America’s potential strategic disengagement from Europe is leading key European powers to reconsider the role of nuclear weapons in European security in the absence of extended U.S. nuclear deterrence. 

Great power competition between the United States and both Russia and China, the return of war and nuclear threats to Europe, and the emergence of new technologies have created a turning point in Germany. In Berlin, policymakers are discussing potential adaptations to Germany's nuclear policies.

Germans are debating nuclear deterrence—again.

A comprehensive look at Germany’s nuclear weapons policies in the twenty-first century.

The concept of strategic stability has come under immense pressure in recent years. Nuclear multipolarity, novel technologies, an exacerbating crisis in arms control, and a growing acceptance of “softer” norms are all taking a toll.

The resulting framework may look very different from arms control of the past. But it would be better than a future in which proliferation proceeds in the absence of any shared guardrails for handling the most dangerous weapons in the world.

Some of these technologies have the potential to significantly undermine international peace and security, particularly if pursued and deployed uncritically.

For this roundtable, we invited four scholars, practitioners, and abolition advocates to further articulate what a research agenda on nuclear injustice should look like.

Europe’s biggest security crisis of recent decades has brought back fear of nuclear use, nuclear war, and arms racing.

New types of missiles, an adversarial NATO-Russia relationship, and the ever-present threat of inadvertent escalation make it necessary to start thinking anew how verifiable arms control with Russia may look like in the future.