discourse about what they mean.

Mallory Stewart: I also think we have to go into Golden Dome sort of eyes wide open, which is we will drive our potential adversaries to those new and novel capabilities that won’t be able to be easily addressed by what we already have proposed in the Golden Dome architecture, right? Realizing there’s still an open question as to interceptors, as to sort of which capacities we’ll be able to roll forward with, based on money or physics or any other reason. But certainly, putting Golden Dome out there will encourage future planners from potential adversaries to say, “Okay, let’s go undersea, let’s go hypersonic, let’s go drone to a maximum degree,” those kind of capabilities that are harder for us to deal with in the, in the Golden Dome context. That said, I think Golden Dome is a response to a feeling that the US government has had for some time that Russia has gone forward with these, you know, super weapons, these new and novel nuclear capabilities, undersea, nuclear powered, you know, nuclear weapon, hypersonics. We’ve seen all of these, Avangard and Poseidon tests that Russia has done of these new and novel capabilities, and the US has not done any new and novel nuclear development for some time.

So there’s been a feeling both in the, you know, d- defense arena, but also more broadly, that the US has been trying to stay the course to sort of, keep within its traditional model of nuclear policy, to stay sort of with its existing arsenal while, first, China’s building up, but second, Russia is going to all of these novel capabilities. And that really drove, in large part, a thinking that we need more to defend ourselves. And, Golden Dome, you know, brought together a lot of the policies of previous administrations to have our missile defense capacities talk to each other, to, you know, be able to more systematically, utilize our missile defense coherently across, you know, both the, the United States and our allies and partners in a way that makes more sense than just individual systems the way it was originally developed. And I, and I, I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think it does lead to the need for a conversation with China and Russia to explain why Golden Dome was deemed necessary, why Golden Dome is supported, right now in the United States, because there’s no other way to really try to feel secure in the face of novel and nuclear development, of weapons systems by Russia and a, a, a advancement, of exponential increase in China’s nuclear arsenal. So, you know, I think Golden Dome is a perfect conversation to have if we are gonna talk about what a potential risk reduction conversation would look like with, Russia and China, not necessarily to restrict ourselves, but at least to explain why we deemed it necessary.

Jon Wolfsthal: And I would just note that Russia and China are complaining about Golden Dome, but Russia is now saying, “Isn’t it good we have these super weapons because of Golden Dome?” Which is ironic, because they developed the super weapons, the ideas for it, before Golden Dome was even announced, right? The blaming on missile defense of all things development in either Russia or China is, somewhat questioned if it’s just Golden Dome itself, because they always blame missile defense, and they always kind of push forward with a need for additional arsenals as a result of our defensive capacities.

Mallory Stewart: But, but I think there is good evidence that the, decision by President Putin to invest a lot of money in these novel delivery systems, Poseidon, Skyfall, were driven by the US decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty.

Jon Wolfsthal: Yes.

Mallory Stewart: And he said, “Okay, well, if ballistic missiles are no longer gonna be the vehicle by which we have an assured, destructive capability, I need to do these things that are less vulnerable to interception by what missile defense might be.”

Jon Wolfsthal: Absolutely.

Mallory Stewart: So just ’cause they, they say it-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah

Mallory Stewart: Doesn’t mean that it’s inaccurate.

Jon Wolfsthal: No, no. I think missile defense is one of the drivers, for all of the new and novel capabilities that we’ve seen, and I think Golden Dome will just exacerbate that.

Mallory Stewart: Completely agree. I just think Golden Dome as a political concept itself was not the driver for these new and novel, but it’s just gonna be added to the list of reasons that they feel they need to continue this going forward.

Austin Long: I will note that those capabilities are not necessarily a wise use of their money. So when you think about arms races and costs at the margin, there are lots of costs at the margin, and some favor us and some may not.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, on that point, what, what would you all say is, like, the right investment for the United States? Like, obviously, you know, modernization was brought up. That’s gonna, I think CBO put out it’ll cost over a trillion dollars over the next decade. Yeah, what do you all see as, like, should the US prioritize certain things? There’s also debate about whether or not ICBMs, should be kept, or, you know, whether we should upgrade to the Sentinel systems, which is already having a host of issues already.

What are your all thoughts on this?

