The 2013 class of Nuclear Scholars, selected from a very competitive applicant pool, contained some of the best and brightest young professionals in the nuclear field. Drawn from graduate programs, the national labs, the civil service, and the U.S. military, these Nuclear Scholars participated in six monthly workshops that focused on a wide range of nuclear topics. These topics included extended deterrence and assurance, stockpile stewardship, nuclear materials security, Iranian and North Korean proliferation, international nonproliferation norms and treaties, missile defense, and nuclear targeting. The program culminated in a final meeting at which the Nuclear Scholars presented their own research to a panel of senior experts. The papers resulting from these presentations are contained in this year’s volume.

Addressing an increasingly complex array of nuclear weapons challenges in the future will require talented young people with the necessary technical and policy expertise to contribute to sound decisionmaking on nuclear issues over time. To that end, the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) runs a yearly Nuclear Scholars Initiative for graduate students and young professionals. Those accepted into the program are hosted once per month at CSIS in Washington, DC, where they participate in daylong workshops with senior government officials and policy experts. Over the course of the six-month program, scholars are required to prepare a research paper. This volume is a collection of the 2014 papers from the Nuclear Scholars Initiative.

The authors featured in this CSIS publication were members of The Project on Nuclear Issues' (PONI) 2020 Nuclear Scholars Class. The PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative is a select group of rising next-gen voices, comprised of graduate students and young professionals.

Interest in nuclear energy has surged in recent years, yet there are risks that accompany the global diffusion of nuclear power—especially the possibility that the spread of nuclear energy will facilitate nuclear weapons proliferation. In this book, leading experts analyze the tradeoffs associated with nuclear energy and put the nuclear renaissance in historical context, evaluating both the causes and the strategic effects of nuclear energy development. They probe critical issues relating to the nuclear renaissance, including if and how peaceful nuclear programs contribute to nuclear weapons proliferation, whether the diffusion of nuclear technologies lead to an increase in the trafficking of nuclear materials, and under what circumstances the diffusion of nuclear technologies and latent nuclear weapons capabilities can influence international stability and conflict. The book will help scholars and policymakers understand why countries are pursuing nuclear energy and evaluate whether this is a trend we should welcome or fear.

This volume, Nuclear Disarmament, provides a comprehensive overview of nuclear disarmament and a critical assessment of the way forward. Comprising essays by leading scholars on nuclear disarmament, the book highlights arguments in favour and against a world without nuclear weapons (global zero). In doing so, it proposes a new baseline from which an everchanging nuclear arms control and disarmament agenda can be assessed. Numerous paths to nuclear disarmament have been proposed and scrutinized, and with an increasing number of countries signing off on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, it is vital to ask which path is the most likely and realistic to succeed. The chapters here also address the rapid pace of technological, political and climatic developments, in relation to nuclear disarmament, and how they add to the complexity of the issue. Taking care to unite the different tribes in the debate, this book provides a community of dissent at a time when academic tribalism all too often prevents genuine debates from taking place. This book will be of interest to students of nuclear proliferation, arms control, security studies and International Relations.

For some observers, nuclear arms control is either a relic of the cold war, or a utopian dream about a denuclearized planet decades in the future. But, as Brookings scholars Steven Pifer and Michael O'Hanlon argue in The Opportunity, arms control can address some key security challenges facing Washington today and enhance both American and global security. Pifer and O'Hanlon make a compelling case for further arms control measures—to reduce the nuclear threat to the United States and its allies, to strengthen strategic stability, to promote greater transparency regarding secretive nuclear arsenals, to create the possibility for significant defense budget savings, to bolster American credibility in the fight to curb nuclear proliferation, and to build a stronger and more sustainable U.S.-Russia relationship. President Obama gave priority to nuclear arms control early in his first term and, by all accounts, would like to be transformational on these questions. Can there be another major U.S.-Russia arms treaty? Can the tactical and surplus strategic nuclear warheads that have so far escaped controls be brought into such a framework? Can a modus vivendi be reached between the two countries on missile defense? And what of multilateral accords on nuclear testing and production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons? Pifer and O'Hanlon concisely frame the issues, the background, and the choices facing the president; provide practical policy recommendations, and put it all in clear and readable prose that will be easily understood by the layman.

On November 10, 2017, Pope Francis became the first pontiff in the nuclear era to take a complete stand against nuclear weapons, even as a form of deterrence. At a Vatican conference of leaders in the field of disarmament, he made it clear that the possession of the bomb itself was immoral. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons presents the pope’s address and original testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureates, religious leaders, diplomats, and civil society activists. These luminaries, which include the pope and a Hiroshima survivor, make the moral case against possessing, manufacturing, and deploying nuclear arms. Drew Christiansen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the 2017 United Nations conference that negotiated the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, helps readers to understand this conference in its historical context. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons is a critical companion for scholars of modern Catholicism, moral theology, and peace studies, as well as policymakers working on effective disarmament. It shows how the Church’s revised position presents an opportunity for global leaders to connect disarmament to larger movements for peace, pointing toward future action.