Digests and Blog

Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of civilians. Ukrainian cities have been leveled and villages have been turned into wastelands. U.S. and allied diplomatic, military, and intelligence support to Ukraine, including over $40 billion in security assistance since the war began, is essential to its defense and an eventual end to the conflict. However, providing some types of lethal U.S. and European military assistance to Ukraine would be escalatory, counterproductive, and only further increase the dangers to civilians caught in…

Inside the Arms Control AssociationJune 2023Earlier this month, the Biden administration outlined a viable pathway for moving back from the nuclear brink.At ACA's annual meeting June 2, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a major policy address stating that the United States is ready to engage in nuclear arms control diplomacy with Russia, as well as the other nuclear-armed NPT states-parties "without preconditions."Sullivan criticized Russia's suspension of its implementation of New START but he noted that "Russia has publicly committed to adhere to the Treaty's central limits…

Russia expressed a willingness to consider the proposal by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in June to engage in a bilateral dialogue on nuclear risk reduction and arms control "without preconditions."“Rather than waiting to resolve all of our bilateral differences,” said Sullivan in a June 2 address at the Arms Control Association’s annual forum in Washington, “the United States is ready to engage Russia now to manage nuclear risks and develop a post-2026 arms control framework.” The 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining U.S.-Russian arms…

Recent comments from U.S. and Iranian officials suggest that the space for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program may be opening back up after talks broke down in August, but the two sides denied recent reports that an interim nuclear deal is on the table.Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani confirmed a June 9 Axios report that the United States and Iran held indirect talks in Oman in May. Kanaani told reporters that Iran conveyed messages to the United States regarding the lifting of sanctions. He also said Tehran remains focused on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal, known as…

After months of ratcheting up its nuclear activities while negotiations remain stalled, Iran took a small, limited step toward deescalation in May. Iran’s recent willingness to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to increase transparency on its nuclear program could help open diplomatic space for additional steps toward decreasing tensions and rolling back Iran’s nuclear advances. The United States should take advantage of this limited window, given the growing risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program and the lack of progress in restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action…

Centrum Balticum publishes a discussion forum, Baltic Rim Economies (BRE), which deals with the development of the Baltic Sea region. In the BRE review, high level public and corporate decision makers, representatives of Academia, as well as several other experts contribute to the discussion. The following contribution from Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández appeared in the February 2023 issue. Russia’s unjustified war on Ukraine has unleashed much suffering, displaced millions, and wrecked any prospects of cooperative security for the foreseeable future.  Moscow’s revisionist actions have…

At a meeting of the G7 nations this week in Hiroshima, the first city destroyed by the bomb, President Joe Biden and other leaders have a chance to begin addressing the long-standing problem of states threatening to use nuclear weapons. Russia’s nuclear threats of the past year in support of its invasion of Ukraine have flashed for all to see a core purpose of nuclear arsenals: coercion and intimidation. At this historic gathering, Biden and his counterparts need to act on Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s proposal that the G7 “demonstrate a firm commitment to absolutely reject the…

Inside the Arms Control AssociationMay 2023We are honored to have President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, delivering the keynote address at our Annual Meeting, “Reducing Nuclear Threats in a Time of Peril,” on June 2, 2023, at 9:00 am, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.As President Biden wrote in his message to ACA at last year’s ACA annual meeting: “Today—perhaps more than any other time since the Cold War—we must work to reduce the risk of an arms race or nuclear escalation. In this time of intense geopolitical tension, arms control and nonproliferation…

On the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to “restore American leadership on arms control and nonproliferation…and work to bring us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.” This month’s summit of the Group of Seven (G7) in Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic attack that killed more than 140,000 men, women, and children in 1945, provides President Biden with a historic and timely opportunity to do so. To support America’s Japanese allies, Biden and the other leaders will need to acknowledge the horrors of…