March 2025
By William Burr

When U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his aides were escaping the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, a Coast Guard officer carrying a heavy briefcase was following him on a staircase. That briefcase was the so-called nuclear football. Presidents and vice presidents are routinely accompanied by a military officer carrying the football, which includes information and technology needed for the worst-case situation when the president or his successor decides to order military action in response to a nuclear or possibly conventional attack on the United States or its allies. A military aide carrying the football has been in presidential entourages since the late 1950s and with vice presidents since the late 1970s. Now aides with footballs shadow President Donald Trump and his vice president, JD Vance.

The football includes information on emergency procedures, nuclear war plans, and communications arrangements with the Pentagon and key U.S. allies. Initially referred to as the “satchel” or the “emergency actions pouch,” it also has been called the “black bag,” the “black box,” and by 1963, it became known as the football.

The football is a symbol of the president’s authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Since the Harry Truman era, presidential control over nuclear weapons and any decisions to use them have flowed from that authority. Before atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities in August 1945, Truman knew little about the nuclear targeting plans but concurred with the arrangements to use the weapons, believing that the targets were straightforward military installations.¹ Days later, Truman, shocked by the mass civilian casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, asserted presidential control by stopping further atomic bombings without his express authority.² Determined to maintain control, in 1948 he refused to turn nuclear weapons over to the Pentagon, declaring that they were not “military” weapons but are “used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people.”³

The Cold War Era

As the Cold War unfolded, Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, and the presidents that followed, sustained the practice of presidential control, with John Kennedy tightening it after Eisenhower transferred custody of most of the weapons from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Department of Defense.⁴ Eisenhower and his successors faced the particularly daunting challenge of heightened strategic nuclear competition with the Soviet Union, which developed long-distance bombers—and by 1957, showed a capability to develop and eventually deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles. As the possibility of a severe crisis precipitating a Soviet nuclear attack became more than a theoretical issue, U.S. leaders wanted to be prepared.

Among the preparatory actions that the Eisenhower administration took was in 1956 when Arthur Flemming, director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, asked a variety of U.S. agencies to begin developing continuity-of-government arrangements and to prepare Emergency Action Documents (EADs), including a proclamation of a national emergency, orders to suspend habeas corpus, provisions for a national censorship office, and other martial-law arrangements. The president would sign them in a crisis.

White House military aide Edward Beach devised the idea of using a satchel to carry emergency information, despite mistaken claims that the Atomic Energy Commission created the football in the early 1960s. Photographic evidence demonstrates that by 1957 naval aides were carrying a locked satchel, but it was not until June 1958 that the agencies had nearly completed a set of the EADs to be carried in it.⁵ The EADs were in the satchel along with documents authorizing emergency use of nuclear weapons, including instructions to make the weapons available to NATO allies that had nuclear sharing arrangements with the United States.⁶

Eisenhower approved instructions in 1956-1960 for “advance authorizations for the use of atomic weapons,” designed so that the United States “could not be caught by surprise.” Those were the highly secret pre-delegation instructions for military commanders-in-chief in the event that the president and vice president were killed in a nuclear attack.⁷

The Kennedy Administration

Before John Kennedy’s inauguration, Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster, a White House aide, briefed the president-elect on the satchel’s contents, including the EADs, Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus, and a document for calling Congress into special session, presumably at the secret location in The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virgina. Goodpaster’s briefing also covered emergency plans to move the president and his family to emergency facilities at Mount Weather and other locations “from which he would operate.”⁸ During the meeting, Eisenhower told Kennedy, effectively, that the satchel would be in the hands of “an unobtrusive man who would shadow the president for all his days in office.”⁹

Goodpaster also showed Kennedy a booklet that included information on the predelegation instructions. Another booklet described U.S. Department of Defense “emergency actions” and how the Joint Chiefs of Staff would communicate with the president in a severe crisis. Goodpaster further explained the “arrangement” that Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon had established if the president were incapacitated: the “Vice President would accede to the powers of the Chief Executive.” Nixon also had a military aide assigned to him, and presumably a satchel, if something happened to the president. Early in the Kennedy administration, the president’s military aides sent a satchel to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who had it returned. Years later, Johnson suggested that he found the presence of a military aide with the satchel to be disconcerting.¹⁰