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah, good. Maybe I’ll, I’ll set the frame and then, let the panelists sort of weigh in. So, under the terms of the New START treaty, President Obama committed to the Senate that he would, and the administration would, modernize, or update all legs of the triad, submarines, bombers, and ICBMs. That grew into something known, in the, in the community as the program of record. So we’re gonna build the new Columbia class submarine, we’re gonna build the new B21, and we’re gonna build the new Sentinel.

In 2014, when I was out of government, we did the first study at the Monterey Institute, which said that’s gonna cost a trillion dollars over 30 years. And people said, “Oh, you’re an extremist, you know, that’s a, that’s an exaggeration.” Then CBO came out a couple of years ago and said, “No, it’s gonna be a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.” And everybody recognized that this was a massive undertaking, whether you believed it was necessary or important, it was what the, body politic, Congress, administrations had agreed was necessary to maintain our deterrent. We had recommended at the time that you actually stagger those systems. Instead of pursuing all three at the same time, you could avoid the strain on the defense industrial base and actually have a better odd of success, than if you pursued them all at once. Because we worried about unilateral disarmament by default.

And in fact- What we are seeing is a sentinel program which is having many more problems because it was rushed to decision under the Trump ad- first Trump administration. We’ve seen the submarine program actually get up a head of steam, and the bomber program, even though it’s unnecessarily classified, make pretty good marks and seems to be doing okay, but we don’t really know what the costs are. I think there’s still broad consensus that the United States will, will and should maintain all three legs of the triad. In this environment, that that still has pretty broad consensus. Where it begins to break down are things like, well, should you go at breakneck speed for sentinel no matter what, or can you in fact rely on life extending the minuteman older systems for another 10 or 15 years, if technically feasible?

Could you manage, say, fewer minutemen, but with more warheads on each missile, so you can maintain roughly the same numbers and give the sentinel program time to actually be fixed, if it’s fixable? And that’s a big question. Where that consensus breaks down are on these new systems. Do we need a sea-launch cruise missile? Trump said yes.

Biden said no. Trump says yes. But now Trump isn’t actually pursuing it at breakneck speed, ’cause there are other things they wanna do. So it’s not clear, and I think there’s some debate on how important it is, but there’s a debate there, and we should continue that discussion. Do we need, brand-new follow-on systems that are being contemplated?

I think, again, that’s where the consensus breaks down, but it should be driven by what you think is necessary for deterrence and reassurance, and if damage limitation should be a driver. And if you don’t have consensus there, then you don’t have consensus on what to do. Now, do you need consensus? Sometimes you go without it, but I think what we have seen is opportunism, where an administration gets into power and they drive decisions through a process that’s inconsistent with what we’ve built up over decades to ensure accountability, financial management, delivery on time, and the results are predictable. You have programs that are massively over budget, that aren’t going to fill our defense commitments, and that drain the coffers, of money that we need for other things.

Mallory Stewart: I’ll just note that it was the Congress that gave us the nuclear sea-launch cruise missile back, not the Trump administration part two. It was the Congress and the Biden administration. So to your point about consensus, there was at least sufficient consensus in the Congress to restore that. Now, to your other point, whether that consensus endures or we have other priorities now is a different question. But it wasn’t just administration changing, it was, it was congressional, fairly unusual congressional endorsement.

Austin Long: I, I think John’s framing is basically right. A lot of the additional expenditures if you wanted, a larger nuclear force will be outside that decade window, because our industrial base is gonna be limited in producing big systems. I mean, we’re producing submarines about as fast as we can right now, absent opening another shipyard or something like that, and even that would take a long time. So I mean, there’s, there’s only so much we can do, in the immediate near term. The question is, what should the goal be?

How should you manage modernization versus keeping older systems going, et cetera? There’s a lot of questions there. I will note, a trillion dollars, that’s a lot of money. Even for Elon Musk, that’s a lot of money. But if you really wanna save money, that comes out of the conventional forces budget, because, you know, the trillion-dollar figure you quote is about 10% of what DOD will spend, maybe 12%, depending on what we think budgets will be over the next decade.

You know, the other 80-odd percent, wherever that ends up being, are for conventional forces. So, you know, nuclear weapons are, relatively speaking, your best economic bet. They have, you know, not as much, versatility in some cases as conventional forces do, but they are relatively, again, relative does a lot of work in that statement, inexpensive.

