 Welcome to the second morning of the 2017 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. It's great to see so many of you here this morning. Before we start, one brief announcement, and this is going to be deja vu to anyone who is here last year. Let me plead with you to download our app. We're doing our proliferation prognostication panel as the second panel today. If you want to participate in that fully, you will need to have the app on your mobile devices. If anyone is having problems downloading or logging on to the app, we have a help desk out there with people who can show you how to do that. First up this morning, we're going to be having a policy perspective from the new administration. I want to introduce our moderator very briefly. He's somebody who many of you will know needs no introduction, Bob Einhorn from the Brookings Institution. If you look at his bio on the app, you'll see that as many of you will know already, he was a special advisor to the Obama administration, deeply involved in the Iran nuclear negotiations, was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration. What the app will not tell you is that he earned the nickname in the Clinton administration of the dentist because he did not give novocaine before bilateral meetings with foreign governments. So let me introduce firstly our moderator who will then introduce his patient for this morning. James, thank you very much. Good morning everyone. We're very fortunate this morning to have Chris Ford with us. Chris is the special assistant to the president and senior director for WMD encounter proliferation on the National Security Council staff. As such, Chris is the most senior Trump administration appointee responsible for arms control and non-proliferation. Chris is also the only Trump administration appointee responsible for arms control and non-proliferation, at least so far. Many of you will remember Chris' service as principal deputy assistant secretary of state and U.S. special representative for nuclear non-proliferation in the George W. Bush administration. Chris is highly respected across the entire political spectrum for his vast knowledge in the field, his fair-mindedness, and his accessibility. When Chris, I admire your courage in agreeing to be here this morning. Your administration is in the midst of extensive policy reviews, and it has yet to establish key positions that are under consideration at this conference. It puts you in a very tough position, especially with a knowledgeable audience like this. If you had asked for my advice, I would have advised you not to accept Carnegie's invitation. And you may prove yourself right. But you didn't ask for my advice, and it's too late now. Anyway, what I'd like to do, I have a number of questions I would like to put to Chris. We'll go on for a while, and toward the end, we'll open up the questioning to the audience, and there should be two microphones on either side, and we'll ask you to line up and state your name and affiliation. So let's begin. Where does the Trump administration stand with respect to its policy reviews on arms control and nonproliferation? Who's got the lead on these reviews? Who's involved? Fair enough. Thanks again for having me here, by the way, and thanks to James and George and all the folks whose hard work has gone into setting this conference up. It's been a few years since I've been to this, usually in a different capacity, and it's fun to – I see familiar faces out there here and there throughout the crowd, which is both good and bad, as you might imagine from my perspective. We'll have to see how this goes, but thanks. We are indeed reviewing all sorts of stuff right now, like all new administrations who are undertaking policy reviews across the spectrum of national security and foreign policy issues. It's very clear now that this will include nuclear policy, of course, including in the preparation of a new nuclear posture review. At the moment, the NSC and the interagency process partners are scoping and setting terms of reference and framing the kinds of questions that will be addressed in this review process. The 2010 NPR, as you guys all know, situated itself within a very broad vision of the longer-term future, as seen through the lens of the Prague agenda concept of a world without nuclear weapons. The new NPR is focusing a bit more pragmatically upon policies and programs that are fairly directly related to U.S. national security needs in light of the current and foreseeable strategic environment, the kinds of things that we think are needed in order to respond to that environment and to protect ourselves and our forces, our allies, and our partners. That threat environment does look notably different than in 2010, of course, and so one of the things that we're trying to do is to assess what, if anything, needs to change in response to those changes. It's worth a look to make sure that we do those things, but it's also worth pointing out that as for sort of a longer-term strategic vision review, that context into which the previous NPR situated itself, that's also something that we're in the process of starting to look at. With regard to who's doing all the reviewing, we're obviously gradually still building out our team in the interagency community. I have more partners on this soon. At the NSC, we're mostly in the question asking business at this point. The Defense Directorate at NSC has the lead in sort of scoping and doing terms of reference for the NPR, and we're beginning to work in my directorate on the sort of broader questions of the interplay between strategic policy and arms control and disarmament matters. Obviously, we coordinate closely with each other and all that stuff. All those things being still underway, it's obviously too early to say what the answers will actually be since no one knows that yet, and as I said, we're in the question asking business, but even being in the question asking business, I would argue is no small thing. We're being encouraged and permitted and encouraged, in fact, to do a real honest to God bottom-up review, to rethink things from the start, to look again at what policy alternatives might be available without being constrained by conventional wisdoms or untested assumptions, interested in working across that conceptual space. But I want to stress that looking at things with fresh eyes is not the same thing. To say that we are doing that is not the same thing as saying that we will necessarily end up with different positions, or fundamentally different positions, or even different positions at all on any given issue. In some areas, we may well do so, in others, presumably not. So right now, I think it's just too early to predict where the outcome is. If as a result of having thought through