How to Unite the Nuclear Policy Field

After US President Donald Trump’s recent vague comments about the possibility of resuming nuclear testing, one of the country’s oldest security debates has become alive again – and just as controversial. Deterrence advocates claim that renewed nuclear testing could discourage nuclear use in light of Chinese and Russian modernization, while disarmament advocates argue that any return to testing would undermine global norms, break alliances, and accelerate the arms race. Trump’s statements did not create this rift, but they sharply highlight a deeper problem – the fact that, eighty years after the start of the nuclear age, experts still disagree on a deceptively simple question: Do nuclear weapons make us safer or less safe?

The division between the nuclear policy camps is not just ideological; It’s cognitive. The competing factions rely on different logics and ideas about what constitutes “safety.” For the camp rooted in deterrence theory, the very absence of nuclear war is evidence that deterrence works and that nuclear weapons keep us safe. For the opposition bloc – more in line with the tradition of arms control and disarmament – ​​eight decades of non-use are a sign of luck, not stability. They say nuclear weapons pose an inherent danger. Deterring a fragile balance supported by contingency rather than design.

After US President Donald Trump’s recent vague comments about the possibility of resuming nuclear testing, one of the country’s oldest security debates has become alive again – and just as controversial. Deterrence advocates claim that renewed nuclear testing could discourage nuclear use in light of Chinese and Russian modernization, while disarmament advocates argue that any return to testing would undermine global norms, break alliances, and accelerate the arms race. Trump’s statements did not create this rift, but they sharply highlight a deeper problem – the fact that, eighty years after the start of the nuclear age, experts still disagree on a deceptively simple question: Do nuclear weapons make us safer or less safe?

The division between the nuclear policy camps is not just ideological; It’s cognitive. The competing factions rely on different logics and ideas about what constitutes “safety.” For the camp rooted in deterrence theory, the very absence of nuclear war is evidence that deterrence works and that nuclear weapons keep us safe. For the opposition bloc – more in line with the tradition of arms control and disarmament – ​​eight decades of non-use are a sign of luck, not stability. They say nuclear weapons pose an inherent danger. Deterring a fragile balance supported by contingency rather than design.

As tensions between the great powers escalate and nuclear modernization accelerates, field discussions are moving along parallel tracks, unable to garner significant popular or political interest. This is clearly evident in today’s polarized debate over whether the United States should deploy a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N. Supporters see this weapon as a reliable and resilient deterrent to new threats, while critics view it as a destabilizing step toward a more dangerous and more offensive arsenal. However, both claim the mantle of “strategic stability,” insisting that their prescribed logic and path best serve peace. (At the same time, the general public had never heard of SLCM-N.)

Going forward, the field must learn from other sectors that have found ways to act amid deep disagreements. The fields of climate governance, AI policy, and global health are characterized by uncertainty, value conflict, and diverging worldviews. However, these societies have learned to transform disagreement into frameworks for collective action – even if only temporarily. Their success suggests that progress does not necessarily require consensus, but rather common points of reference and a willingness to engage with differences. For nuclear policy, this means establishing common baselines capable of shaping decisions regarding the SLCM-N Treaty and other future nuclear developments. By reclaiming key terms as boundary concepts, building integrated institutions, and confronting the lack of attention, the field of nuclear policy can overcome its epistemological and ideological fissures.

Other sectors It has built effective policy frameworks even when basic philosophies diverge, albeit with varying degrees of success. In climate policy, economists, scholars and activists have long clashed over strategy – carbon pricing versus regulation, green growth versus degrowth. But despite internal debates, the climate science community shares a coherent problem frame: climate change is real, human-driven, and urgent. Institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) transform scientific disagreement into consensus-based reports, which include confidence intervals to indicate areas of uncertainty. These reports provide policymakers with reliable guidance even as research and modeling continue to evolve.

AI governance experts remain divided across fundamentally different risk horizons. One camp focuses on short-term, empirically observable harms, such as model bias, system reliability, and data governance; Another faction emphasizes the failure of long-term alignment and existential risks. These groups have worked in parallel for much of the past 10 years until the term “AI safety” began serving as a bridge around 2021. Its conceptual flexibility has allowed researchers to work under a common mandate to “make AI systems safer,” even if they are working with incompatible risk models. Joint efforts by complementary institutions such as the AI ​​Safety Institute in the UK and the AI ​​Consortium in the US have helped create common evaluation practices, red team methods, and reliability standards, providing governments with a single entry point into the discussion. Although the current rapid shifts toward the development of frontier models and artificial general intelligence have begun to marginalize parts of the safety community and weaken previous consensus between the camps, this brief convergence demonstrates the potential for unification.

In public health, urgency has helped bridge knowledge divides. During the COVID-19 pandemic, economists, ethicists and epidemiologists disagreed about the trade-off between freedom and caution, but they converged long enough to act, coordinating the rapid development and global rollout of vaccines through efforts like COVAX. Shared epidemiological data, trusted institutions, and real-time feedback supported the tentative consensus, even if new cracks have since appeared with the emergence of the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda and US efforts to reduce funding for global public health initiatives.