During the Kennedy administration the satchel would include information on U.S. nuclear war plans that was not available when Eisenhower was president. Before that happened, however, in early 1962, Kennedy had requested the Joint Chiefs to develop procedures to enable the president to initiate a nuclear strike “without prior staffing at the Pentagon.” He wanted to know what “he would say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike” and how the Pentagon could authenticate such instructions. White House naval aide Captain Tazewell Shepard sought to ensure that the procedures in the JCS Emergency Actions File were flexible enough to allow the president to act in a crisis. By November 1962, the White House had received from the Pentagon an emergency actions folder, later renamed the Gold Book, for inclusion in the satchel. It may have offered the procedures, along with emergency conferences, that Kennedy had sought.¹¹

When Kennedy became president, the Eisenhower administration had recently completed the first Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), a nuclear war plan that included targets for strategic bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Initially the SIOP was a one-shot plan involving the launching of thousands of nuclear weapons simultaneously against the Soviet Union and its allies with the potential of causing scores of millions of casualties. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were dissatisfied with this plan’s inflexibility and in 1961-1962 approved arrangements to break up the SIOP into more discrete options, such as preemptive or retaliatory strikes on military and urban-industrial targets together, or military targets only. Those options also would involve huge casualties.¹²

A Comprehensible War Plan

Distilling the war-plan options into a form that was comprehensible for any president took time, but in 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed the SIOP Execution Handbook, later known as the “black book,” and gave a copy to Kennedy in July. The satchel included booklets with explanations of SIOP attack options and estimated casualties presented in “cartoons and color schemes to make the thing more understandable.” As the SIOP changed over the years, military aides would update the handbook and related material.¹³

By 1963, the satchel was becoming known as the “football” for unknown reasons—but possibly because it was passed from military aide to military aide and the Kennedy family had a fondness for touch football. At that time, when the president was traveling outside Washington, warrant officers on shifts carried the football because they were closer to the president than the military aides. Yet only the military aides knew the combination for the lock and could make its contents available to the president. During the 1960s, the aides and warrant officers did not follow the president around Washington because the Pentagon knew how to get in touch with him, but eventually the aides routinely would accompany the president during local travel. The football was not light: By 1963 it weighed about 30 pounds and by the 1990s, about 45 pounds.¹⁴

When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, Ira Gearhart, an Army warrant officer, was at the back of the motorcade. He rushed to the hospital and, learning of Kennedy’s death, took the football to the room where Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sitting. Although the Pentagon was worried about Gearhart’s location, he followed Johnson to the airport and was on Air Force One when the new president took the oath of office. During the flight back, military aide Chester Clifton briefed Johnson on the football. Once back in Washington, Tazewell Shepard arranged for fuller briefings for the new president on the football and its contents.¹⁵

Although Johnson did not like the idea of the football and wanted to hand off the responsibility to the Pentagon, he eventually acquiesced in the arrangement. A newspaper article from 1965 included the first public reference to the football, quoting White House aide Jack Valenti as saying, “The ‘black bag’ or ‘football,’ as we call it, goes wherever the President travels.”¹⁶ As far as is known, Johnson did not arrange for a football to be assigned to his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and no information is available indicating that vice presidents Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford, who served under President Richard Nixon, or Nelson Rockefeller, who served under President Ford, had a football assigned to their military aides. When Nixon resigned in August 1974 and flew off to California, the football was in the hands of Ford’s military assistants.¹⁷

A Football for the Vice President

Believing that the vice president should be a partner in national security policymaking, President Jimmy Carter assigned a football to Vice President Walter Mondale and this became the practice for future U.S. administrations.¹⁸ By Carter’s time, if not before, the president carried a laminated card, known as the “biscuit,” with unique alphanumeric codes needed to authenticate his identity with the Pentagon before authorizing nuclear weapons use. Carter accidentally left the biscuit in clothes sent for dry cleaning at one point. In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot, the card was separated from him during surgery and found later in a shoe, while the aide with the football was left behind at the Washington Hilton Hotel when Reagan was rushed to the hospital. Years later, President Bill Clinton lost his biscuit.¹⁹

