The Legality of Nuclear Deterrence

The legality of nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and nuclear deterrence have been much debated over the years and a 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice did little to settle the issue. What if the ICJ were to take up the issue again? Would the result be any different, especially in light of the negotiation of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? Please join us for a discussion of these issues. Our speaker will be Newell Highsmith, who supervised the Arms Control and Nonproliferation section of the Legal Office at the Department of State from 2001 to 2017. He will summarize the main lines of argument and conclusions from a new monograph on the subject, produced by the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Newell Highsmith is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University. He served as an attorney at the U.S. Department of State for 30 years on issues of arms control and nonproliferation, most recently as Deputy Legal Adviser from 2013 to 2017. He served as primary legal adviser to the U.S. negotiating teams for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and for the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. Mr. Highsmith was also involved with negotiating the 2008 agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation with India, analyzing the legal issues raised by Syria's use of chemical weapons and its construction of a clandestine nuclear reactor, evaluating Russia's violations of its arms control obligations, responding to Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing, facilitating Libya's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction, and responding to the revelations regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons program. He earned his B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.