Webinar On-Demand: President Trump’s Nuclear Arms Challenges and the Dangers Ahead

Presented by the Pulitzer Center, the Outrider Foundation, the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Rachel Oswald, foreign policy reporter for CQ Roll Call, and Scott D. Sagan, co-director and senior fellow of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University, discussed the current terrain of global nuclear risks. They shared insights into the dynamics of nuclear diplomacy, the growing nuclear ambitions of countries like China and Russia, and how the United States may navigate defense strategies and shape nuclear policies in an increasingly unpredictable global environment.

• The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced on January 28, 2025, that it was moving its doomsday clock one second closer to midnight. This adjustment signals that humanity is the closest it has ever been to “a catastrophic event that would imperil all of humanity,” Oswald explained. Sagan was among the scientists who made this call. 
  “And we set the clock, as the bulletin has done for decades now, based not on a prediction about what’s going to happen over the next year, but what has happened over the past year. Has the world gotten safer? Or has it gotten more dangerous? And the judgement, a consensus judgment, is that it’s gotten slightly more dangerous,” Sagan said.
• The Bulletin’s announcement came just over a week after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Oswald noted the rocky start of the new administration and asked Sagan to share his thoughts on Trump’s openness to reach deals. “Well, I personally think Donald Trump has quite a strong hand now … I personally think that President Trump would love to get a Nobel Peace Prize—to say that Barack Obama is not the only president who got a Nobel Peace Prize … And therefore, he does have incentives to be a peacemaker and to be a dealmaker … So, I think that we’ve got an opportunity here … to have more arms control or potentially have some agreements on nonproliferation,” Sagan responded.
• Both China and Russia have been building their nuclear arsenals, raising concerns about a three-way arms race between China, Russia, and the United States. As a result, the new administration’s nuclear policy—especially in relation to China and Russia—has become a critical issue. On Russia, Sagan shared: “Now, the sad irony right now is that the potential Russian use of nuclear weapons has gone down in Ukraine because Russia is being more successful. And that the risk of nuclear war goes up when Russia feels like it is losing a conventional war. So I hope that there is a peace, but it would be a negotiated peace. And I hope that Donald Trump doesn’t give in to Vladamir Putin’s desire for a complete success, because that would decrease the risk right now, but it would increase the risk of future Russian invasion of either Ukraine or of other neighbors.” 
• “We don’t know what the Trump administration’s policy will be regarding China,” Sagan said. “We do know that people speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign during the election campaign commented that the United States should have as many nuclear weapons as China and Russia [combined]. Now, if you wanted to match two other countries it means that you’d likely have a capability to attack that other country, potentially in a destabilizing manner.” Sagan stressed, ”In my view, a three-way arms race cannot be won and should never be raced.”  
• Oswald noted that the instability European NATO countries felt during President Trump’s first administration has led to a loss of confidence in the United States for security. As a result, these nations have made strides to better secure themselves, leading to the formation of new security groupings. “It’s bewildering, and it’s alarming,” Sagan remarked before adding this additional concern: “I am a reluctant believer in nuclear deterrence. I think that nuclear deterrence has not been perfect … But it also has an effect. People in leadership positions are concerned about their legacy and are concerned about the possibility that a conventional war could turn into a nuclear war. And that can be a constraint. That said, nuclear deterrence, people will often say, requires extreme rationality. I don’t think that’s quite right. Deterrence doesn’t require rationality. It requires a checks-and-balances system, so that if an irrational leader makes a rash decision, others can oppose it. And that’s why I worry about dictators with nuclear weapons: They can make rash decisions, based on bad information, based on misconceptions, based on false warnings, and no one will correct them.”
• Oswald observed that the Biden's administration bandwidth was tested, noting that, in her experience, the United States struggles to balance multiple crises at once. She asked Sagan to share his thoughts on the new administration’s capacity to manage such challenges. Sagan offered the assurance that “the U.S. government is filled with very competent bureaucratic actors, and the U.S. military is filled with well-trained, loyal, and I think, extremely competent officers. We should have some sense of continuity, even when top leadership changes … Not everything changes … All that nuclear infrastructure still exists, and we should be pleased that it works as well as it does. It’s not perfect, and there have clearly been problems, but I think on the whole, it’s great.”
• In response to an audience member’s question, “Is there anything that the common person can do to at least try and help,” Sagan underscored the importance of voting.   
  “My good friend and former Stanford colleague was General John Chali Kashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff … He was asked at a meeting once at Stanford whether he told his soldiers going into combat what should they be thinking about … He’d ask them, ‘Are you afraid?’ And they said, ‘No we’re not afraid, Sir. We’re not afraid.’ He said, ‘No, you should be a little afraid, not afraid enough to paralyze you, but just afraid enough that you don’t do something stupid.’” Sagan shared. “ I worry that the American public is not afraid enough, and so they will vote for people who don’t know much about these subjects at all, or don’t care about these subjects. You should be just afraid enough that this should be one of the important things that you use when you decide who to vote for.” 

Additional resources:

• Outrider Nuclear Expert Source List
• Outrider Newsletter
• Outrider Nuclear Bomb Blast Simulator
• Trump Orders ‘Iron Dome’ for U.S., but Freezes Funds for Nuclear Protection
• CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) Live Debate: AI Integration in NC3

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