The protocols that developed over the years for the football and the military aides who carry it remain highly classified. No doubt, the football includes the EADs and information on basic options in nuclear and non-nuclear strike plans. Reportedly, the football includes communications gear, is hardened to protect against electromagnetic pulse, and holds a tablet with satellite links to tactical warning systems. All of that plus armor has added to the football’s weight.²⁰

The fact that one person, the U.S. president, has had the singular authority to make life-or-death nuclear use decisions has led to debates and proposals to address the dangers inherent in this arrangement, including by involving other responsible officials in nuclear use decisions in order to prevent a rushed process and by Congress asserting its war powers more robustly.²¹ Such reforms are worth serious discussion no matter who resides in the White House, but the advent of a new president who rejects checks on executive authority and is determined to expand personal control over the government increases their relevance.

The current configuration of power, with one party controlling all major institutions of government, suggests that meaningful reforms are not in the cards for the foreseeable future. The United States can only hope that serious crises do not emerge when the football must be unlocked.

ENDNOTES

1. Alex Wellerstein, “A ‘purely military’ target? Truman’s changing language about Hiroshima” Restricted Data: A Nuclear History Blog, January 19, 2018.

2. Henry Wallace, “Diary Entry, Friday, August 10, 1945,” and Leslie Groves, “General L. R. Groves to Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, August 10, 1945, Top Secret, with a hand-written note by General Marshall,” in William Burr, ed., “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book (EBB), No. 716, August 4, 2020. See also Alex Wellerstein, “The Kyoto Misconception: What Truman Knew, and Didn’t Know, about Hiroshima,” in Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, editors, The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton University Press, 2020).

3. James V. Forrestal, “‘Meeting at the White House—Atomic Bomb Custody,’ 21 July 1948,” in William Burr, ed., “U.S. Presidents and the Nuclear Taboo,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 611, November 30, 2017.

4. Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977,” in William Burr, ed., “United States Secretly Deployed Nuclear Bombs In 27 Countries and Territories During Cold War,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 20, October 20, 1999.

5. David F. Krugler, This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 156-162. For the argument that the Atomic Energy Commission devised the football, see Annie Jacobsen, “What’s Inside the President’s Nuclear Football,” Time, April 11, 2024.

6. Charles Finucane, “Letter from Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Personnel, and Reserve Charles Finucane to General Andrew J. Goodpaster, 9 December 1959,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 8, 2023.

7. William Burr, “First Documented Evidence that U.S. Presidents Predelegated Nuclear Weapons Release Authority to the Military,” National Security Archive, March 20, 1998, and William Burr, “Newly Declassified Documents on Advance Presidential Authorization of Nuclear Weapons Use,” National Security Archive, August 30, 1998.

8. Andrew J. Goodpaster, “Memorandum for the Record by Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, 25 January 1961, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, July 9, 2018; Krugler, This Is Not a Test, pp. 169-171; Emily Matchar, “The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Bunker a Secret for Three Decades,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 9, 2024; Federation of American Scientists, “Mount Weather High Point Special Facility,” November 25, 1999.

9. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1965), p. 617.

10. William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20 – November 25, 1963 (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 261; Garrett Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), pp. 177, 250.

11. Tazewell Shepard, “Tazewell Shepard to the President, ‘JCS Emergency Actions File,’ 16 January 1962, with attached ‘Alert Procedures and JCS Emergency Actions File,’ Top Secret,” and “Memorandum from G.C. Bullard to General Taylor, ‘President’s Emergency Actions “Gold Book,”’ 11 January 1964, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, September 20, 2018.

12. William Burr, “The Creation of SIOP-62: More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” National Security Archive, July 13, 2004; Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Berlin Contingency Planning,’ JCSM 431-61, 26 June 1961, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Long-Classified U.S. Estimates of Nuclear War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly Underestimated Deaths and Destruction,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 798, July 14, 2022; William Burr, “New Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” National Security Archive, No. 236, November 21, 2007.

13. Tazewell Shepard, “Memorandum of Conference with the President Prepared by Naval Aide Tazewell Shepard, 24 July 1963, Top Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, September 25, 2018; “William Manchester interview with General Godfrey McHugh, 6 May 1964, excerpts,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.