Mallory Stewart: I think we should also sort of parse a little bit the semantic argument that modernization somehow includes new types, right? The interesting thing to me about China’s buildup is that they’re calling it their own modernization, right? And our modernization concept is, is ensuring a safe, secure, and effective nus- nuclear arsenal, which everyone presumably would want. You don’t want your nuclear arsenal to be easily hacked. You don’t want your nuclear arsenal to fail miserably.

You don’t want to have accidents, and, and result in nuclear disasters because you haven’t modernized– you haven’t kept your systems, up to par with, with the standards that are required in today’s, you know, technological environment, versus what, you know, China and Russia can argue, and Russia said this as well, modernization for them includes these novel nuclear, super weapons in Russia, includes the exponential increase in the nuclear arsenal, and that’s very different, right? I think the, the Obama administration certainly in negotiating for the New START treaty understood that modernizing the nuclear arsenal meant keeping it up to today’s safety, security, and effectiveness standards. It didn’t mean new and novel types of nuclear weapons, and I think that’s, that’s an important difference because we hear this word modernization tossed around. I’ve even seen sort of the nuclear opponents argue that modernization is a bad thing, and that, that confuses me because we all want a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal if we have to have a nuclear arsenal, which in today’s environment, the consensus is we do. F- not just for ourselves, but for our, our, our allies.

So, you know, I think the question is, in the trade-off that Austin mentioned, yes, the nuclear program may be 10% of our conventional, but our conventional is also struggling, as we saw in, again, an Iran war, that, you know, Trump began, which didn’t necessarily come to a positive, winning conclusion, right? And so even if you’re, you’re arguing that it’s just 10% of that conventional capacity, i- is that a trade-off that we should, we should discuss a little bit more before we start new nuclear weapons programs, before we commit to new and novel variants of, you know, of our traditional nuclear arsenal that is being appropriately modernized but doesn’t necessarily has to inc- have to include these new and novel variants?

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s see, we have about 20 minutes left. We’ll go ahead and go into Q&A unless anyone has anything further to add at the moment. Okay. If you’re online, please, submit them, through either the events webpage, Facebook, YouTube, or on X. For those in the audience, please speak clearly into the microphone.

Try to keep questions short if you can, and in the form of a question. And we’ll go ahead and get started. Yes, sir, in the back. Thank you.

Carl Pulzer: Carl Pulzer, Center on Capital and Social Equity. So my question has to do with the move from a, a two-player game of mutual assured destruction. It used to be just us and the Soviets, so if, if you blow me up, I’ll blow you up. Commun- you know, and it still almost happened. And now we have a multiplayer game, maybe three main players and about 10 side players.

Some are in alliances, some are independent, some are overlapping. So i- I mean, the question is: How do you manage that? Or, it seems to me we’re less secure because c- there’s more of a chance of surprise attack. There’s d- you know, deception, and if you only have an hour or two to respond, and you only had one red phone before, now you maybe have, like, 20 colors. So how do you manage th– I mean, in, in real time?

And I mean, maybe you have a president that’s on TV, you know? Like, may- maybe how do you manage that? I mean, maybe we have to do more in the communications. Anyhow, that’s the question. Thanks.

Benjamin Giltner: Thanks for your c- discussion. Do you wanna take more questions or-

Mallory Stewart: Sure, yeah, we’ll take another question.

Benjamin Giltner: Yes, in the front, middle.

Ashida: Excuse me. Hi, my name’s Ashida. Thank you so much for being here. We talked or you guys talked a little bit about Golden Dome. Could you please touch on how other countries might start taking their capabilities to space, and what the nuclear domain intersected with the space domain looks like or will look like, and what, security risks we can expect?

Benjamin Giltner: I was gonna have you take the first question, but I think you gotta take the second one.

Mallory Stewart: Sure. I can do both if you want. Certainly to your question, I do think e- enhanced communication, preventing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculation is something that we need at all times, but even more so in a multilateral environment where we have, multipolarity on, y- sort of arms racing, but also, potential threat and threat perceptions. That doesn’t solve the problem. It does become that much more complicated.

