How the U.S. Can Prevent Nuclear Chaos

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: North Korea vowed to never give up its nuclear arsenal at a rare address to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday. The announcement comes at a politically unstable time with growing international concerns around nuclear proliferation. Amid these threats, a bipartisan task force has urged the United States to reconsider how it intercepts the expansion of this destructive industry. Ernest Moniz and Meghan O’Sullivan, co-chairs of this task force, joined Walter Isaacson with their recommendations.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Meghan O’Sullivan and Ernie Moniz, welcome to the show.

 

ERNEST MONIZ: Pleasure to be here.

 

MEGHAN O’SULLIVAN: Nice to be here.

 

ISAACSON: Megan, you and Ernie were among the co-chairs of a report that just came out, and I think it’s published recently, on the Task Force on Nuclear Proliferation and U.S. National Security. What was the point of that, Megan?

 

O’SULLIVAN: The origins of the task force, I’d say go back even just as far as 1964. And we think about, at that time, China detonated a nuclear weapon, and President Lyndon Johnson brought together a group of foreign policy experts to say, What is the next phase of potential nuclear proliferation looked like. It was called the Gilpatric Commission, and they came out with a number of recommendations and considerations that were then implemented. It led to 60 years of essentially a period of minimal proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

 

We’re now at a period where Ernie and our other co-chair, Tino Cuellar from the Carnegie Endowment, we assess that we’re at a moment where the potential for greater nuclear proliferation has not been greater in decades. And so, again, we are faced with a very rapidly changing geopolitical environment, one that we think lends itself to much greater proliferation of nuclear weapons. So we convene this bipartisan task force in an effort to, again, look at the question, is this a national security priority of the United State to advance non-proliferation? And if so, are the tools in the architecture that have withstood the test of time for 60 years, are they still well suited to today? And that was the reason that we convened that task force. And the, and the results, as you said, were published just last week.

 

O’SULLIVAN: Ernie, as Megan said, it was chaired 60 years or so ago by Ros[well] Gilpatric, who was Deputy Secretary of State, but it was a Lyndon Johnson Presidential Commission. Y’all were self-organized. Is there a problem that we don’t have, you know, the government, the president, trying to figure this out?

 

MONIZ: Well, Walter, I think clearly — well, first of all, let me just say that this task force today came to the same high level conclusion of the Gilpatric Commission, namely that nuclear proliferation is indeed central to our security and, and should remain a, a priority.

 

But this commission was a non-governmental commission. And one of our recommendations to — and I’ll come back to your question — for example, was about the need to really rethink extended deterrence, how our allies consider U.S security guarantees. There have always been uncertainties, but I would say, now going back to your question today, some of the directions being taken in the United States by the administration, for example, they do, they do elevate some of those concerns about reliability of U.S. commitment. So, so I would say that that distinction really did, did come into play in our considerations.

 

ISAACSON: And so, Megan, Ernie just talked about extended deterrence — which those of you in the foreign policy business know what it means — but basically it means don’t get nuclear weapons of your own. Don’t worry. We, the U.S. will use our deterrent capability so that you don’t particularly need them. Do you think that’s believable these days, Megan? Is that still a good policy? Why are you all supporting extended deterrents?

 

O’SULLIVAN: Well, there’s two important points here, Walter. The first is, yes, the task force was unequivocal in saying that developing, maintaining a robust extended deterrence is absolutely essential to a successful continuation of non-proliferation objectives. Now, we recognize that it is harder today to make that a credible argument to many of our allies. And it’s not just at this moment in time, it’s really over the span of, you know, multiple administrations that I think many of our allies are questioning America’s commitment and reliability. Some of this just has to do with, you know, it, it goes back to, Is America overextended? And I would say particularly now, there are many allies who are questioning whether or not the United States will be willing to use the extended deterrent or to provide the extended deterrent. 

 

I think the, the, that was one of the reasons why we created the task force is to say it’s a changed geopolitical environment. You have China becoming, you know, a, a country that has a very large nuclear arsenal. You have Russia now threatening the use of nuclear weapons. You have Iran — a proliferation threat like we haven’t seen from Iran before — the current military force, not withstanding, and the questions over extended deterrence. 

 

ISAACSON: Ernie, we just heard Megan say that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has been throwing around the implication that he could use nuclear weapon. In a speech that President Trump gave to the military this week. He kind of addressed that, and he was talking about Putin saying the — President Trump said he had moved two submarines because of it. And he says, “We cannot let people throw around that word, the ‘N word.’” And by ‘N word’ he meant nuclear. Do you think that President Trump is on this page that we really have to keep a deterrent and also keep a non-proliferation policy?

 

MONIZ: Yes, I do actually. And in fact, just to elaborate slightly on what Meghan said in this context. Part of the extended deterrence is in fact the idea that our allies need to frankly strengthen their military postures and then, and then have those postures integrated with, with our nuclear deterrent. Strengthening their conventional postures is, of course, very consistent with what the president has been, been advocating. 

 

I would also say that with regard to Russia specifically, but also I would say China, clearly a lot of the success in non-proliferation during the Cold War — and beyond the Cold War — came from great power relationships, the US and, and the USSR, and then then Russia working together despite disagreements on, on a shared interest in non-proliferation. That that continues today. It’s a little bit creaky, shall we say, the great power coordination, but it’s something where we again, recommend re-engaging in that despite the differences with both Russia and, and China.

 

Now, President Trump, one other thing, Walter, I’ll just add is that President Trump, long before he was president, going back to the 1980s, in fact, was speaking out against nuclear weapons. He has spoken many times about trying to decrease their role in our security posture. And in fact, it was just earlier this year in May where Vice President Vance explicitly said that the president, I think, to use his words, hates proliferation, and I hate proliferation. So I think there are elements there to build on and that’s exactly what our report tries, tries to address and, and to make suggestions. 

 

For example, I’ll end by just saying that one of the recommendations is that the three countries perhaps even expanded to other nuclear weapon states, at least the five original weapon states, if not more could, for example, collectively commit to not threaten or use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. Well, that would be an incentive for them, in fact to state — 

 

ISAACSON: Well wait Putin did the opposite.

MONIZ: I’m sorry?

 

ISAACSON: Well, President Putin just did the opposite.

 

MONIZ: No, so no — 

 

ISAACSON: Threatening nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state, Ukraine. 

 

MONIZ: Exactly. And, and that’s one reason why we have said — I have said for sure — that President Putin really crossed a line there and did something unprecedented. The idea here is it would be great to put that genie back in the bottle. It’s not easy. But that kind of negative security assurance would be, we think, quite quite effective if we can get there. And I think the president would be interested in going in that direction.

 

ISAACSON: Meghan, talking about Ukraine. Ukraine had nuclear weapons when it ended up not being part of the Soviet Union anymore. And we convinced them to give up the nuclear weapons by saying, Don’t worry, you don’t need them. We’ll defend you. Boy, that doesn’t make me feel very confident that we can talk other countries into doing that.

 

O’SULLIVAN: Well, I think there’s, as, as you know, Walter a very long history there and contested in, in some ways. But I think the big point that you’re making is a very valid point that many countries of around the world not only look at Ukraine and giving up nuclear weapons that, that were on their soil when the Soviet Union dissolved, but they also look at the, the Libyan example or the Iraq example, and they think, you know, countries that give up nuclear weapons or don’t have nuclear weapons are ones that are subject to aggression. And they look at other countries, the most obvious one being North Korea — which is the only country in this century to have acquired nuclear weapons — actually, you know, against perhaps all odds, you see you know, the leader of North Korea comfortably in place. And so I think the lesson that many countries have is that pursuing a nuclear weapon could be in their national security interest.

 

And again, the purpose of the task force is to ask how we can recalibrate our policy and upgrade our tools and the architecture that the international community has to kind of make sure that countries aren’t making those kinds of calculations so that they have, you know, new or more credible incentives to stay non-nuclear. 

 

So one of the one of the findings of the task force, which I think is very significant, particular in this political moment, is that, again, a bipartisan group of, of foreign policy national security experts all agreed that even the U.S. allies should not should not be in a position to gain a nuclear weapon, that that’s not in the U.S. interest, that it is in the U.S. interest to convince them not to pursue one. And the reason why this is so significant is some of your viewers may know that, you know, there’s an active conversation in Washington about, well, maybe it would be cheaper and more efficient and easier for the United States if some of our allies had their own nuclear weapon, we wouldn’t have to provide that extended deterrent in the same way. And this group really concluded, that’s a very risky approach to take, and we need to invest, again, in finding a way to ensure that our allies, that they do not need to go down this road in order to guarantee their own security.

 

ISAACSON: Ernie, how could you say with a straight face to the people of South Korea that now that we’ve allowed North Korea to get a nuclear weapon, they aren’t safer and better off with one?

