Eighty-one years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what questions should the arms control community be asking itself? In this collection of reflections, ELN staff consider how the anniversary informs their work and what it means to keep the human consequences of nuclear weapons at the centre of debates on international security.
AI is transforming the nuclear risk landscape faster than governance can adapt. ELN Policy Fellow Nikita Gryazin argues that the recently signed Rome Declaration should mark the beginning, not the end, of efforts to strengthen nuclear risk reduction. Doing so would help preserve meaningful human control, extend decision time, and update crisis management for the AI era.
Despite the success of the Ankara summit, the US is gradually decoupling itself from Europe in ways that will have profound consequences for European security and strategic stability. As ELN Senior Associate Fellow Nicholas Williams writes, NATO will not collapse in a single dramatic moment; it is slowly changing into something less able to perform its central task.
Thirty years ago today, the International Court of Justice drew a direct line between nuclear threats and the potential use of nuclear weapons. Now, as nuclear rhetoric returns to the centre of international politics, ELN Policy Fellow Jana Baldus argues the Court’s landmark advisory opinion remains an essential legal guide, and a call to action.
Despite failing once again to adopt a final document, the 2026 NPT Review Conference revealed both troubling fractures and surprising resilience within the Treaty regime. From geopolitical polarisation and competing visions of the NPT to constructive discussions on AI and risk reduction, Emmanuelle Maitre writes, the conference offered reasons for concern and cautious optimism.
After 16 years without a consensus final document, write Carmen Wunderlich and Leonardo Bandarra, the challenge facing the NPT is less about disagreement on specific issues than about growing doubts over the role and value of the review process within an increasingly complex nuclear order, and amid geopolitical shifts and the renewed prominence of nuclear deterrence in global security policy.