I think one of the reasons that our, deterrence analysis, and our, national security community has to constantly evolve is to take into account the multipolarity we’re now facing, the fact that there are so many more potential sources of both nuclear and conventional attack, and what we can put in place to strengthen our own security and that of our allies, including what international laws we negotiated, what normative processes we ourselves promoted because we saw it in our interest, and whether we need to preserve them more adamantly to feel that we understand what’s coming, to preserve a certain amount of transparency and predictability, and again, to prevent misunderstanding and miscalculation. And I can go into some examples if you want, but I do wanna jump to your question ’cause I think it’s really important. We’ve seen with the, allegation of the US government u- under the previous administration, in 2024, a, a deep and serious concern about Russia placing a nuclear weapon in orbit around the Earth in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. And I mention the Outer Space Treaty because, again, this is one of the treaties we negotiated that we strongly believed w- was in our own interest. But we negotiated it at a time before it had w- before there was, technical capability to verify much of the parameters.

And Article 4 of that Outer Space Treaty says that any WMD is prohibited from being placed in orbit around the Earth or in celestial bodies, but this would be a clear-cut and direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty, and so where does Russia wanna go with that? Are they gonna continue developing this program covertly, and then potentially utilize it in violation of the Outer Space Treaty as an endgame in a conflict? Are they just developing it as a, you know, a threat they can hold over us? What, what is the intent? And I think that, that there’s a lot of confusion on that, but certainly there’s a recognition of the importance of outer space to our national security, to global stability, to financial markets, to all forms of, of daily life, both in our country and almost in every country around the world.

So it’s a, it’s very much a, a, a endgame kind of weapon system that we should try to understand. I would argue that we strengthen the treaties that we put in place to try to prevent these kind of developments, and the Outer Space Treaty is a perfect example of something negotiated 60 years ago that now we have the capacity to verify. We didn’t build in a verification provision, but maybe now through a practice of the parties or through all the ongoing open-ended working groups in which they’re discussing, the prevention of arms race in outer space, maybe we can start talking about verification capacities to strengthen that treaty and to show attribution toward anyone that would violate it and hopefully hold them accountable. But as we see international law diminish, the likelihood of strengthening treaties, the likelihood of attribution and accountability under treaties itself is also diminishing. And so then you face the additional challenge, then do we have to prepare and harden ourself against nuclear attack in space?

And I think we should be hardening our satellites. We should be, you know, developing capabilities to persist and be resilient through such an attack. But it’s very hard for those countries that don’t have the capacity or resource to do that with their satellites to be able to maintain that, resilience. So it’s an open question. I think one of the approaches should be strengthening international architectures that have kept us safe, and another should be preparing ourselves to be more resilient and to be able to outlast, such a novel use of nuclear weapon in outer space.

Jon Wolfsthal: I agree with Mallory generally, particularly on that last point about the need for hardening and resilience. But you know, you asked questions about stability. I mean, there’s, there’s nothing more destabilizing than a nuclear weapon in space because it is both vulnerable to preemption, this is part of why we believe the Russians were gonna keep it secret. It’s vulnerable to preemption.

Austin Long: Yes, it is the Doomsday Machine. I see you, see you snickering over there.

Jon Wolfsthal: I’m not, not at all. Uh- I’m comfortable. And so this is the, you know, the, the, the question about stability, it’s, it’s not just up to the United States to decide whether stability, prevails in relationships. This is a capability that genuinely invites preemption but is quite powerful if it u- it’s used. It’s exactly the kind of thing that brings up questions about crisis stability much more so than US nuclear force posture.

It, for me, this is a question on both fronts, both on crisis communication, but also on this, action reaction cycle of, nukes in space, missile defenses in space. And, you know, we have a responsibility to be strategic, to think about, okay, what might happen, and how would you like to avert that? It’s likely possible, inevitable, we will come into some sort of conflict with Russia and/​or China, unintended, accidental, or intentional. It would be a good thing if we had the means to communicate with each other in real time without having to rely on Verizon. And so let’s put those things in place now.

Yes, they’re hard to do, and yes, there’s a lot of work, and sometimes the Chinese don’t wanna cooperate, and sometimes the Russians don’t wanna cooperate, but it’s time worth spent. On Golden Dome, here’s the scenario. We’re gonna build a, a, a, a network of thousands of space-based interceptors to try to intercept one nuclear weapon potentially coming from an adversary that’s gonna land on the United States. And so we think we can intercept that. And our adversary isn’t going to take a nuclear weapon and blow it up in space to blow a giant hole in those interceptors so that they can then follow through with another nuclear weapon through that exact hole to hit us.