Although these efforts have not been bulletproof, nuclear policy has a responsibility to at least try to apply these lessons. This does not mean abandoning disarmament or enshrining deterrence as a doctrine, but rather focusing on an implementable middle ground where goals overlap. As nuclear policy experts Vipin Narang and Pranay Vadee recently pointed out, navigating a tripolar nuclear world—in which China, Russia, and the United States are expanding their arsenals amid eroding arms control—will require smarter, more flexible approaches to reducing risks.

Across the spectrum of nuclear policy, there is consensus on several key goals: preventing nuclear use; Reducing miscalculations in crisis situations; avoiding arms races and brinksmanship; ensuring the security of arsenals, technologies and materials; And adhere to non-use standards.

In short, although the strategies and justifications differ, the goals – preventing war, managing escalation, and maintaining the nuclear taboo – are largely consistent. To prevent these shared goals from being overshadowed by bilateral fissures, discussions on issues like SLCM-N must be evaluated through a multilateral framework, asking not whether the regime validates deterrence hawks or disarmament advocates, but under what conditions deployment reduces or increases the risk of escalation and strengthens or erodes alliance cohesion.

The nuclear policy field will also benefit from an “IPCC moment”: a systematic, cross-community process capable of mapping differences, clarifying uncertainty, and finding common ground. First, basic terms that currently exist as ideological flags must be transformed into flexible anchors for dialogue. For example, the term “strategic stability” is currently used by the deterrence and disarmament camps to reflect divergent logics, but the basic dimensions of the term are actually shared across expert communities – generally referring to the ability to manage crises without unintended escalation, restraint in a competitive arms race, flexible command and control systems, coalition cohesion, and the absence of incentives to strike first (high confidence in second-strike survivability). Although experts may weight dimensions differently, they can work from the same basic map if the basic terms are recovered and generalized.

Efforts to create such a common language will require coordinated leadership. Often, think tanks, national laboratories, and academic centers act as ideological enclaves, but a coalition of the willing of leading institutions is able to embrace common definitions in their analyses, maneuvers, and policy directions. A more formal meeting, similar to the IPCC, could bring together government agencies, academic experts and civil society to produce joint assessments of the state of the field and translate technical discussions into public narratives, helping policymakers navigate contested terrain without demanding a false consensus. Funders can foster this shift by rewarding synthesis for support: joint fellowship support, paired articles, and cross-review committees.

Finally, the field of nuclear policy must confront an attention deficit. A renewed focus on common terminology and collaborative frameworks is insufficient if the field continues to operate within a narrow expert bubble – not because the number of experts is shrinking (although a growing funding crisis would cause that) but because expert discourse largely revolves within itself without public engagement. As I explored in a New America Future Security Scenarios Lab report, public concerns about nuclear weapons have steadily eroded, replaced by more immediate concerns such as pandemics, cyberattacks, and climate change.

However, the nuclear risks have not diminished. Russia’s increasingly aggressive nuclear signals – from nuclear threats on the battlefield in Ukraine to its suspension of its participation in New START inspections and data sharing – have reintroduced nuclear coercion into everyday geopolitics. On the other hand, Iran continues to accelerate uranium enrichment, enhance its facilities, and test the limits of international monitoring, creating a regional environment that is exceptionally vulnerable to miscalculation. Despite fleeting increases in interactive interest, public concern remains low, leaving the expert community to speak out with urgency in the shrinking civic space.

Promoting civic interest and engagement will help spread the burden of awareness. Although nuclear risks currently lack a dramatic crisis (thankfully), organizations can design participatory simulations to make abstract risks deeper. For example, the new National Museum of American Nuclear History and Future in Washington, D.C., could serve as a civic anchor with exhibits on the history of the bomb, national laboratories, and arms control, while offering interactive crisis simulations, public education programs, and even a research library that helps host visiting scientists. Without a broader base of participation and understanding, even well-designed frameworks will struggle to gain traction, and recognition will remain disconnected from action.

Recent rise Nuclear issues in the news cycle provide an opportunity for renewal, but they will not persist on their own. To transform this moment of curiosity into a moment of sustained engagement, policymakers and nuclear experts must come together to define boundaries, build inclusive institutions, and create accessible places for citizen engagement. Disagreement is inevitable in a field characterized by uncertainty and competing understandings about what “safety” requires. But the goals of protecting the nation and humanity itself should not be mutually exclusive. Working to address common risks—preventing use, reducing escalation, and enhancing control—is a task broad enough to unite a divided field.

The next generation nuclear strategy must be multilateral by design, able to harness disagreement as a source of resilience, not paralysis. The goal is not unity of doctrine, but unity of purpose: keeping nuclear risks visible, discussable, and manageable in a fractured world.