Framework for a Secure Nuclear Future


Creating a new framework for a secure nuclear future without nuclear weapons.

Challenge

Nuclear deterrence is no longer an effective strategy for managing contemporary nuclear risks but there is no shared understanding of what a sustainable world free of nuclear weapons looks like.

Action

Develop a new framework for a secure nuclear future without nuclear weapons that includes the legal, institutional, normative, and technological requirements to verify, monitor, detect, manage, and control nuclear materials and technology.

Results

A fresh narrative and positive vision for a more secure and robust future without nuclear weapons that is viewed as realistic, achievable, and sustainable.

Nuclear deterrence is no longer an effective strategy for managing growing contemporary nuclear risks, particularly as cyber threats and artificial intelligence increase the potential for nuclear weapons use. Relying on the threat of use of nuclear weapons not only makes us less secure but is inconsistent with our values.

The world needs a new framework for a secure nuclear future where nuclear technology may still exist, but the world no longer relies on nuclear weapons and the inherent threat of nuclear annihilation. Instead, the legal, normative, institutional, and technological foundations exist to confidently verify, monitor, manage, and control the peaceful use of nuclear materials and technology.

As NTI President Joan Rohlfing wrote in The Myth of “Just” Nuclear Deterrence: Time for a New Strategy to Protect Humanity from Existential Nuclear Risk, “[w]e owe the future a system that will prevent global catastrophe or even extinction and allow humanity to flourish .. It is time to rethink the global strategy for managing nuclear risks.”

This project seeks to build such a framework, identify its elements, and examine where gaps still exist that need to be filled to bring this vision to reality. The project will engage communities with overlapping interests in preventing nuclear use, such as the financial, business, environmental, humanitarian, and climate communities.

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