A deadly pandemic to control. An urgent nationwide vaccination programme to roll out. An economic crisis to navigate. Political divisions and distrust deep enough to spark mob violence and terrorism.
On 8 May last year, US President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which sets limits on Iran’s nuclear programme to ensure that it cannot produce nuclear weapons.
This year’s Munich Security Conference (the MSC), held on 15-17 February raised many questions but didn’t have the answer. It was not a happy and certainly not a self-confident gathering. Yet a couple of moments suggested the first new blooms of new ways to think about security might soon poke through the soil.
At a political rally on Saturday, 20 October, US President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the 1987
Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty). This confirms what has steadily been unfolding over the past couple of years: the architecture of Russian–US nuclear arms control is crumbling.