By Bulletin Staff, October 25, 2016
On Monday, October 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew his country from the US-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA). The PDMA, first signed in 2000 and renewed in 2009, affirmed the intention of each country to dispose of stockpiles of plutonium that could be used to build nuclear warheads.
President Putin’s decision to pull out of the PDMA is just the latest worrying development affecting an increasingly troubled relationship between Russia and the United States. Below, we’ve gathered some of the best writing the Bulletin has to offer on the subject. Are we now in Cold War 2.0?
Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?
Pavel Podvig
The way back to the US-Russia negotiating table
Lawrence J. Korb
Time for a different kind of US-Russian arms control
Adam Mount
From the digital journal:
Interview with former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul
John Mecklin
Free access
Putin: The one-man show the West doesn’t understand
Fiona Hill
Free access
Barrels and Bullets: The geostrategic significance of Russia’s oil and gas exports
Michael Bradshaw and Richard Connolly
Free access
US-Russia relations: The middle cannot hold
Jeremy Shapiro and Samuel Charap
Free access
Would Russia’s undersea “doomsday drone” carry a cobalt bomb?
Edward Moore Geist
Blurring the line between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons: Increasing the risk of accidental nuclear war?
Pavel Podvig
Saving nuclear arms control
Alexei Arbatov
Nuclear Notebook:
Russian nuclear forces, 2016
Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris
Free access
US nuclear forces, 2016
Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris
Free access
Other reading:
Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement
http://fissilematerials.org/library/PMDA2000.pdf
Free access
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