+1 202.525.5962 [email protected] @globalzero
1342 Florida Avenue NW Washington, DC 20009 USA
www.globalzero.org
blundering toward nuclear chaos The Trump administration after 3 years
American Nuclear Policy Initiative Jon Wolfsthal, ed. May 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Global Zero
We welcome redistribution and reuse with attribution for widest possi- ble dissemination. !is work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. Table of Contents
Introduction II
The Trump Administration After Three Years: Blunder- IV ing Toward Nuclear Chaos American Nuclear Policy Initiative members
US-Russian Nuclear Stability and Deterrence 1 Jon Wolfsthal
Nuclear Policy and Modernization 12 Kingston Reif
Response to the Iranian Nuclear Challenge 25 Richard Nephew
Approach to North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program 35 Kelsey Davenport
Global Nonproliferation Regime 52 Alexandra Bell
Preventing Nuclear Terrorism 64 Nickolas Roth
Making America’s Nuclear Energy Great Again 76 Sharon Squassoni
Author Biographies 85
I Introduction
The world has changed considerably since this assessment of the nuclear policies of the Trump administration was written in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has thrown the entire world into uncertainty, and tested the US government and President Donald Trump’s ability to handle a global crisis of unprecedented proportions. The demands of managing this crisis, and repairing the damage done to our societies, economies and populations rightfully demand our priority attention.
However, even a pandemic does not erase the persistent and even systemic challenges facing the United States in other areas. The nuclear dynamics that undermined stability and threatened to unleash disaster – even when compared against a pandemic – remain in place and can material- ize almost without warning. Thus, we must meet the new challenges of today while still seeking to assess and repair the risks that existed before anyone ever heard of COVID-19. While some aspects of these materials may seem dated due to the onset of COVID-19, the authors rightly remain concerned about the underlying global nuclear dynamics and remain committed to as- sessing them clearly and deliberately.
President Trump is unlike any previous US president. Among other traits, he prides himself on rejecting old approaches to both domestic and foreign policy challenges. This has created broad tensions between the current administration and established policy practitioners who have in- vested time, energy, and expertise in protecting US interests for decades.