Sept. 20, 2019

Power Under Parity

Distinguished Research Fellow Paul Bernstein contributed his expertise to this report on strategic parity in an era of great power competition.

July 23, 2019

The INF Treaty: A Spectacular, Inflexible, Time-bound Success

This article discusses the changing dynamics that led first Moscow and then Washington to reevaluate the merit of the INF Treaty. It concludes that the treaty's relative rigidity may play a key role in its undoing and suggests that future arms control negotiations develop more flexible and resilient mechanisms of review, dispute resolution, and verification.

Nov. 3, 2016

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Challenges for the New Administration

The 2015 National Security Strategy identifies the proliferation and/or use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) among the top strategic risks to the Nation’s interests.

July 18, 2016

The Soviet Biological Weapons Program and Its Legacy in Today’s Russia

In its first Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Case Study, the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CSWMD) at the National Defense University examined President Richard M. Nixon’s decision, on November 25, 1969, to terminate the U.S. offensive biological weapons program. This occasional paper seeks to explain why the Soviet government, at approximately the same time, decided to do essentially the opposite, namely, to establish a large biological warfare (BW) program that would be driven by newly discovered and powerful biotechnologies. By introducing the innovation of recombinant DNA technology—commonly referred to as genetic engineering—the Soviets were attempting to create bacterial and viral strains that were more useful for military purposes than were strains found in nature.

March 10, 2016

Making Russia Think Twice About Nuclear Threats

On September 11, 2013, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, writing in The New York Times, issued “A Plea for Caution From Russia.”

March 9, 2016

Countering Russia’s Strategy for Regional Coercion and War

Much of the discussion since the 2014 Ukraine crisis began has focused on how Russia could exploit a local or regional political crisis (real or manufactured) to launch a military action that would result in a rapid fait accompli against one of the Baltic states (or elsewhere in eastern Europe), forcing NATO to weigh the costs and risks of a military response.

Aug. 20, 2015

Putin's Russia and U.S. Defense Strategy

The workshop addressed two questions bearing on the development of U.S. and NATO strategy toward Russia.

Aug. 15, 2015

Putin's Russia and U.S. Defense Strategy

The workshop addressed two questions bearing on the development of U.S. and NATO strategy toward Russia. First, how has Russia framed the problem of deterring and defeating a conventionally superior nuclear-armed major power and its allies? Second, what should the United States and NATO do to strengthen their deterrence and defense postures? In exploring these challenges with a diverse group of experts, the workshop also sought to give impetus to a community of interest that should work collectively to ensure that defense planning is informed by a detailed understanding of contemporary Russian attitudes, doctrine, and capabilities. In order to focus in depth on the deterrence challenge, the workshop did not undertake a comprehensive review of all the issues shaping Russia’s relations with the west. A number of worthy and important questions were therefore not discussed in detail, including the genesis of the current confrontation with Russia, the full range of recent developments in Russian military capability and doctrine, Russian domestic politics, and how to integrate the military and nonmilitary dimensions of national and international strategy toward Russia.

April 1, 2010

The Origins of Nunn-Lugar and Cooperative Threat Reduction

In a 1999 interview, Ashton Carter, a key figure in helping to create and implement the threat reduction program initiated by Senators Sam Nunn (D–GA) and Richard Lugar (R–IN), recalled four visits between 1994 and 1996 to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine. Planted in the soil of this base were the most powerful rockets mankind has ever made, armed with hundreds of hydrogen bombs and aimed at the United States. In turn, Pervomaysk was itself the target of similar American missiles and weapons. Under the Nunn-Lugar program, the missiles deployed at Pervomaysk by the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and the silos that housed them were destroyed.

July 1, 2009

Aligning Disarmament to Nuclear Dangers: Off to a Hasty START?

Confronted by a daunting array of nuclear threats, and having pledged to reinvigorate the application of disarmament tools to address these dangers, the Obama administration has decided to focus its initial efforts on negotiating a new bilateral agreement with Russia to replace the Cold War–era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires at the end of this year.