Contributions to Nuclear Security Project

In January 2007, four esteemed American statesmen – former Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry – wrote an influential op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, arguing that the growing spread of nuclear weapons and materials leaves the world facing the “very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands..” They repeated their call one year later in the same pages.
 
Since then, Senator Nunn’s organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), has launched an effort to follow up on the vision outlined in the two articles, seeking to highlight the dangers of nuclear proliferation and reinvigorate the national and international debate surrounding nuclear disarmament. CSIS is proud to be involved with NTI’s Nuclear Security Project. Our work with NTI involves surveying the international attitudes of key countries to the idea of a nuclear free world and gauging opinions on the associated steps that would be necessary to achieve nuclear disarmament, beginning with reducing the reliance of nuclear weapons as an instrument of countries’ security policies. This project has involved international travel to engage with policymakers and leading opinion-leaders, as well as extensive background research on multiple countries’ positions toward various nonproliferation treaties and policies, such as the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiations on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and reductions of the alert status on operationally-deployed nuclear missiles.
 
To learn more about NTI’s Nuclear Security Project, please visit www.nuclearsecurityproject.org.