alternatives and decided that if for example it became clear that current approaches are in fact the best approach to handling any particular set of challenges, then so be it. If not, not. That's the purpose of a review. And I think having gone through that, our policies and approaches and our ability to protect American national security and those of our friends and allies will be stronger as a result of that. So watch this space. I would love to have more to say. But while we do work through the review process, I would ask your all's patients in bearing with us on this because it is, I understand it's frustrating to have me sort of tapped in around what the substantive policy answers are likely to be. But please understand that it's because these issues are so important that we need to take the time to get it right. And getting that right will be more important to just cranking out a sort of improvised position because of the time deadline driven by a particular conference or meeting or event of some sort. So we're trying to do this properly and I encourage all of you to resist the temptation to overinterpret what I do or do not say or what we do or do not say in this context until we can come up with a fuller portfolio of real answers for you. And believe me, when we do have answers to those questions, I will be as anxious to convey them as you probably will be to hear them. Good. I'm sure everyone will hold you to that last page. You mentioned, Chris, the Prague speech, the Prague agenda. Would the Trump administration outline its broad approach to these issues in a similar fashion, high level, maybe presidential speech doing that? And an important part of the Prague speech for the President Obama was the idea that the goal was a world without nuclear weapons. Do you expect the Trump administration to reaffirm this goal, which has been the goal of many previous Republican or Democratic administrations? Open question, as I said, like all administrations, we're reviewing policy across the board with no exception in that respect. And that necessarily includes reviewing whether or not, among many other things, the goal of a world without nuclear weapons is, in fact, a realistic objective, especially in the near to medium term, in light of current trends in the international security environment. I do not know where we're going to come out on that, and please don't take my comments about us reviewing it as a warranty as to what the answer will be. But I think it would be in some ways irresponsible not at least to examine the question and to conduct that kind of an ongoing review as a responsibility of public policy stewardship. I think there's been a tension for a long time in U.S. policy between the sort of an officially stated ongoing interest in the end state of nuclear disarmament and the concrete national security needs that we've perceived. This tension didn't go away with the end of the Cold War, and in some ways I think it probably increased. For decades we have endorsed a grand vision of eventually disarming, and we've sought to take credit for our series of post-Cold War nuclear weapons reductions as indicia of that commitment, while yet maintaining at the same time a robust and effective arsenal that's capable of ensuring our security and that of our allies in Europe and the broader Asia Pacific region against both nuclear and non-nuclear threats. Other possessors have struggled with these same tensions, and even those who don't have weapons in many cases have struggled with these same tensions, because of course those who countries that rely upon U.S. extended deterrence recognize also that their security depends in no small part upon our possession of those tools. So this tension I think was manageable, clearly manageable for a while. For so long as post-Cold War reductions made it possible to point to dramatic reductions in nuclear arsenals as a result of changing conditions after the end of the Cold War, it was certainly very plausible to argue that we indeed, to demonstrate that we had fidelity to that long-term goal, even though it remained far off and was dependent upon conditions that no one could really foresee or particularly plan for, but it's certainly possible at least and bears examination of whether the headspace available for that kind of achieving reductions without running a file of real national security concerns is whether that headspace has been increasingly used up. It's an interesting challenge for us and it's a part of this review, I should say, to explore whether traditional U.S. fidelity to that visionary end state of abolition and demonstrating fidelity to it by pointing to rapid progress and reducing arsenals is still a viable strategy for a variety of reasons. The prospect for further reductions between the United States and Russia seem less likely than it might have been a few years ago. The British and the French have purely to have come down to some sort of irreducible minimums and every other declared weapons possessors today, both modernizing and expanding its arsenal. And at the same time, reductions by the United States and Russia encouraged, well coupled with public postures I should say by weapons possessors including the Prague speech have encouraged what I think are largely unrealistic expectations and demands for ever faster progress. These expectations I suspect and you all would know better than I have increased the bitterness that's felt today in disarmament circles for the lack of greater progress towards that goal and hence increased appeal of what I think is a fundamentally misguided ban treaty talk process that's getting underway in New York this month. So this tension between the goal of disarmament as a visionary end state and the perceived national security needs that are actually felt by people in the real world that tension is becoming increasingly acute and so you will not be surprised to learn that we're at least trying to assess where we are along that. It's not totally obvious that we can continue to have it both ways in that respect for the foreseeable future. So that's part of the review process and we'd certainly clear that we will need to maintain a safe and reliable arsenal for some time as NATO summit in 2016 and Warsaw emphasized for example as long as such weapons exist we will reign a nuclear alliance in NATO and it's an open question exactly where this comes out. So lots of things to be reviewed but the answers to these questions obviously have very dramatic potential implications especially for long term planning and so again I urge patients as I said before with us as we review this but it is certainly among the conceptual space of options that we're exploring right now. Correct me if I'm wrong Chris but what I hear you saying is the administration will review the question of whether to reaffirm the goal of a world without nuclear weapons okay. Let me turn to strategic arms reductions with Russia. President Trump has characterized Newstart as one sided. He's also suggested that he was prepared to engage in a nuclear arms race. On the other hand President Trump has talked about his desire to improve relations with Russia. Does the Trump administration believe that the United States needs more strategic nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles and is the Trump administration prepared to engage with the Russia and seek a new start agreement? Well certainly with Newstart at the moment we're very focused and will be over the next year on ensuring that each side ends up reducing and limiting its forces to meet the treaty criteria which will come into force in February of next year. More broadly it is certainly true the President has made very clear that he will not accept a second place position in the nuclear weapons arena and he's made very clear that he will also wants to excuse me also wants to ensure that the men and women in our nuclear forces have the best available tools and that if any country decides it wishes to pick a fight with us in arms race sense we will not let it win that race. But he's also as you have said made it very clear that he is interested in broader engagement with Russia on matters of mutual interest. And I'd imagine this could indeed include some kind of discussion or perhaps progress further on nuclear arms if that were felt to be in the interest of both parties. And if we felt we could trust Russia to keep its word after the problems that we've been having with them over the INF treaty for example of late. I can't speculate at this point what the outcome of that kind of an engagement with Russia might be but for a variety of reasons of course but I'd reckon that an arms race with us is not something an arms race with American technology and military budgets is not something that they would find particularly attractive and that there may well be grounds to define a useful dialogue on important matters of mutual concern and perhaps this could eventually bear fruit in some kind of an arrangement that addresses some of the most destabilizing aspects of arms competition. And we'll just have to see where that goes. Thank you. Let me turn to INF. This was discussed in some of our discussions yesterday and it was asserted that unless the INF issue is resolved then it's gonna make any future arms control agreement with Russia very difficult to do. The US believes that Russia has violated the INF treaty by testing and then deploying INF missiles of INF ground-based cruise missile of INF range. What's gonna be the administration's response to this violation? Will it seek to bring Russia back into compliance with the INF treaty and if that's not possible what will the US response be? Will we for example develop, produce, deploy our own INF missiles, INF range missiles? Well certainly the INF violation problem is a great concern to us. Let no one think otherwise. There's a growing concrete threat that's presented by to us or to our forces, to our allies and friends in Europe and Asia by this new system and because of not just for that concrete reason but also for the potential implications that it does indeed suggest or the questions that it raises about the future of arms control with Moscow. We're taking it very seriously. I used to do, as you alluded to, I used to do verification and compliance for a living in a previous life and you can be sure that this is something on which we're focusing very intently. Compliance enforcement is historically one of the hardest things to do in this line of work. It's in many ways easier to reach agreements than to make sure that they are appropriately kept. One of the hardest things to do in the arms control world and our track record in the United States has not always been all that great. To my eye, enforcing compliance and defending arms control are two sides of the same coin. I think if you say you like arms control but you aren't willing actually to enforce agreements, you aren't really arms control's friend. We intend to take violations more seriously than that. If there's still a chance to persuade Russia to go back into compliance with the INF treaty, we have to actually do something to change how it is that they calculate their position on this, their cost benefit calculations rather than just expecting that wagging our fingers at them some more will shame them and get them to reverse what is obviously some kind of a strategic priority for them. I think we need to do more to disincentivize violations and I think we need to do more to ensure and that's the second point which could follow further from the first that we ensure that Russia doesn't obtain a military advantage from its violation. We at the moment, this is my sort of usual, it's under review answer but we are currently reviewing options in this respect. We're brushing off and reconsidering old options that were considered but not implemented in previous administrations. We're exploring potential new ones and we're trying to evaluate what the best response should be as we seek to ensure that we fulfill our responsibility to protect our security and that of our allies and friends. I wish I could tell you more but we're gonna please be assured that we are working on this very hard. Right, let me turn to missile defense. Recent US administrations have supported limited homeland missile defenses capable of countering the relatively small missile forces of countries like North Korea and Iran but not capable of countering the much larger ballistic missile programs of countries like Russia and China. Will the Trump administration adopt the same approach or will it seek homeland missile defenses with more robust capabilities including against peer competitors like Russia and China? Well, in the same executive order in which he ordered the commencement of the new NPR President Trump also ordered a new ballistic missile defense review, BMDR. In order to, and I'll quote you here I guess, in order to identify ways of strengthening missile defense capabilities, rebalancing homeland and theater defense priorities and highlighting priority funding areas. As with so much else, I'm afraid it's too early to know where this review is gonna come out but certainly the North Korean and Iranian missile threats that are accelerating. As those programs continue apace, it's hardly surprised we're looking afresh at what the right answer is in trying to balance these issues. I don't have an answer for you yet, certainly on that but we'll be needing to consult with our allies and partners as well as we formulate what we think the right answer should be. It's