Published Op-eds | Arms Control Association

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I salute the Arms Control Association … for its keen vision of the goals ahead and for its many efforts to identify and to promote practical measures that are so vitally needed to achieve them. -

– Amb. Nobuyasu Abe

Former UN Undersecretary General for Disarmament Affairs

January 28, 2004

Published Op-eds

The opinion pieces and editorials below are those authored by Arms Control Association staff and leadership published in major U.S. and international media.

This Is What Trump Needs to Do to Make North Korea Get Rid of Their Nukes

Authored by Kelsey Davenport on June 13, 2018

This op-ed originally appeared in TIME , Jun. 13, 2018. The handshake between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will go down in history. But it’s not yet clear if the summit will produce an equally historic outcome on denuclearization. Despite Trump’s attempts to sell the summit document as a breakthrough , it reiterates a boilerplate commitment to “ complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula ,” a pledge that North Korea has made, and broken , before. This vague, aspirational language is a long way from the “comprehensive document” described by Trump in his...

Young voices on peace with North Korea

Authored by Alicia Sanders-Zakre and Catherine Killough on June 11, 2018

This op-ed originally appeared in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, we spoke with young people around the world who saw hope in the summit, and a chance to advance their own work—including the reunion of families divided by conflict, the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula, and a negotiated agreement that would lead toward the denuclearization of North Korea. Captivated by North Korea’s nuclear tests and Trump’s reckless Twitter tirades, the media rarely pick up voices of the next generation. Young...

Trump just opened the door for Iran to expand its nuclear capabilities

Authored by Daryl Kimball on May 10, 2018

This op-ed originally appeared in The Hill . Fulfilling a misguided campaign pledge, President Trump has chosen to violate the 2015 nuclear deal between the United States and its partners — the EU, U.K. France, Germany, Russia, and China — with Iran and reimpose U.S. sanctions that were waived according to the terms of the 2015 accord in exchange for severe limits and very robust international monitoring on Iran’s nuclear activities. Now, the valuable nonproliferation barriers established by the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are at risk. Contrary to Trump...

Trump's Reckless Violation of the Iran Deal Jeopardizes U.S. National Security

Authored by Kelsey Davenport on May 9, 2018

This op-ed originally appeared in TIME , May 9, 2018. By blocking Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons, the 2015 agreement with Iran had helped resolve a long-standing crisis that was destabilizing the Middle East. But on Tuesday, President Donald Trump put this critical accord at risk with his reckless and irresponsible decision to violate the multilateral nuclear deal. By walking away from the agreement, Trump is jeopardizing U.S. national security interests and risks precipitating a nuclear crisis that the international community can ill afford. Trump’s justification for abandoning the deal...

Iran's Past Nuclear Experiments Reflect Value of JCPOA

Authored by Daryl G. Kimball on May 2, 2018

This op-ed originally appeared in The Iran Primer of the United States Institute for Peace. For decades, the international community has grappled with the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation and, in particular, the risk that the Islamic Republic of Iran might seek the capability to design and produce nuclear weapons. For more than a decade following the 2003 revelation that Iran had surreptitiously built a uranium conversion facility and an enrichment plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the world’s major powers have expended enormous effort and political capital to...

Trump's Threat To Nuclear Order

Authored by Kingston Reif and Kelsey Davenport on October 12, 2017

This post originally appeared in War on the Rocks . If you thought “repeal and replace,” or perhaps, “repeal and not replace,” was only a strategy for the botched Obamacare repeal effort, you’d be wrong. It seems to also describe the game plan of President Donald Trump and Republican hawks in Congress when it comes to the agreements and norms that underlie the global nonproliferation regime. The Trump administration and Congress face critical decisions over the next several months that could have bigly consequences for the international nuclear order. These include whether to continue...

The North Korea Standoff Is Now As Bad As the Cuban Missile Crisis

Authored by Daryl Kimball on September 26, 2017

This op-ed originally appeared in Fortune. The nuclear danger posed by North Korea is not new. For more than a decade, the Kim regime has possessed nuclear weapons and has been steadily pursuing the capability to develop compact warheads and longer-range missile systems. But since the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, a bad situation has become far worse. North Korea has accelerated its missile testing and Trump has vowed a military attack against North Korea if it threatens the U.S. or its allies. The risk of conflict through miscalculation by either side is now as severe as the...

Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Push Nuclear Ban

Authored by Alicia Sanders-Zakre on September 20, 2017

This op-ed originally appeared on InkStickMedia.com As President Donald Trump threatened North Korea last month with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” over 50,000 gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to recall that the world has in fact seen such horrific acts. Among them were survivors of the “fire and fury” that consumed the two cities 72 years earlier. The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, called hibakusha in Japanese, were small children at the time, octogenarians today. They are a living challenge to Trump’s bombastic remarks; many have...

How congressional Republicans are trying to undermine U.S.-Russia relations

Authored by Kingston Reif and Thomas Countryman on August 18, 2017

This op-ed originally appeared in The Washington Post . As U.S.-Russia relations continue to sour, President Trump has taken to Twitter to blame Congress for the continuing deterioration. Trump’s finger-pointing may not pass the laugh test, but the fact that Congress is not to blame for our troubles with Moscow does not mean that it can’t make matters worse. And when it comes to nuclear weapons, Congress appears determined to do just that. Republicans have urged the Pentagon to begin developing a new, potentially nuclear missile prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty...

At Trump-Putin Meeting, Start with New START

Authored by Kingston Reif and Maggie Tennis on July 6, 2017

This op-ed originally appeared in Defense One. If the treaty is allowed to disappear, so will the Pentagon’s best tools for divining facts about the Russian nuclear arsenal. President Trump apparently has “no specific agenda” for his first in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, slated to occur this week on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany. So we’d like to suggest one: stabilizing the increasingly troubled relationship between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, beginning by extending the landmark New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New...