Nuclear Weapons, Ukraine, and Great-Power Competition

Join me for a conversation with four fantastic panelists about nuclear safety and security issues brought on by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and more broadly on the state of nuclear security globally during this era of dramatic change.

This program was made possible by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

• Nickolas Roth is Senior Director for Nuclear Materials Security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Nickolas works at the intersection of arms control, risk reduction, and institutional resilience, and previously directed nuclear security work at the Stimson Center and contributed to Harvard’s Project on Managing the Atom.
• Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate with Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Belfer Center and author of Inheriting the Bomb, a definitive study of Ukraine’s post-Soviet disarmament and the limits of the Budapest Memorandum. Her scholarship grounds today’s debates about guarantees, coercion, and nuclear restraint.
• Pan Yanliang is a Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). He studies the Russian and Chinese nuclear industries and the nuclear fuel cycle, and works on CNS engagement with Chinese counterparts—giving him a distinctive cross-regional vantage.
• Lily Wojtowicz is a Research Fellow at the Hertie School (Berlin) and a USIP–Minerva Peace & Security Scholar, whose work focuses on extended deterrence credibility, European security, and alliance adaptation under great-power rivalry.

5:19 - The Gap Between Coercive Rhetoric and First-use Thresholds

11:26 - The Implication of Ukraine’s allies regarding weapons 

17:26 - Golden Dome

21:30 - China’s Position on Nuclear Weapons

29:25 - How Belarus Altered European Debates

31:13 - Civilian Nuclear Power 

38:32 - North Korea’s Support for Russia

40:59 - Beijing on NATO and Asian Security

43:09 - Europe’s Reaction to Nuclear Risk

45:44 - Nuclear Risk in the Russia-Ukraine War

52:56 - Trump’s Impact on Kremlin Nuclear Thinking

1:01:52 - US-China Nuclear Relations

1:04:49 - Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament

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