About Article

Arms control treaties have served admirably to control and limit nuclear weapons for several decades. The provisions and limits, however, have proven to be inflexible, often limited in scope to specificsystemsandcountries,anddifficult and time-consuming to negotiate. It is time for the nuclear weapons states to consider a new paradigm to incentivize reductions while building security and stabi lity in a more enduring and expandable format. Previous nuclear weapons security cooperative efforts between the US and Russia under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program demon strated that countries can share data and access on nuclear war heads. Under a new cooperative forum to be established by the US and Russia and then expanded to include all five declared nuclear weaponsstates, a new paradigmcanbeenvisioned thatwould allow for modernization as a trade-off for reductions and increases in security and stability measures. The nuclear weapons states should create an enduring forum to negotiate trade-off formulas and imple ment them through specific contracts to be managed as issues and technologies arise. As security and stability measures strengthen, the nuclear weapons states can increase incentives to roll back inven tories on a continuous basis.