Co-sponsored by the NSSC and NPWG
Like each of its post-Cold War predecessors, the Trump administration has reviewed its policies and posture with respect to nuclear weapons. The result is a mixture of continuity and change, with the change reflecting a re-focus from the long-range hopeful vision of the early Obama administration to a more somber assessment of near-term threats.
This presentation will discuss what is new in the document, the significance of the changes and the additional policy and technical challenges resulting from the international developments to which the administration is responding. It will focus on the areas that have been most contentious and examine the validity of the concerns raised.
Ambassador Brooks served from July 2002 to January 2007 as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons program and for the Department of Energy’s international nuclear nonproliferation programs. In the early 1990s, he served as Chief U.S. Negotiator for the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Ambassador Brooks has over five decades of experience in national security, much of it associated with nuclear weapons, including service as Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Director of Defense Programs and Arms Control on the National Security Council staff and a number of Navy and Defense Department assignments. As a Navy submarine officer, he served on four nuclear-weapons capable ships. Ambassador Brooks is now an independent consultant on national security, a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control and of the Board of Managers supervising Sandia National Laboratories the State Department International Security Advisory Board and an advisor to five other Department of Energy national laboratories.
