Since the United States and Russia might soon sign a new treaty that limits their strategic nuclear weapons, it's natural to wonder about Washington and Moscow's tactical nuclear weapons, which the treaty won't cover. The hope is that the momentum for a nuclear-weapon-free world, the renewed U.S.-Russian negotiations, and the ongoing review of the U.S. nuclear posture and NATO strategic concept will help make progress on reducing nonstrategic nuclear arsenals--an issue that has been largely neglected for more than a decade.

Dear Friends: As the Bulletin’s new Executive Director and Publisher, I cannot think of a more important set of issues than those taken up by our editors, columnists, and contributors.

JOHN MECKLIN The debates: Why nuclear weapons should be a major focus of the 2020 campaign The first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden takes place on September 29th. Dive into Bulletin articles to explore the nuclear weapons questions that citizens and journalists alike should be asking the candidates now, before the election in November. Start … Continued

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group are delighted to announce that the Bulletin will be moving into a partnership with Routledge, part of the Taylor and Francis Group, effective January 1, 2016. Today, the rise in geo-political tensions between the West and Russia, ongoing international environmental debates on climate … Continued

Swashbuckling military action in outer space occupies a hallowed place in American popular culture. But in the 1980s, fiction and reality fused in the form of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a “pipe-dream” of a missile defense program. Now, President Trump’s announcement of a US Space Force has brought militarized space fantasies back to the … Continued

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946. At that exact moment, the United States presented a blueprint for the abolishment of nuclear weapons to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. The rest is history.

Why the concept of minimum deterrence—which calls for nuclear arsenals much smaller than the United States and Russia now possess—could be a basis for future arms control efforts.

In Moscow on July 27, 1989, at the offices of the Central Committee, a group of high-level officials gathered in the office of Lev Zaikov, the Soviet Politburo member who oversaw the country's military-industrial complex. Sixteen people in addition to Zaikov came to the session, a Politburo "commission" that included Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, and Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Moiseev.

There was an encouraging sign after talks abruptly ended in Hanoi:  Neither side will walk away from diplomacy just yet, and the public messaging from both sides was positive. But there was also a worrisome sign: the inability to announce a date, even a rough one, for negotiators to meet again.

A preview of the Trump-Kim summit from Hanoi, Vietnam.