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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 5: Nuclear Weapons, Arms Control and Disarmament

AGA 5.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 13, 2025, 14:30–15:30, HS HISKP

U.S. Physicists and Nuclear Arms Control During the Next Four Years — •Frank von Hippel — Princeton University

Nuclear arms control has been in retreat in the US since 2002 when President Bush Jr. took the U.S. out of the ABM Treaty. President Obama obtained Senate ratification of the New START Treaty (which expires in 2026) only in exchange for a commitment to "modernize" the entire US nuclear arsenal. China*s decision to build hundreds of missile silos has caused Congress to push for reversal of some post-Cold War nuclear reductions. A second Trump Administration may, like the first, be interested in resuming nuclear testing. It remains to be seen whether the US public can be engaged with nuclear weapons policy again, as it was in the early 1980s. The Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction has mobilized to educate Congress about the risks of nuclear war and opportunities to reduce them. We would welcome a similar mobilization in Germany, a member of NATO*s nuclear planning group

Keywords: Nuclear Arms Control