14. “William Manchester Interview with Major General Chester Clifton, 21 April 1964, excerpts,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, No. 834, July 18, 2023; Ibid., citing Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 27, 1965; Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 62-63, 261, 321; Nancy Benac, “Nuclear ‘halfbacks’ carry the ball for the president,” Seattle Times, May 17, 2005.

15. Manchester, The Death of a President, 62-63, 321; Manchester interview with Clifton and “William Manchester Interview with Captain Tazewell Shepard, 1 May 1964,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.

16. “Untitled two-part draft memorandum, n.d. [1965],” in William Burr, ed., “Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The ‘Football,’” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 632, July 9, 2018; Allen and Scott report, July 27, 1965.

17. Graff, 2017, pp. xiv-xv.

18. “Memorandum from Denis Clift to Vice President Mondale, with Mondale memorandum attached, “PEADS,” 1 March 1979, Secret,” in William Burr, ed., “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” National Security Archive, EBB, No. 834, July 18, 2023.

19. Jamie Dettmer, “Of biscuits and footballs: The perils of presidents and the nuclear codes,” The Hill, January 23, 2017; Christopher Woody, “Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months, and a ‘comedy of errors’ kept anyone from finding out,” Business Insider, January 3, 2018.

20. Hans Kristensen, “US Nuclear War Plan Updated Amidst Nuclear Policy Review,” Federation of American Scientists, April 4, 2013; various tweets by Marc Ambinder, including on October 23, 2020 at 17:37 UTC. Stephen Schwartz’s “Atomicanalyst” site at bsky.social is a valuable source for photos of military aides carrying the football.

21. “Policy Roundtable: Nuclear First-Use and Presidential Authority,” Texas National Security Review, July 2, 2019; Bruce Blair, “Strengthening Checks on Presidential Nuclear Launch Authority,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2018; Adam Mount, “There’s Nothing Between an Unstable President and the Nuclear Button,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2024.

March 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

U.S. President Donald Trump announced a return to maximum pressure on Iran but reiterated his support for reaching a nuclear deal. The move to ratchet up sanctions sparked a backlash in Tehran, prompting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to caution against negotiations with Washington.

In a Feb. 4 presidential memorandum, Trump said that the United States will deny Iran “all paths to a nuclear weapon” and directed the Treasury Department to “impose maximum economic pressure on the Iranian regime.” The pressure campaign will include “driving Iran’s export of oil to zero,” the memorandum said.

Trump told reporters Feb. 4 that the memorandum is “very tough on Iran” but he was “torn” and “unhappy” about signing it. He expressed a preference for reaching a nuclear deal but did not provide any details about the possible terms of an agreement.

In response to the return to U.S. maximum pressure, Khamenei said Feb. 7 that negotiations with the United States are “not intelligent, wise, or honorable.” There should be “no negotiations with such a government,” he said. The comments appear to signal a shift away from Khamenei’s previous support for talks (see ACT, October 2024).

Khamenei did not expressly forbid President Masoud Pezeshkian’s administration from engaging in talks, suggesting that there may still be space for diplomacy in Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a Feb. 8 conference in Tehran that Iran still wants to see sanctions lifted but emphasized that negotiations cannot take place “under the maximum pressure policy.”

After signing the memorandum, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu said that the United States and Israel share the goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and if maximum pressure can achieve that goal, “so be it.”

Netanyahu’s visit came amid reports that Israel is still considering military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.

The Washington Post reported Feb. 12 that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that Israel is likely to attempt a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the first six months of 2025. According to the source referenced in the report, the agency assessed that Israeli strikes would set back Iran’s activities only by months and would incentivize Iran to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. The attack scenarios would require U.S. support for Israeli operations, the intelligence report said.

Trump has refused to commit the United States to supporting an Israeli attack on Iran. Following the Netanyahu meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social that “Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran to smithereens ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.” Trump said in the Feb. 5 post that he prefers a “Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement.”

Despite Trump’s comments, Netanyahu expressed confidence that with “unflinching support” from the United States “we can and will finish the job” of neutralizing the threat posed by Iran. Netanyahu made the comment during a Feb. 17 press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Meanwhile, Pezeshkian suggested that Iran will rebuild its nuclear programs if Israel attempts a military strike. He said Feb. 13 that Iran’s enemies can “hit the buildings … but you cannot hit those who build it.”

