Nonproliferation and Disarmament Today, A Nuclear Reckoning

Building on renewed awareness of nuclear dangers arising from Christopher Nolan's epic film, the presentation assesses the status of the international nonproliferation regime and the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons arising from Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. The nonproliferation regime has been relatively successful in preventing the cascade of nuclear weapons development that some feared early in the atomic age, although significant proliferation dangers remain. Russian threats of nuclear weapons use and the risk of catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia atomic station recently prompted the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move the hands of its iconic clock closer to midnight than at any time since Oppenheimer and his colleagues created these weapons 78 years ago. The talk explores strategies for containing proliferation dangers and renewing the impetus for nuclear arms reduction and disarmament.

About the Speaker

David Cortright is professor emeritus of the practice at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, Cortright was the director of policy studies at the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and director of the institute’s Peace Accords Matrix project, the largest existing collection of implementation data on intrastate peace agreements.

Cortright has written widely about nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international peacemaking. He has provided research services to the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has served as a consultant or advisor to agencies of the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the International Peace Academy, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies