Two summits in June will set the course for discussions on nuclear arms control.

NATO Heads of State and Government will gather on 14 June in Brussels to initiate the process leading to a new Alliance Strategic Concept. Two days later, on 16 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden will meet in Geneva and discuss how to restore predictability and stability in Russian-US relations, including through new bilateral Strategic Stability talks. What are the implications of these meetings for future discussions on nuclear arms control? What can and what should we expect for future nuclear reductions? How are discussions on the Alliance’s deterrence and defence posture linked to the US-Russia bilateral track? How can Europeans ensure that Washington and Moscow take their interests into account?

One week ahead of the NATO summit, we discussed these and related questions with three distinguished members of the Deep Cuts Commission, namely Sarah Bidgood, Ambassador Walter J. Schmid and Andrei Zagorski, moderated by Oliver Meier.

Watch the full briefing

Nuclear arms control faces an uncertain future. The last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, New START, will expire in February 2021, unless Russia and the U.S. extend the accord. Looking beyond the near-term, bringing in additional actors, such as China, and capturing new technologies are some of the longer-term challenges.

One day after the U.S. Presidential elections, the Deep Cuts Project discussed these and related questions with Rose Gottemoeller, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute. She presented her recommendations on how to move forward in the realm of nuclear arms control, based on her recent article Rethinking Nuclear Arms Control in the Washington Quarterly.

Deep Cuts Commissioners Andrei Zagorski, Head of the Department of Disarmament and Conflict Resolution at IMEMO, and Götz Neuneck, Senior Research Fellow at the IFSH, commented on the proposals, followed by Q&A. Moderated by Oliver Meier, Senior Researcher at the IFSH Berlin office.

Watch the full briefing