A U.S. presidential executive order is expanding missile defense efforts, signaling a fundamental shift in missile defense policy.  

March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

In its first week in office, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump approved an executive order expanding missile defense efforts, signaling a fundamental shift in missile defense policy and calling for the revival of interceptor and sensor development programs.

An Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ship, on training exercises, is part of the U.S. missile defense system. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Missile Defense Agency)

The Jan. 27 order adopts a new policy of deterring and defending against “any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland,” marking a departure from the long-standing policy across administrations that U.S. missile defense investments should be designed primarily to manage threats from rogue states.

In its 2019 Missile Defense Review, the first Trump administration endorsed the traditional policy, stating that the “United States relies on nuclear deterrence to address the large and more sophisticated Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.”

But other aspects of the 2019 review have been resurrected in the new executive order, such as a call for “Development and deployment of space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept.” In its fiscal year 2020 budget request, the first Trump administration sought to fund studies of particle-beam and kinetic space-based interceptor concepts, although these were later dropped in the following year’s budget.

The new executive order also revives plans for a missile defense “underlayer and terminal-intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack.” The concept of an underlayer stationed in the continental United States, adapting the Standard Missile 3 Block IIA interceptor and the Aegis ship-based missile defense system, also was recommended in the 2019 review and included in the fiscal 2021 and 2022 budget requests.

In both of those years, Congress blocked most of the funding for the Missile Defense Agency’s proposal to adapt the Aegis and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems to fulfil the underlayer role (see ACT, January/February 2022).

The new executive order directs the defense secretary to produce within 60 days a “reference architecture” for implementing a plan to defend against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.”

In addition to steps toward developing space-based and underlayer interceptor capabilities, this document should include plans to accelerate the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, according to the order. The Office of Management and Budget is instructed to price out the missile defense expansion so the proposals can be considered for inclusion in the fiscal year 2026 presidential budget request.

Following rapidly upon the executive order, the Missile Defense Agency issued a request for information to defense contractors on Jan. 31 that seeks ideas on how to meet the broad requirements of the Trump administration’s ambitious plans.

On Feb. 5, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), introduced a bill to authorize $19.5 billion in fiscal 2026 funding for a broad set of missile defense initiatives beyond the scope of the executive order. Most of the proposed spending, $12 billion, would go toward expanding the ground-based midcourse interceptor field at Fort Greely, Alaska.

The cabinet of political allies will advise on nuclear policy issues.

March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed a cabinet of political allies to advise on nuclear policy issues during his second term in office and supplemented them with some subcabinet staff from his first administration.

Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump’s new secretary of state, meets with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman at the U.S. State Department on Feb. 25. (Photo by Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images)

The Senate unanimously confirmed Trump’s secretary of state, former Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jan. 20. As a lawmaker, Rubio pushed for a strong U.S. response to Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and urged Trump to rescind the U.S. signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in response to allegations of Russian low-yield testing (see ACT, July/August 2019).

Awaiting confirmation is Thomas DiNanno, whom Trump nominated Feb. 11 to be undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. DiNanno previously served as acting assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance from 2019 to 2020 while confirmed as a deputy assistant secretary, and before that held several senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and former television commentator, had a more difficult path to confirmation, receiving only 50 votes in a split Senate. Senators raised questions about his lack of high-level policy and management experience and personal character.

During questions at a Jan. 14 confirmation hearing, Hegseth claimed that “Russia and China are rushing to modernize and build arsenals larger than ours.” Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not publicly reported a significant expansion of Russian nuclear forces, they have aired concerns that China might build an arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 nuclear warheads (see ACT, January/February 2025). Those projections remain below the roughly 3,700 warheads in the U.S. stockpile.

The new U.S. secretary of defense is Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, speaks during a meeting with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman at the Pentagon on February 24. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, has divided Republican hawks. Colby’s history of advocating for a military policy that prioritizes China is “a concern to a number of senators,” according to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Feb. 13 comments to The Hill.

Colby was deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development from 2017 to 2018, and a principal author of the first Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy. With past experience working on nuclear issues in government and at think tanks, Colby has an extensive track record that senators might scrutinize before his confirmation hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

In the past, he has argued against military action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and urged the shepherding of U.S. forces and materiel for a potential war with China. In 2014, he also broached the possibility of first-use of U.S. nuclear weapons against China to ensure against a military defeat, long before this option was discussed more widely in Washington.

