Lora Saalman Ofner left her position at the Carnegie Endowment and is now an Associate Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.
Lora Saalman Ofner was a nonresident associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focused on China’s nuclear and strategic policies toward India, Russia, and arms control.
Saalman organized seven seminar series resulting in over 50 events at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. She also taught Chinese- and English-language courses on China’s and India’s regional diplomacy as an adjunct professor at Tsinghua University.
Saalman completed her PhD at Tsinghua University, where she was the first American to earn a doctorate from its Department of International Relations. Her Chinese-language dissertation covers the impact of U.S. and European export control shifts on Sino-Indian military modernization. She was awarded the Outstanding PhD Graduate Award and the Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Tier. She also organized one of the first Sino-Indian conferences on nuclear relations between the two countries. This conference led to the volume The China-India Nuclear Crossroads, which Saalman edited.
Prior to joining Carnegie in April 2010, Saalman served as a visiting fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, a visiting fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and a research associate at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. Additionally, she was a graduate research assistant at the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for East Asian Studies and Center for Nonproliferation Studies, through which she earned a one-year fellowship to work at the Division of Safeguards Information Technology at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The proliferation of new technologies threatens to increase the risks of nuclear use. Join us to discuss two of those risks; precision-strike weapons in the hands of U.S. allies and artificial intelligence.
While the United States argues that its deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea is necessary to counter the nuclear threat from North Korea, Chinese experts worry that U.S. missile defense assets in the region could undermine China’s strategic nuclear deterrent capability.
Attempts to secure strategic stability in the Asia-Pacific region are being put to the test by increasingly tense relations in the U.S.-China relationship and concerns from U.S. allies in the region.
As new technologies challenge the notions of nuclear balancing and strategic deterrence, experts are examining policy measures to address the matters that may arise with these new capabilities.
China tested a hypersonic gliding weapon for the first time on January 9. Although details of the test are murky, it confirms a long-suspected Chinese interest in developing hypersonic weapons.
Despite repeated assertions that Conventional Prompt Global Strike will be a niche capability, not intended to affect U.S. strategic balances with other countries, Beijing does not fully trust these assurances.
There are growing signs that strategic relations between China and Russia are on an upswing. Yet the nuclear and strategic relationship between these two powers remains largely unexamined, as do their long-term prospects for cooperation.
China and India have long-standing unresolved border issues but the Indian media too often acts to further inflame tensions by over-hyping the situation.
The recent border dispute between China and India may initiate a more comprehensive system between the two countries for communicating on territorial issues and other points of contention.
Beijing believes that China's strategic and security interests must be met in order to ensure that economic gains follow.