worth pointing out of course that the last BMDR was published in 2010 and as I mentioned before, this is a very different threat environment in many ways than it was at that time. But it's also I think worth pointing out that to the degree that we have, to which homeland, some homeland and regional ballistic missile defense capabilities have may have come to worry other near-peer nuclear possessors, the degree to which that issue and the question of that worry is entangled with the issue of, to some extent the issue of overall nuclear numbers. To the degree that we've tried to achieve overall lower numbers of weapons more than to address other matters related to strategic stability, we may actually have been worsening the problem for some of our near-peer adversaries and precisely the aspects that you're referring to. We are of course not remotely near the point at which our BMD is in any danger of threatening other, threatening Russian or Chinese nuclear postures or second strike capabilities of course. But given the BMD needs that we clearly have in light of the expanding missile programs in North Korea and Iran, the previous focus upon lower nuclear numbers may have contributed actually to the Chinese and Russian strategic dilemmas. So I would argue that given our determination in Washington to defend ourselves and our allies and our partners against North Korean and Iranian missile threats, if you credit the concerns expressed about our missile defense by officials in Moscow and Beijing, it would follow that the biggest threat to Russian and Chinese deterrence in this respect is actually North Korean and Iranian missile development. So I would suggest that if China and Russia were ever willing to come on board and work with us to stop those missile programs and their tracks, we would be able to have a much more interesting discussion about BMD with both of them, but perhaps we will at some point. Thank you. I'd like to turn to North Korea now. It appears that the Trump administration, its approach will include bringing much stronger pressures to bear on Pyongyang, presumably to try to enlist Chinese support to pressure the North Koreans, as well as working closely with our allies in the region to strengthen collective defenses and ensure the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrent. My question is whether the Trump administration would also be prepared to engage in negotiations with the North to constrain their nuclear and missile capabilities. Secretary Tillerson was in the region recently and seemed to suggest that engagement with the North would have to be put off until after the North has actually dismantled its nuclear program. So I want to get a sense from you where the administration stands taking into account that at one point President Trump himself talked about sitting down with Kim Jong-un and having a hamburger. Clearly the North Korean threat is one that we do and need to take very seriously. It's got an unchecked nuclear weapons program and accelerating missile testing program that is increasingly poised to deliver a nuclear weapon over intercontinental ranges to the United States. It clearly presents a threat that we can't ignore. It's also true that transparently, as I think Secretary Tillerson has said, past approaches to trying to contain that threat haven't worked as well as one would have liked them to work. So you won't be surprised to learn that North Korea policy is of course subject to a broad review. That does very explicitly look at the whole spectrum of possibilities. I don't know what you, you know, if hamburgers is one end, you know, warm hamburgers and I don't know, let's get alliterative, war hammers or something, right? So there's this enormously broad continuum and we are looking at that entire conceptual space. Don't have answers on what will come out of that review but you may see something sooner rather than later on that. The NSC's Asia directorate was one of the first out of the box in policy review terms and starting to work on North Korea review through the interagency. So perhaps that process will mature quickly and we'll be able to have more fidelity on where we are with that. I'm afraid I don't have much for you right now except that it clearly needs a new look and what that will be is subject to review. Sorry for the mantra. Thank you. Next goes back to the unwisdom of taking this invitation back. Next I'd like to raise the JCPOA and policy toward Iran. There have been reports that the Trump administration is gravitating toward preserving the JCPOA and insisting on very strict enforcement while at the same time pushing back against provocative Iranian activities in the region including its ballistic missile activities and its support for proxies in the region as a means to expand its own regional influence. Now did the Obama administration not strictly enforce compliance with the JCPOA and how can it be enforced more strictly? The policy review process that we have underway for these issues generally and there's sort of a series of nested reviews. There's sort of a broader look at Middle East strategy as a whole. There's an Iran strategy subcomponent of that and as a subcomponent of the Iran strategy there is of course the what do we do about the JCPOA sort of review. The simple answer is that we don't know that answer yet but I can certainly say that until such time as we have guidance from above to do something different our marching orders are very clear and that is that we will make sure that the United States adheres strictly to its commitments under the JCPOA and we will also work very hard to make sure that Iran does. I think the documents or the decisions by the Joint Commission that were made public late last year do show now in public that from time to time it is possible for there to be disagreements about interpretation issues. The meaning of something or how it is that one resolves a particular issue and that those things are subject to discussion and debate in the commission and in the past occasionally compromise answers have been reached. I think we intend to be very hard-nosed lawyers and making sure that we take a very strict line on those kinds of issues so that for so long as we are inside the JCPOA and we certainly are and remain there until someone tells me otherwise we will enforce it very strictly indeed. As to non-nuclear pressures if there were any reticence before about putting pressures on Iran in response to non-nuclear mischief as I call it things like ballistic missile development, terrorism sponsorship, regional abuse stabilization, human rights violations, whatever it might be you will not find us shy about doing that as well. I think we probably already made that clear but so until further guidance to the contrary we are within the