Another stakeholder in nuclear debates will be the incoming secretary of the Air Force, Troy Meink, who was appointed principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in October 2020. Among other roles, Meink was a test engineer for the Missile Defense Agency while a commissioned Air Force officer, according to his official NRO biography. In his more recent positions as a Defense Department civilian, his responsibilities centered on acquiring military space assets.

The new secretary of energy, Chris Wright, was confirmed 59-38 by the Senate Feb. 3. In comments to department staff the next day, Wright lauded nuclear weapons as having, “in the big picture, very much a peace-generating impact.”

An oil and gas industry executive, Wright recognized the need to continue environmental remediation work at contaminated Cold War-era nuclear facilities, including the former plutonium production site at Hanford, Washington. “We need to finish cleaning up all of these sites,” he said. Several Hanford clean-up workers were laid off by the Department of Energy later in February.

Trump nominated Brandon Williams, a former New York congressman and former Navy submariner, to be administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Williams, Meink, and Colby await confirmation.

Mike Waltz, until Jan. 20 a Florida congressman, joined the administration as national security advisor. In three terms in the House of Representatives, he sat on the foreign affairs, armed services, and intelligence committees and gained a reputation for being willing to engage across the aisle on issues despite holding doctrinaire conservative views on foreign policy.

The Trump administration reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to total North Korean denuclearization; Pyongyang said the goal is impossible.

March 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

The Trump administration reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to total North Korean denuclearization, a goal that Pyongyang described as impossible and impractical.

The test launch of North Korea’s new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location is seen last November via a 24-hour Yonhapnews TV broadcast at Yongsan Railway Station in Seoul. (Photo by Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In a Feb. 15 trilateral statement, Japan, South Korea, and the United States expressed “their resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization” of North Korea and sent a “strong warning” that they will “not tolerate any provocations or threats to their homelands.”

The statement was issued after a meeting in Munich with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Japanese Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi, and South Korean Foreign Minister Korea Cho Tae-yul.

In a Feb. 18 statement in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea accused the three states of “inciting collective confrontation and conflict on the Korean peninsula” and said that the goal of denuclearization is “outdated and absurd.”

North Korea’s nuclear weapons are necessary for “defending peace and sovereignty” and a “legitimate tool of self-defence,” the statement said, and the country will “consistently adhere to the new line of bolstering the nuclear force.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had cast some doubt on whether denuclearization would remain a U.S. policy goal for the Trump administration. During his confirmation process, Hegseth referred to North Korea’s “status as a nuclear power” in a Jan. 6 questionnaire for the Senate Armed Services Committee.

His statement prompted a backlash in South Korea, whose foreign ministry issued a statement Jan. 15 saying that North Korea “can never be recognized as a nuclear-armed state.” Denuclearization is “a principle consistently upheld” by the international community, the statement said.

When U.S. President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore during his first term of office, the two leaders signed a joint declaration that called for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” (see ACT, July/August 2018).

Since returning to office, Trump has said he is willing to meet with Kim again. At a Feb. 7 press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said his administration “will have relations with North Korea” and noted that he and Kim got along “very well” during their meetings in 2018 and 2019.

But North Korea’s nuclear doctrine has shifted since 2018 and the country has invested in new military capabilities, including more accurate short-range, nuclear-capable missiles and long-range systems capable of targeting the continental United States.

Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, raised concerns about the intercontinental ballistic missile that North Korea tested in October 2024 during congressional testimony on Feb. 13. The shortened launch time of the solid-fueled Hwasong-19 missile may impact the effectiveness of U.S. early warning systems, he said. He also noted North Korea’s intentions to increase production of its missile systems and warned that this could “narrow [his] confidence” in the Northern Command’s “existing ballistic missile defense capacity in the coming years.”

Furthermore, recent comments by Kim suggest that North Korea is not interested in resuming dialogue with the United States at this time.

In a Feb. 8 speech marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army, Kim said his country must bolster its military readiness to “proactively respond” to regional security threats. He reiterated plans for an “unlimited defense buildup” and accused the United States of increasing the risk of conflict by deploying nuclear strategic assets in the region.

On the same day, a KCNA commentary said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not a “bargaining chip” and condemned U.S.-led efforts to disarm the country of its deterrent.

The deteriorating relationship between North Korea and South Korea could further challenge any U.S. diplomatic efforts. South Korean outreach to North Korea preceded the Trump-Kim summit in 2018.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also is looking to engage North Korea. At a Feb. 20 press conference in Japan, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi called for the establishment of an agency presence in North Korea.