That’s not very strategic, and it gets to the point of where Golden Dome came from. It came out of Donald Trump’s head, and that is not where strategy comes from. We all have to interpret what presidents say and try to make strategy out of it, and we have a feedback loop to do that. But Golden Dome is not a wise investment. What is a wise investment, and I think you’ve got consensus here on this panel at least, if you think you are vulnerable in space because you rely on space-based battle management communications for all sorts of things, have the ability to quickly put up low Earth orbit satellites to replace if you lose them.

And that removes the incentive on your adversary to attack you in space. That’s been legislated for the last 20 years, and we haven’t built it. And Elon Musk, for all of his ills, has provided a capability to do that quickly. We should be doing that in a very aggressive way to remove the incentive to attack. But that’s where we’re supposed to be doing our jobs and where the administration is actually supposed to be imposing good policy.

We’re just not in that world right now.

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s take some more questions. Yes, Sahar.

Sahar Khan: Hi, I’m Sahar Khan with the Institute of, Global Affairs. Keeping in mind that US foreign bases don’t house nuclear weapons but are considered essential for US extended deterrence, what lesson does the damage to US bases in the Gulf offer to US force posture and extended deterrence? And this is for all three of you. Thanks.

Jon Wolfsthal: I’m no longer with the Federation of American Scientists, but when I was, they put out information that says the US does maintain nuclear weapons at foreign bases overseas. So I’m just saying.

Austin Long: Go ahead.

Jon Wolfsthal: No, no, go for it.

Austin Long: I mean, bases are vulnerable to attack, whether they’re here or overseas, right? I mean, that’s, that’s been true, right? We build our force posture to try and lessen that, but I think it does call for, you know, John mentioned regional missile defenses. That’s a capability we’ve invested in, we should continue investing in. You also have to be able to, you know, potentially, if you have nuclear weapons based anywhere, whether it’s at a bomber base in the United States or overseas, the ability to get it away from the base.

A base is a large known target. Adversaries will target it even if they’re not intending to target nuclear weapons. They wanna target where your military aircraft are operating from. You need to be able to get your military aircraft, and presumably some set of your nuclear weapons if you’re in a crisis or conflict, away from that. So whether it’s dispersing bombers or dis- dispersing dual capable aircraft or associated with NATO or whatever, you have to have those kind of things in place.

But I mean, it’s a war. Bases are gonna get attacked. Like, that’s, that, that’s part of war fighting. You have to be prepared for it.

Mallory Stewart: I, I think I would just add that it’s, you know, just s- shows that the US is not impenetrable. And, and I don’t think anyone thinks that we are, but I think there has to be an understanding that even with the best defense systems possible, things will get through, especially with the novel uses of drones, es- especially with the novel weapons that are now being utilized. And I, I think that’s an important consideration. You know, I would just flag that in such an environment where things will get through and you have numerous players and a challenge to attribute and maybe a diminishment in international law that would sort of allow for more clarity or transparency on what is happening, that’s when you really need, that’s when you most desperately need the ability to communicate clear- clearly and the ability to parse through what’s happening on the ground. ‘Cause the fog of war that exists no matter what during war will get even worse if we somehow think we don’t need those communication capacities or we don’t need those, those, networks and connections.

And so, you know, I, I think it just argues for closer connectivity and more communication as much as possible with all of our allies in the event that there are attacks going on on our bases in their territory.

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s get someone in the back. Yes, the gentleman in the very back. Thank you.

Audience Member: If an adversary were to launch a preemptive first strike before the Golden Boondoggle is fully operational, how would the US respond? Would we use nukes, or is it more likely that our adversaries would rather we spend ourselves into a financial crisis by sinking trillions into this Golden Boondoggle?

Jon Wolfsthal: I’ll try to take the first whack here. So if, I mean, if a country launches a nuclear weapon at us, the United States is going to use all the means at its disposal to defend itself, defend its allies, and to attack that country. Now, the nature of the conflict, the nature of the adversary will dictate what that response looks like. Every president, even this one, has wisely said, “I’m not gonna commit myself explicitly a priori to a specific response. We don’t need to tell that.” But we’re very specific when we say to North Korea, “If they use a nuclear weapon against us or allies, that’s the end of the Kim regime,” period.