JCPOA holding Iran strictly accountable to its terms and also for non-nuclear mischief outside of its terms. One of the vulnerabilities of the JCPOA and this has been acknowledged by supporters and opponents of the agreement is that some of the key nuclear restrictions expire at various intervals, eight years, 10 years, 15 years. Has the administration begun to give some thought to these out year threats and how to deal with them either now or eventually? Starting to indeed, yes. I mean to the degree that, well to some extent dependent upon what the outcome is of our JCPOA review itself it's not clear what out years means. We know it could be less or more time if you catch my drift but certainly either way the broader longer-term issue of what to do about Iran's nuclear program is something that we are beginning to work on. When the JCPOA, the concrete restrictions that JCPOA begin to come off there is indeed a challenge. That agreement, one of its selling points but also one of its drawbacks is that it tried to sort of kick the can down the road for a decade or so with respect to what to do about the broader challenges of what a large and well-established fissile material production capacity would mean being dropped into the region like that and we're beginning now to struggle with how to think about those challenges and what the right answer is as far as our policy will have to be. Not surprisingly, I don't have those answers yet but yes indeed we are starting to struggle with that. Okay, I want to turn to nuclear security for a moment. The Obama administration is convening of nuclear security conferences at the summit level is widely considered to have contributed to the progress made on nuclear security in recent years. How will the Trump administration sustain momentum on nuclear security? Will it favor nuclear security meetings at the summit level? Well, as I understand it, oh, there's been a process that's already underway to help transition to some extent from there. After using the high profile sort of head of state level summit approach to sort of accelerate and jumpstart actions to eliminate and to secure nuclear materials, the previous administration as part of its final nuclear security summit, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is at least my understanding not having been there at the time, put in place a process by which these issues are worked thereafter to be implemented through lower level engagement and technical experts groups. The IAEA, for example, will also continue to play an important role in this. I understand they'll be acting as a central, the expectation was that the IAEA would be acting as a central body for coordinating and promoting nuclear security globally and hosting periodic ministerial level conferences to promote political commitments and this kind of thing. This was already explicitly a process of transferring from that sort of really periodic, high profile head of state level engagement to a more institutionalized and routinized process of making sure that expert level attention is applied to these things on a sustainable basis for the long term future. That seems like a sound approach to me at least and certainly it remains very true for us that nuclear security is extraordinarily important. This is particularly important at a time when we face growing threats from terrorists such as ISIS who already possess and use chemical weapons, for example. Nobody wants nuclear materials going walkabout in that kind of a context and we on the new team are quite committed to making sure that it doesn't as well to eliminating excess material, improving security and doing all those kinds of things. So it remains a continuing priority but at this point I don't have any reason to question the transitional approach that was adopted at the end of the last administration. Okay, let me ask the organizers. I'm thinking ahead toward questions from the audience and I remember sitting in the audience yesterday and wanting to raise a question but sitting in the middle of the group I didn't want to stand up and walk all the way around. I wonder if we could have microphones available so that I could see people's hands raised and I can just call on them rather than to have them line up at the microphones. Can't do it? You don't have microphones available? We do have people to pass out the microphones. Okay, great. Great, whoever said that. Let me turn to enrichment and reprocessing. Administrations of both parties have discouraged the spread of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to additional countries. In its civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates, the Obama administration secured a legally binding UAE commitment not to acquire such capabilities. This later became known as the gold standard. Will the Trump administration insist on the gold standard in its civil nuclear agreements with other countries? It's a great question. As I understand it, U.S. practice has been somewhat inconsistent on that. It's also the case that the previous administration reached a 123 agreement with Vietnam that involved an analogous enrichment and reprocessing language but made this a political commitment rather than a legally binding one. I think there were also one, two, three agreements with China and the ROK that didn't include that kind of heightened non-proliferation control language. So we seem to have been sort of over a spread and taken different approaches in different circumstances. So you're quite right to identify this as an important question. In our view, certainly we regard 123 agreements as being very important to the international non-proliferation regime but also important to the U.S. nuclear industry and to jobs therein, as you might imagine. And we also, even apart from ENR commitments, we insist upon all kinds of things in 123 agreements and indeed, I think we're required by law to insist upon all kinds of things in 123 agreements that with respect to a broad range of non-proliferation undertakings as well. So I would agree we do need to review our policy and see what, if there's a way to have a more consistent approach but I don't know exactly what that's going to be at this point. On the issue of cooperation and technology sharing more broadly, I think you'll find us happy to continue longstanding U.S. approaches of working to ensure that developing countries are able to share in the benefits that nuclear technology can bring. Such cooperation benefits our nuclear industry as well and it benefits their recipients certainly in addition to that. We do need to ensure that this kind of cooperation occurs in a safe and secure manner, that it doesn't imperil our strong national security interest in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities or dual use technologies including physical material production of course and that we need to make sure it doesn't happen unless it is accompanied by safeguards that are effective and capable of ensuring that there's any attempt to divert material from proper uses that is detected in a manner that permits enough time for us and the international community to undertake effective responses. That's often very challenging to do all these things at the same time but I don't think you'll find that we will be taking a different position with respect to being committed to technology sharing and cooperative agreements internationally provided that we can make sure that the fundamental requirements of national security and non-proliferation equities are taken care of. Okay, the ban treaty now. It had to come. Negotiations as you know are gonna begin in New York next week on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that the Trump administration is gonna oppose a ban treaty just as the Obama administration did of course. What are the Trump administration's main concerns about a ban treaty and will the Trump administration play an active role in opposing it including by pressing allies in other countries not to participate, not to sign up and so forth? Or will it take a more hands-off approach? I think the short answer and here despite my tap dancing earlier I think I can speak a little bit more authority in this respect. I think the short answer is that we do and we will that is we oppose it and we will continue to encourage others to oppose it. Largely because we think it deserves opposing. As we see it, such a treaty wouldn't actually eliminate a single weapon. It wouldn't impose any new legal obligation upon non-participating nuclear weapons possessors or their allies if they did not participate. It would have no impact upon customary international law precisely because among other reasons the states who's practiced in opinion of jurists to use the technical term. Those states who actually matter in that regard don't support it. But while I think these things are quite true I think it's not necessarily the case that the ban negotiations would have no effect or that they're just sort of a waste of time in that respect. I think they actually would make the world a more dangerous and unstable place because they appear to be intended to have the effect of delegitimizing and undermining the extended deterrence relationships with our allies in Europe and in the Asia Pacific region. Unless allies are partners who benefit from our extended deterrence actually sign up to the treaty there wouldn't be a legal impact to it in that respect but I think it could be a meaningful political and diplomatic one. If it harmed and undermined those alliance relationships I would argue that the ban would actually work against international peace and security making conflict and aggression more likely degrading existing security relationships and probably thus increasing the risk of escalation and indeed nuclear conflict itself. Specifically it would undermine the longstanding strategic stability that's underpinned the international security environment for decades. And I think that makes it a dangerous and misbegotten idea. It feeds off of and it contributes to unrealistic expectations and it's likely to make things worse rather than better. Indeed I think it would be hard to imagine a diplomatic effort that would be better calculated to discredit the disarmament community by demonstrating to nuclear weapons possessors that the disarmers are fundamentally unserious about addressing the real challenges of maintaining peace and security in a complicated and dangerous world and of trying to make that world a genuinely better and safer place for all of us. I don't hold out that much hope that the backers of the ban will reconsider their approach in light of our views on this. But we certainly hope that they would and we hope that our allies will not join them in legitimating such a dangerous effort. Thank you. Was that clear enough? I think so. The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts in the budget of the State Department and presumably although we haven't seen all the details this will involve pretty substantial reductions in U.S. contributions to various international organizations. There's been reports about significantly reducing our contributions to the UN and other organizations. My question is whether reductions in U.S. contributions to international organizations would also apply to the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency. I remember when I was at the State Department we had these arguments between the non-proliferators and the people responsible for international organizations across the board and those responsible for international organizations always wanted to maintain a very strict budgetary discipline, no real growth in U.S. contributions. Whereas in the non-proliferation side we were arguing that the IAEA was really an exceptional organization, very important to U.S. national security and so we shouldn't subject it to the budgetary disciplines of the others. So with the prospect of deep cuts in U.S. contributions to international organizations do you see the Trump administration treating the IAEA as an exception and even increasing significantly U.S. contributions to the IAEA, especially given its critical role on such questions as verifying the JCPOA? Yeah, I mean I'm not a detailed budget here but I have spent some time, I worked on the Appropriations Committee in the Senate a few years ago and I have an acute and sometimes very painful appreciation for the slips, twix the cup and the lip as it were that go between any president's statement of priorities in a budget submission and what ends up coming out the other end of the sausage machine. I have no, not having a crystal ball, I couldn't begin to predict what actually happens on this but certainly I would agree with you the details matter and that these details matter in particular and as I've expressed to Director General Amano in person just a couple of weeks ago. Rest assured that we have a very great appreciation for all the good work that the agency has been doing. It's important to implementing safeguards, to doing monitoring of the JCPOA, to all of the various aspects of its mission and a great appreciation for the excellent work that its inspectorate in particular does in these regards. So we do understand, as you suggested, those details matter. I don't know exactly how the budget details are going to work out but don't think that we approach international organizations with a completely cooking cutter one size fits all mindset because we don't. Great, okay. Well, I think we've covered a pretty broad range of issues, Chris. I think it's