The IAEA last accessed North Korea’s nuclear facilities in 2009. Grossi said that “there are areas like nuclear safety where we could try to establish some form of engagement” with North Korea.

Hundreds of workers who maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal were fired as part of a Trump administration purge of federal workers.

March 2025
By Libby Flatoff

Hundreds of workers who maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal were fired as part of a purge of federal workers by the Trump administration, which is now rushing to rehire many of them.

Researchers at the Savannah River National Laboratory, part of the vast U.S. nuclear weapons complex managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), whose workforce was hit by Trump administration layoffs. (Photo courtesy of SRS)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 11 to promptly "initiate large-scale reductions in force," and two days later, some 300 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy, were fired as part of the broader layoffs.

The decision to rehire almost all of those dismissed from their jobs came after sharp criticism from the public, experts, and members of Congress. Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), responding to the cuts on X, wrote, “The Trump Administration fired the U.S. nuclear staff not realizing they oversee the country’s entire weapons stockpile. This isn’t government efficiency. It’s incompetence. They are making America less safe.”

On its website, NNSA describes its mission as “to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile,” which its Office of Defense Programs carries out through the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program.

With a $25 billion annual budget, the agency maintains, refurbishes, and secures more than 3,000 nuclear warheads and oversees the production of new nuclear warheads. It employs 2,000 staff and manages more than 55,000 contractors.

According to the Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan, “since many roles within the nuclear security enterprise require specialized training or years of experience to develop proficiency, effectively training personnel, then retaining them, is essential to success.”

Rob Plonski, an NNSA deputy division director, discussed the layoffs in a LinkedIn post Feb. 15. “We cannot expect to project strength, deterrence, and world dominance while simultaneously stripping away the federal workforce …. Years of knowledge and experience are being lost, with no clear strategy to replenish that expertise at the pace required to maintain operational excellence,” he wrote.

Speaking to reporters Feb. 13, Trump suggested scaling back nuclear modernization as a way to reduce government spending. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many, you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over,” he said.

There are an estimated 12,400 nuclear weapons worldwide, including 5,225 held by the United States.

The Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction plans to develop cross-cutting strategies to reduce risk, expand engagement with non-members.

March 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

The Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction will focus this year on developing cross-cutting strategies to reduce risk and expanding engagement with states outside of the multinational initiative, Canada announced.

The Global Partnership, established in 2002 by the Group of Eight industrialized states, is focused on preventing chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons proliferation. As chair of the 31-member initiative for 2025, Canada is responsible for setting priorities for the initiative’s work.

In a statement on its plans, Canada said the initiative has had a “transformative impact” on weapons of mass destruction [WMD] threat-reduction efforts because of its “unique combination of perseverance and adaptability.”

To ensure that the Global Partnership can address current and future challenges, Canada will focus on developing a strategy for addressing concerns that cut across CBRN threats, “particularly WMD-related disinformation, technologies, and strategic trade controls.”

Canada also will look to engage states and organizations that currently do not participate in the initiative but “have demonstrated a capacity and willingness to contribute meaningfully to WMD threat reduction.”

One of the partnership’s key tools for reducing CBRN risk is a matchmaking process that connects offers of funding and expertise from initiative members to other states or groups working on specific WMD-threat reduction projects.

According to an annex of projects from 2024, 18 Global Partnership states helped implement 424 projects in 159 countries. Italy, the 2024 chair, prioritized a different set of issues, including support for Ukraine and biosecurity efforts (see ACT, March 2024).

The annex documented projects in Ukraine designed to detect and respond to WMD-related threats; strengthen security at nuclear facilities, including rebuilding infrastructure around the Chernobyl complex; and support for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s work in Ukraine. It also noted that partner states supported 153 biosecurity projects, including programs to strengthen biosecurity and biosafety. 

Lawsuit Forces U.S. To Review Nuclear Plans

March 2025

The U.S. National Security Administration (NNSA) was ordered by a federal judge to complete a nation-wide programmatic environmental impact statement on expanded plutonium “pit” bomb core production within two-and-a half years after several nonprofit groups challenged the agency's failure to do so. The groups announced the agreement Jan. 16 in a joint statement.

