Managing Nuclear Risks in an Era of Strategic Confrontation
Abstract: The United States and its allies are now in a new era of strategic confrontation, with a rising risk that nuclear weapons will be used by an adversary in conflict. While remaining open to cooperative measures, they now need to depend most on themselves to manage and, if possible, reduce nuclear risks. It is possible to identify a set of principles or guidelines for such efforts, ranging from ensuring a robust nuclear deterrent adapted to today's threats to, at the very opposite end of the spectrum, setting out a credible and compelling long-term nuclear vision for dealing with the most dangerous weapons yet invented by man. Revitalizing nuclear dread; clarity of commitments coupled to managing conflict flashpoints; unilateral signaling and restraint, at best to encourage parallel restraint; engagement with allies, adversaries, and onlookers; and preserving what remains of the 20th century's arms control legacy are other principles. Particularly for the United States, rebuilding greater consensus at home on defense, deterrence, and the American role in the world is a challenge that cannot be avoided. Are these principles the right ones? Can they be successfully implemented? Suffice it to contend that taken together they offer a better place to begin crafting a U.S. and allied approach than either of the two most prominent alternatives -- refusing to admit that a world in which nuclear weapons can be steadily moved into the background does not exist or gambling on nuclear deterrence alone to ensure that our luck never runs out in a future nuclear crisis.
Bio: Dr. Lewis A. Dunn is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. After nearly three decades from 1987 to 2017 as a senior manager and analyst at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), he now is an independent consultant. He analyzes and writes on issues of reducing global nuclear dangers, arms control and nuclear disarmament (including verification), Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) diplomacy, and nuclear non-proliferation. As a consultant to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, he provides support on NPT and nuclear disarmament verification issues. From 2018-2023, he was a member of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. He served in the Reagan Administration from 1983 to 1987 as Assistant Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and from 1981-1983 as a Special Assistant for Non-Proliferation in the Department of State. Prior to joining the Reagan Administration, he was a senior analyst at the Hudson Institute. From 1969-1974, he taught Political Science at Kenyon College. Dr. Dunn has lectured in the United States and abroad, been invited to speak at international workshops, and published widely on nuclear risk reduction, arms control and nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and NPT issues. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