 

MONIZ: We think that we need to maintain our alliance, if you like, with South, South Korea. We continue to provide a nuclear deterrent, but what’s really important is in a, in an integrated way improving our conventional capabilities. As a reminder — and you well know, you know this quite well, Walter — that the, the threats to South Korea are not simply from North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. They have artillery lined up essentially along the border with South Korea that could pretty much annihilate Seoul. So it’s really comes down to an, an integrated regional strategy for, for security, and that’s what we would advocate. 

 

ISAACSON: Megan, you’re not just a defense expert, you’re a whole foreign policy expert. And when we’re talking about this, we talk about the need for Russia and China to work together with us to do it. That seems to me that we’re in the least capable position we’ve been in for 20, 30 years to get both those countries to work with us. In fact, somehow we’ve driven Russia and China into a closer partnership, at least. What — there’s so much we would need to do with both countries, from AI to climate, to nuclear proliferation, to bio- to gene-editing. Is there a way we can get back to having a more pragmatic relationship, especially with China?

 

O’SULLIVAN: The, the answer to your question is, is sort of twofold. One, in the report we talk about how having a successfully rejuvenated global non-proliferation regime cannot be done by the United States alone. It has to be done with some kind of cooperation with Russia and China. We’re not advocating an immediate resuscitation of talks. We’re we’re saying that we’re hopeful, and we would recommend that those talks happen as soon as is possible. But most important, I think we acknowledge — and make the case very credibly — that we still have common interest with both Moscow and Beijing in preventing more states from becoming nuclear weapons states.

 

And so, you know, you suggest, could we imagine a world in which we’re having productive conversations with them across a very wide range of things? We’re saying we should not wait until the relationship is that thought to pursue these talks. That there are common interest among these three powers in having a world with less proliferation. And therefore, we should try to find ways to pursue this. 

 

It’s actually interesting. On the day we released the port — the report, it was the same day that Vladimir Putin said that he would be willing to adhere to the, the limits on the development of nuclear arsenals a year beyond the expiration of the New START Treaty, which will happen in February. So in the absence of some kind of you know, temporary understanding as of February 2026, the world will be without any limitations on the development of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia for the first time in decades — 

 

ISAACSON: Wait let me follow up on that. Do you think the Trump administration will wanna extend this, what’s called the START treaty, the Strategics Arms Reduction Talk treaty?

 

O’SULLIVAN: Yeah, I, I can’t speak for the Trump administration, but it would make, to me, and I think — well, I’ll speak for myself at this moment. It would make to me a lot of sense to take Vladimir Putin up on that. I think there might be other motivations that Vladimir Putin has in extending that offer.  Perhaps he’s looking to, you know, try to mud muddy the water between, you know, be tough on Ukraine and nice on nuclear matters, or perhaps he’s looking for limitations on the Golden Dome project that the Trump administration is committed to. But, you know, without commenting on what other elements might come into that conversation, I would imagine the Trump administration would find it very much in its interest to have more time to be able to develop a follow on to the new START. 

 

And this goes back to Ernie’s, Ernie’s point about how President Trump has been clear that he is not interested in seeing any more nuclear proliferation around the world. And so this is, you know, a this would be something that we should recognize as a positive step, although not mistake it for any kind of, you know, warming of a relationship with Moscow.

 

MONIZ: Walter, can I just add that, I think the it’s easy to, you know, be somewhat cynical about the, about the offer. For one thing, the Russian economy is, is in no position to greatly expand its nuclear arsenal. Frankly, neither are we in a position to expand our nuclear arsenal right now, given some of the challenges in terms of so-called modernizing the arsenal. Nevertheless, completely agree with Meghan that having those guardrails at least extended is a very, very good signal, and one that has to be capitalized on by having other discussions start. Despite the Ukraine situation, we can have other discussions. 

 

And by the way, New START, of course, it puts these quantitative limits on, which is what Putin offered to extend. But there are other elements as well, in terms of inspections — very, very tricky in this current current environment; in terms of data exchange, which could be still possible, certainly alerts in terms of missile tests. So I, I think the issue is I very much hope the president will accept the offer, but accept it with the statement, “and let’s keep talking, and get some other things in place.”

 

ISAACSON: Meghan O’Sullivan, Ernie Moniz, thank you both for joining us.

 

MONIZ: Thank you, Walter.

 

O’SULLIVAN: Thank you, Walter.