A lawsuit filed by activist groups has halted the production of plutonium pits at the Savannah River Nuclear Site temporarily while the National Nuclear Security Administration does an environmental impact statement. (Photo courtesy of Savannah River Site)

The lawsuit was filed by Savannah River Site Watch of Columbia, SC; Nuclear Watch New Mexico of Santa Fe, NM; Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), based in Livermore, CA; and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition of coastal Georgia. It argued that NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not properly assessing alternatives before proceeding with pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Savannah River Site in South Carolina. In September 2024, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lewis Geiger ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, leading to a settlement requiring the programmatic environmental statement and public participation (see ACT, November 2024).

According to the groups’ statement, the agreement would effectively halt preparations for plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site. It would give NNSA two-and-a-half years to complete the environmental statement and hold public hearings before a final decision. Citizens can comment on NNSA’s draft statement and voice health and environmental concerns. In the meantime, NNSA is prohibited from installing classified equipment, introducing nuclear materials, or constructing key facilities at the Savannah River Site, where the agency is planning to produce pits by the mid-2030s. Pit production could continue at the Los Alamos lab. —SHAGHAYEGH CHRIS ROSTAMPOUR

OPCW Chief Visits Syria for Talks on Chemical Weapons

March 2025

The head of the international chemical-weapons watchdog agency visited Damascus in February, marking a major step toward resetting relations with Syria after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

Fernando Arias, director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and his team met with the interim president and foreign minister of Syria’s caretaker government in what the OPCW described as “long, productive and very open” discussions on Syria’s chemical weapons program.

Since 2022, the United Nations has bemoaned the lack of progress by the Syrian government in meeting its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Last year’s overthrow of Assad and his government by Syrian rebels is seen as a new opening. (See ACT, January/February 2025.) Arias presented Syrian officials with an action plan drafted by the OPCW Technical Secretariat to help Syria address the remaining issues with its chemical weapons declaration.

After years of denying the program's existence, Syria submitted a declaration of its chemical weapons and facilities to the OPCW in September 2013. In January 2016, the OPCW announced that Syria’s entire declared stockpile of 1,308 metric tons of chemical agent and precursor chemicals had been destroyed. The OPCW determined, however, that the Syrian government continued to use chemical weapons even after the bulk of the declared stockpile had been eliminated.

“Today’s visit to #Syria marks a reset,” Arias said in a Feb. 8 post on X. “After 11 years of obstruction by the previous authorities, the Syrian caretaker authorities have a chance to turn the page and meet Syria’s obligations under the Convention.”—MINA ROZEI

It has been barely a month since Inauguration Day, but U.S. President Donald Trump is already moving to reshape longstanding foreign policy, radically alter relationships with the nation’s closest allies, and upend its role as a bulwark against an expansionist, authoritarian Russia.

March 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

It has been barely a month since Inauguration Day, but U.S. President Donald Trump is already moving to reshape longstanding foreign policy, radically alter relationships with the nation’s closest allies, and upend its role as a bulwark against an expansionist, authoritarian Russia.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin attend a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Not only has Trump, ignoring all facts, blamed Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion; he appears to be seeking an end to the war on Putin’s terms: ceding Ukrainian territory seized by Russia, denying Kyiv a path to NATO membership, and leaving Ukraine with flimsy security guarantees. Trump’s posture already has undermined the credibility of U.S. security commitments to its NATO allies and could lead to further instability in Europe.

At the same time, a dialogue between Moscow and Washington could lead to negotiations to maintain or lower current limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals before the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires in February 2026.

In January, Trump expressed support for nuclear talks with China and Russia in terms not uttered by a Republican politician in recent memory. In response to a question about China-U.S. relations, he said: “Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about .... So, we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.” The Kremlin replied that it wants to resume the nuclear dialogue “as soon as possible.”

To translate Trump’s denuclearization comments into concrete results, his team will need to craft a more practical and effective approach than the one Trump pursued in his first term. In 2020, Trump tried and failed to launch three-way talks involving China, Russia, and the United States. He then refused to agree to a simple extension of New START, leaving it to Putin and President Joe Biden to do so during Biden’s first days in office in 2021.

Negotiating on nuclear arms control with Russia is always difficult. Achieving a new comprehensive framework could require sustained talks over many months, if not longer. The two sides have sparred for years about further cuts to their strategic stockpiles, the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, substrategic nuclear weapons, and missile defenses, which Russia believes could negate much of its offensive retaliatory force.

The smartest approach would be for Putin and Trump to strike a simple, informal deal to maintain the existing caps set by New START (1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 strategic delivery systems) after the treaty expires, as long as the other side agrees to do so. They could agree to resume data exchanges and inspections, or simply monitor compliance through national technical means of intelligence.

