Skip to content

Seeking Nuclear Security Through Greater International Coordination

<p>A woman rides a bicycle past cooling towers at a thermal power plant in Beijing on December 3, 2007.</p>
A woman rides a bicycle past cooling towers at a thermal power plant in Beijing on December 3, 2007. (Jason Lee/Reuters)
  • Tanya Ogilvie-White
    Senior Lecturer, International Relations, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Jack Boureston
    Managing Director, FirstWatch International

Overview

In April 2009, U.S. president Barack Obama identified nuclear terrorism as the gravest threat to the United States. But debates in the main decision-making bodies in Vienna and New York reveal strong resistance to measures that would strengthen the nuclear security regime. This International Institutions and Global Governance program Working Paper by Jack Boureston and Tanya Ogilvie-White offers suggestions to strengthen the nuclear security regime and achieve the four-year goal set by President Obama to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world. The paper concludes that the time-consuming task of forging international consensus will be essential to preventing what Graham Allison has called “the ultimate preventable catastrophe”—a nuclear terrorist attack.t

Report

The Pharma Choke Point

Disabled person with Multiple Sclerosis hand sorting prescription pills
By Thomas J. Bollyky, Rush Doshi, Prashant Yadav, Olivia Kosloff and Elena Every