The Case for Arms Control and Drawing Down Nuclear Forces

Posted: January 24th, 2017

By Hans Kristensen

Hans M. Kristensen is Director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists. He is co-author of the FAS Nuclear Notebook column published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the World Nuclear Forces chapter in the SIPRI Yearbook. He is a frequent consultant to the news media on the status and operations of nuclear forces of the world's nine nuclear-armed states.

The pursuit of nuclear arms control agreements and other efforts to draw down nuclear forces to reduce nuclear dangers is a goal that is almost as old as the nuclear weapon itself. It has been a major national security and foreign policy objective for nearly all U.S. administrations, Democratic or Republican, even though they may have gone about it in very different ways.

As President Donald Trump’s administration takes office the question is whether it will follow this American arms control tradition and pursue new reductions of nuclear forces, or whether its policies will seek to hold the line, or even increase the nuclear arsenal.

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