time to open it up to the audience. Do we have, do we have microphones? Great, thank you. Thank you so much. So please just raise your hand. I recognize as many people as I can see. What we'll try to do is take maybe three questions at a time and Chris can respond to those. Please let us know your name and your affiliation. And Bill Potter, I think we saw your hand go up first. Thank you very much, Bill Potter, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey. Chris, it's good to see you here. Both you and Bob have a distinguished background as practitioners as well as scholars dealing with nonproliferation issues. I recall Bob writing a book about a dozen years ago on the nuclear tipping point. And when you served as the special representative in the NPT review process, you also confronted a number of pressing proliferation challenges. And so I'd be quite curious wearing either your practitioner or your scholarly hat. If you could comment on how benign you see the world today from the standpoint of the potential for further nuclear weapons spread. Perhaps contrasting today with your experiences, I recall in 2007 at the NPT, PREPCOM, could you comment a little bit about the state of the world from your vantage point today in terms of the potential for further proliferation? Okay, why don't we take another Alexei in the back. Hello, my name is Alexei Roboto from Russian Academy of Sciences. Planning the new cycle of modernization of American strategic forces. Will administration be interested in keeping freedom of hands in doing that in the next decade and after that? Or would it be willing to have clear limits so that Russian and American forces are developed within established framework and in the context of predictability and transparency? And if I may, the second question. Your personal attitude towards the concepts of selective use of strategic nuclear weapons, which apparently are being elaborated both in Russian and American strategic community. Maybe take one right here, this man. Mohamed Omar from National Defense University, Islamabad. As you mentioned, there are existing issues with the current one to three agreements that have been negotiated. Are the terms of current one to three agreements being reviewed also? Are we likely to see some renegotiations on those? Thank you, Chris, why don't we turn to you. Okay, I'm not sure exactly where to begin, I guess. The potential for further proliferation. One of the things that has changed, back when I was in previous incarnation in this line of work, we were still coming out of the AQCon period and the discovery of all these sort of pop-up whack-a-mole proliferation programs. I was involved in, the bureau for which I worked at the State Department was involved in helping get the WMD materials and weapons designs and things like that out of Libya. So that was a very odd and dangerous feeling time because these things were sort of popping up like a hydro-headed creature of some sort here and there and everywhere. One of the things that we've done since then in the US government, and I'll give the previous administration a lot of credit for this, has developed a very elaborate process internally for how it is that we survey the landscape and how we try to track emerging proliferation threats. That's a pretty, I mean, I've heard complaints that's too bureaucratic and whatever else, but you can't please everyone all the time. And my impression is that the internal process by which we try to keep an eye and keep situational awareness of that landscape and have an eye to sort of emerging threats a little ways down the road and over the horizon issues isn't a bad way to do it so far. And I'm glad that it's been routinized after the fairly alarming discoveries that we faced last time I was in this business. So I have under no illusions that the world is a benign place. I think it's a very dangerous place. And I think that the progress of the North Korean nuclear missile threats have in a sense provided ample illustration of how if these things emerge they can be enormously difficult to struggle with. I fear that we may have legitimated the illicit and illegal acquisition of official material production capabilities with Iran. How we struggle with that now is of course a great question and I don't know the answer to that just yet. We're trying to deal with that. But I'm under no illusions that we are in a necessarily a more benign world but at least we have had some time to think about how it is that we approach looking out for those kinds of threats. And I'm pleased with what I've seen so far. As to the question of modernization of forces from Dr. Abatov, the question of, I think the question is whether we would like to have free hands as things move forward or clear limits. And obviously one of the ingredients of that is making sure that we understand what it is that we think that we need. I have a strong suspicion that what we believe our national security interests to require will be compatible with an approach just to use stability and engagement with our near peer nuclear competitors that will be a constructive and helpful one. But one of the ingredients to deciding whether and to what degree that's the case will be how it is that they approach their own policies. And certainly with respect to the issue of selective use of nuclear weapons that you mentioned, one of the many concerns in that respect is precisely what the implications may be of emerging trends in Russian military doctrine with respect to when it is and under what circumstances and at what point in a conflict nuclear weapons use would be contemplated. That is a subject of concern and that's something that it would be, I think, very important to talk about because I'm not sure that those trends point us all collectively in a very good direction. I would also point out, of course, as I mentioned before, that one of the challenges of that kind of engagement will also have to do with compliance enforcement as I mentioned in the context of INF. Although there are other areas like CFE and the Open Skies Treaty in which Russia's not precisely been impressing everybody with its capitalist treaty compliance of late, how we answer those questions will have a lot to do with the degree to which it is possible to imagine a future in which we engage constructively with each other and can rely upon the word of the other, each can rely upon the word of the other party in trying to deal with these issues. And I think it must also be said that at least if you look to open source issues anyway, there are some interesting outstanding questions about the future of Russia's own modernization and nuclear development program, in particular the potential exploration of novel and somewhat exotic delivery modalities that could indeed