Despite Trump’s stated support for a nuclear deal, it is not clear who in his administration is the point person for talks with Iran.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Feb. 14 that “we are running out of time” to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. He said talks can be concluded quickly and the IAEA “has all the information and elements” but it is up to the states to determine what is necessary in an agreement.

In addition to the risk of military strikes derailing the prospects for diplomacy, it is likely that the Western European states-parties to the 2015 nuclear deal (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) will begin the process of reimposing 
UN sanctions on Iran by mid-summer if there is no progress on a deal.

The process uses a veto-proof mechanism in UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, to reimpose UN sanctions and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. That mechanism, known as “snapback,” expires in October 2025.

The Trump administration, having withdrawn the United States from the nuclear deal during its first term, cannot trigger the snapback (see ACT, September 2020).

Trump’s Feb. 4 memorandum called for the U.S. ambassador to the UN to work with U.S. allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.”

Iran has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if UN sanctions are snapped back.

March 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

U.S. President Donald Trump signaled interest in “denuclearization” with Russia and China, but efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and differences over the scope of potential arms control negotiations present challenges to talks.

Responding by video to a reporter’s question about the U.S.-China relationship at the World Economic Forum Jan. 23 at Davos, Trump said “we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.” He reiterated this position later that day during an interview at the White House with Fox News.

“I want to say: Let’s cut our military budget in half,” Trump told reporters on Feb. 14, on the prospect of a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons; we already have so many,” he added, Associated Press reported.

In his remarks to the Davos meeting, Trump said he spoke during his first presidential term with Putin about “denuclearization of our two countries, and China would have come along.” Although the United States attempted to engage Beijing in arms control talks in 2020, U.S. officials were unable to convince China to attend a trilateral summit with Russia or commit to negotiations (see ACT, July/ August 2020).

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump Jan. 24, saying, “there is something to talk about, we need to talk. Time has been lost in many respects,” according to Reuters. 
The Russia-United States New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire Feb. 5, 2026, leaving the nuclear peers without limits on their deployed strategic forces.

The U.S. Department of State indicated in a Jan. 17 report on Russian compliance with New START that, although Russia “may have exceeded the deployed warhead limit by a small number during portions of 2024,” the “United States assesses with high confidence that Russia did not engage in any large-scale activity above the Treaty limits.”

During the Biden administration, Russia maintained that talks on nuclear arms control would not proceed until the United States dropped its support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. Moscow also suspended its participation in New START in February 2023 to protest Washington’s support for Kyiv (see ACT, March 2023).

Now, Moscow will insist that the nuclear arsenals of France and the United Kingdom be included in the scope of a new round of negotiations, Peskov said.

At a Feb. 10 briefing, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov sounded a note of pessimism. “The U.S. is proposing a three-way talks format, and we want a five-way format. We are going round in circles,” he told Reuters.

Four days later at a press conference in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun reiterated China’s traditional position that Russia and the United States should “further make drastic and substantive cuts to their nuclear arsenals, and create necessary conditions for other nuclear-weapon states to join in the nuclear disarmament process.”

Since the change of U.S. administrations, high-level contact between Russian and U.S. officials has accelerated, focused primarily on resolution of the Ukraine war. Trump and Putin held a 90-minute phone call on Feb. 12 on several bilateral issues, according to a social media post by the U.S. president. The call was preceded by a meeting between Putin and Trump’s special envoy for talks on Ukraine, the Middle East, and hostage negotiations, Steve Witkoff, CNN reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials in Saudi Arabia Feb. 18. According to a State Department press release, the two sides agreed on steps to normalize relations and hold talks resolving the Ukraine conflict, “in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.”

Growing concern over the prospect of a Russia-United States agreement at the expense of Ukraine prompted an emergency summit of European leaders Feb. 17 in Paris. Speaking in a Feb. 4 online interview to the UK commentator Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated a previous call for allies to provide nuclear weapons to Ukraine to deter Russia. “Give us back nuclear arms. Give us missile systems,” Zelenskyy said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

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