Such a deal would reduce tensions, forestall a costly arms race that no one can win, and buy time for talks on a broader, more durable, framework deal. An interim arrangement to cap or cut their strategic nuclear arsenals would provide new diplomatic leverage to curb the buildup of China’s arsenal, now about 600 nuclear warheads, some 400 of which can be delivered on long-range missiles.

In the absence of such new limits, Russia and the United States could significantly increase the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads by uploading additional warheads onto existing land- and sea-based ballistic missiles. Any Russian and U.S. buildup would destabilize the mutual balance of nuclear terror, strain the already exorbitant and behind-schedule U.S. nuclear modernization program, and prompt China to accelerate its own nuclear buildup.

Although Trump has decried the enormous costs of nuclear weapons—now projected to consume more than $800 billion in the next decade—he also has directed the U.S. Defense Department to make a priority of upgrading the nuclear arsenal and expanding missile defenses, ostensibly to defend against a Chinese or Russian strategic nuclear attack.

This approach would only stiffen resistance in Beijing and Moscow to limits on their own offensive nuclear forces and encourage them to adapt their nuclear forces to overwhelm new U.S. missile defenses. A new U.S. nuclear buildup would not achieve “peace through strength.” It would be madness.

Halting the cycle of spiraling nuclear tensions is in every nation’s interest and is every nation’s obligation. Under Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Russia and the United States, as well as China, France, and the United Kingdom, are legally obligated to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

Even if Trump appeases Russia on Ukraine, it is still in the U.S. and international security interest, as well as Trump’s own interest, to curb nuclear excess and reduce the nuclear danger. If Trump can pull off an agreement to cap or reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals, that would be a significant and surprising step forward in a time of global turmoil.

2025 Board of Directors Election

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All members of the Arms Control Association are invited to vote for the Board of Directors online or by mail on the proposed slate of candidates for the 2025-2027 term. The slate of candidates for the 2025-2027 term are listed below and include six current board members who have agreed to continue to serve, one returning member, and one new member.

Please see below the biographies of this year's candidates and the ballot. Cast your vote by April 15, 2025. Please note that if you also vote by returning the ballot you have received by postal mail, your vote will only be counted once.

If you have any questions about this year's board election, please contact Kathy Crandall Robinson, Chief Operating Officer, at at [email protected] or 202-463-8270 ext 101.

Board Candidate Bios

Candidates Running for Reelection:

 

 Deborah C. Gordon has been on the board of directors since 2016. She is an Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University from which she retired in August 2019 after 22 years as the Executive Director of the Preventive Defense Project and is currently an independent consultant providing consulting services to several small technology companies.

 

  

 

 

 Victoria Holt has served on the board of directors since 2022. She was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Security in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs at the U.S. Department of State and is currently the Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Angela Kane has served on ACA’s board of directors since 2019. She is a former United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and is currently a Senior Fellow for the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation. 

 

 

 

 

 Maryann Cusimano Love has served on the board of directors since 2019. She is currently a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations in the Politics Department of the Catholic University of America. She is also a member of the Core Group for the Department of State’s working group on Religion and Foreign Policy, charged with making recommendations to the Secretary of State and the Federal Advisory Commission on how the U.S. government can better engage with civil society and religious actors in foreign policy.

 

 

 

 

Jayita Sarkar has served on the board of directors since 2022. She was a professor of Global History of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow’s School of Social and Political Sciences in Scotland, United Kingdom and is currently the British Academy Global Innovation Fellow for 2024-25 at the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 Christine Wing has been on the board of directors since 2007 and was a former Ford Foundation program officer for intl. peace and security and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Center on  Intl. Cooperation, NYU. She is currently an independent consultant. 

 

 

Returning Candidates for Reelection: 

 

 

 

 Bonnie Jenkins is currently a faculty member at George Washington University and is the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Intl. Security. She founded Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS) and was recognized in 2020 as the Arms Control Person of the Year. Prior to her nomination to serve as Undersecretary of State, she served on the ACA Board of Directors.

 

 

 

New Candidates: 

 

 

Stephen Warnke has over 30 years of health care legal experience and service on several non-for-profit boards of directors. He recently retired from the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP, practicing in its New York office. His clients included not-for profit teaching hospitals and medical schools, managed care organizations, investor-owned health care and pharmaceutical companies, and community-based providers of health, mental health, and social services. Over the course of his career, he served as a policy advisor in the New York City government, and was the founding chair of FAIR Health, a national nonprofit created to bring greater transparency to health care costs and health insurance information.

 

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