Russia and China know that if they launch a nuclear weapon at us, they are likely to face a nuclear reprisal. That is one of the reasons, probably not the dominant reason, but one of the reasons they don’t launch nuclear weapons at us. They probably don’t launch nuclear weapons at us because they’re not really interested in starting a nuclear war. There’s no real benefit for them to do so in regular situation. So it’s not that we then pivot and say, “Okay, you nuked us.

Don’t worry, we’re gonna get Golden Dome ready,” you know? It, it That’s– I don’t think that’s the dynamic here. I think the question is: What is the circumstance under which the United States is attacked with a nuclear weapon? In that situation, things are horrible. The United States is at war, or we are in a massive crisis and miscommunication, where we’re trying to figure out what is going on and how.

That’s welcome to a world with nuclear weapons.

Austin Long: The- Use a conventional weapon to take out

Jon Wolfsthal: You can’t I mean, one, Golden Dome doesn’t work. Two, if it’s built and it has any working capability, it’s likely not gonna be built with a single point of failure. And so the idea is that you’ve got resiliency to your systems. Y‑you know, what we’re trying to avoid is war. W‑we’re good at that in certain circumstances.

We’re bad at that, clearly, in other circumstances. I don’t think Golden Dome is likely to start a war, and I don’t think that having Golden Dome is likely to prevent the United States from suffering damage. The question is, you know, with all of the different things, from, educating your children to hitting the button, how are you structuring your society and the global security environment? And are we prioritizing things well? And, you know, having been doing this for a while, we’re not at our best right now.

But, you know, stand by. Operators are working and, and we hope to be with you soon.

Austin Long: I would also note we’ve pursued national missile defense in the past, SDI. We have national missile defense today that started more than two decades ago. The Soviets and the Russians complained about them. They invested in things that were countermeasures. What they did not do is attempt a preemptive attack in order to forestall that.

Committing suicide for fear of death seems an unwise course.

Mallory Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that, Golden Dome itself is gonna force a country to attack us. What I’m concerned about is that we just don’t know all of the various different complications. If we’re already in a war and a country, this is years in the future, a country thinks Golden Dome will prevent a certain amount of missiles from getting through, and they thus do a larger, you know, a, a larger attack to try to get through Golden Dome and they, you know, either intentionally or unintentionally are more effective in damaging us than they intended to be, and the it immediately escalates. And this could be a conventional attack, and they somehow don’t think they’re gonna go through. I mean, even look at the attack on Israel several years ago, where it was a large volley of, of, missiles from Iran, and some got through and some didn’t, and they, their calculus may have changed because they were factoring in Israel’s missile defense.

I think my concern is that we play out scenarios. We tabletop. We have deterrence experts across the board looking at all of these different scenarios to control escalation, but we don’t account for the numerous variables that we cannot predict, the, the credibility of one particular president versus another president, the predilection to protect allies or not protect allies in different administrations, the belief that your missile is gonna be more or less effective based on the advocacy for a defense system that does or does not work. And I think why we need so many of the international legal and normative architectures that we put in place after World War II to m- stay in place is just to allow for some predictability in our processes, allow for some capacity to communicate, allow for some consequences if violations of those normative and legal architectures go forward, so that we can, again, feel that in this world of unpredictable circumstances, we at least know where we’re starting from with respect to, engagement o‑o-on a warfare front. And I think as we see that normative and legal architecture declining, we also see the variables increasing, right?

The effectiveness of programs, the credibility of i- alliances, and the US government itself, and that’s what makes the situation so dangerous right now. And I think, to your point, it’s not gonna be Golden Dome that starts or ends a war, but it could just allow for an additional exacerbation of the planning, of the thinking of both adversaries and allies.

Benjamin Giltner: All right, so we are right at time, at 2:05. Thank you all for providing your insights. A very good discussion. And that concludes our entire Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference. So, first would like to thank all of you up here and then to the rest of our panelists for taking time out of your busy schedules.

I know you all have a lot going on, but we very much appreciate you providing your insights on this very important topic. Would like to thank the AV development and conference teams. You all put this all together. We’re very grateful for that. And then finally, thank you all t‑to the audience.

You asked some great questions. And with that, we are doing a reception in the lobby, where w‑we’ll have some food and refreshments, so please do join us there. Thank you.

\