Journal on World Affairs, UCLA
While the United States continues to move out of the CENTCOM area of responsibility and look elsewhere in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, ensuring regional denuclearization in the Middle East and establishing a free flow of oil must remain in America’s national interest.
Pakistan’s political stalemate is built upon months of internal security threats and scrutiny from the international community over Prime Minister Khan’s courtship with Russia and his endorsement of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
While it is undeniable that China’s economic rise poses security risks to the U.S. and undermines its national interests, the dangers of a Cold War mentality cannot be overstressed.
The problem of “proliferation fatalism” and “deterrence optimism” is seen through withering arms control agreements, the conclusion of bilateral efforts to uphold nonproliferation diplomacy, and deep fissures between Democrats and Republicans on achieving the goal of nuclear nonproliferation.
While the extension of New START signals a potential change in bilateral relations, tensions will likely continue to exist between the two nations.
In the op-ed, Biden also promised a push towards North Korean denuclearization and a unified Korean peninsula. Biden’s ability to deliver on this promise will depend on North Korean economic recovery, domestic priorities, and relations with South Korea.
In the midst of the noise of America’s electoral drama, tensions have risen once again between the United States and Iran. In the past weeks of the Trump administration, the executive policy of ‘maximum pressure’ has escalated interactions with Iran.
Despite being called the “number-one threat” and the “single greatest problem [of] the world,” according to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, on-air time for discussing nuclear weapons culminated in a whopping twelve minutes.
Though America’s nuclear arsenal and second strike capabilities are arguably the most powerful in the world, recent actions by China have left Washington worried. The Pentagon’s report on China’s growing military power, which now surpasses the United States in the fields of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles, is a somber reminder that the world has entered into a second nuclear age.
Outer space has been called the “new frontier” since the 1960s, but today is being named the “new arena” for an arms race. With the United States, Russia, and China coming to a head in space weaponry and lacking cooperation on arms control treaties, the destruction of the “new frontier” amidst an arms race is increasingly likely
Journal on World Affairs, UCLA