prove to be very destabilizing. So this is not something that we will ever be able to address in isolation, precisely because of the reciprocal dynamics that are involved in any kind of a competition like this. And I hope that we'll be able to arrive at a constructive and good place, but it's not just up to us. As to 123 agreements, I think at this point we're reviewing the breadth of issues there. I mean obviously the question of to what degree, what kind of enrichment and reprocessing equipments go into these things and how that issue is handled is indeed a question about the internals of the agreements. There are some aspects of them that are statutory and that's not something that one changes casually. I've come out of a Senate background so I certainly don't take that lightly. So I don't know exactly where that's gonna go, but we are engaging very explicitly right now with how it is that we should approach 123s in the future. Let's take another round, Scott. And I think we said Daryl in the back. There's Daryl number two and this woman right here. Scott Sagan from the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. Chris, the most recent nuclear employment guidance given to the US military for the first time told StratCom that they must always follow the laws of armed conflict, in particular the principles of distinction, that is the principle of non-combatant immunity and the principle of proportionality. Would you personally favor a continuation of that guidance and do you think the Trump administration will continue that particular guidance? Are we collecting questions or? Yeah, we're gonna collect three. I gotta get a bit of a breather on that one. Daryl, are you ready? Yes, thank you, Chris, for being here. It's helpful to hear your answers. It's hard to express policy in 140 characters, so this is very helpful. My question about the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as you know, the NSG has been debating a bid by India to become a member with US backing a country-specific proposal. What is going to be what you anticipate the new administration's view on this? Is that a policy that it will continue to support or is that under review will the new administration look at the proposals that have been put forward by some for a criteria-based approach? Thanks. Thanks. Go ahead. Stephanie Cook with Nuclear Intelligence Weekly. Mr. Ford, thanks for coming today. I have a question. If you say that you're examining the question of the end game and whether the end game should or should not be the elimination of nuclear weapons, I wonder how much the risk of that, you know, even questioning, which is honest and open and everything, but is there a risk that you, if you come to the conclusion that that shouldn't be the end game, that that encourages other states to develop nuclear weapons and related to that, I wonder if you could clarify different statements made by the administration about the question of nuclear capability in Japan and South Korea. Thank you, Stephanie. Chris, over to you. Okay. On employment guidance, I don't want to get out in front of my skis with respect to what the NPR may or may not end up struggling with. I mean, certainly, I think it's a question for consideration whether further changes to guidance are necessary and appropriate in the current context. I'm not going to venture out with a personal view on that at this time. I'll let them, the staff work is beginning for all that sort of thing. I think it would be both professionally and personally unwise to get out in front of that in terms of my own speculation, but there is a broad universe of things that need to be considered and that's the kind of thing that it may be appropriate to address in the context of an NPR. I don't have much for you, I'm afraid at this point. On the issue, Darrell of Indian NSG membership, as I understand it, the principal debate, certainly in US policy circles for some time now has really been over sort of tactics. What is the best and most efficacious way to try to advance India's application? People may be of different minds on that topic. The Indians may be of different minds than other players in the international community on how to do that too. I haven't seen much to question the basic approach of what to try to accomplish, although obviously trying to find what the right answer to how to do that tactically may change with the circumstances and that's something that's certainly somewhat in play right now in NSG circles, but I haven't seen any reason to suggest that there'll be a change of direction in that respect. And on the issue of the end game, end game question, I have no doubt that there is, and will be, angst and agitation connection with the sort of the sound bite that, oh my goodness, they're reviewing the end state question. To a degree, I think that's unavoidable. I think it is necessary to have that review and I would stress again, as I said before, that simply to ask the question is not to answer it. I think it would be a mistake and very ill-considered of us not to explore these questions and to test the assumptions behind that have been so important to articulate a US policy in the past. It's been a personal frustration of mine over the years of how hard it is to engage people on these kinds of questions a decade ago or so working for a different president. I got involved in an effort to engage on these very kinds of questions, asking diplomatic interlocutors in the NPT process, for example, what conditions they imagined it would be necessary to achieve in order to make possible a world without nuclear weapons. That wasn't the phrase that we used at the time but it was the same idea, right? And how they imagined as a policy, a matter of policy programatics, how they envisioned actually making those conditions come true. And I was very disappointed at the time on how difficult it was to engage with people on those questions and how little work actually seemed to have been put into sort of staffing up, if you will, that kind of agenda as a policy matter. It was very clear to everyone that had to be that way in terms of the end state but it was not at all clear how to get there or how it is that one would even begin to think about how to do that and it was sort of disappointing to me and I've also been sort of surprised and disappointed at the lack of engagement on those kinds of longer term things that I've seen inside the US government. Even at a time when we, at least officially, made the cornerstone of our strategic policy the pursuit of that load star end state of a world without nuclear weapons. So I think it would be, in that context, I think it's about time that we engage with these issues and whatever your perspective is on what the right answer is surely it's a good thing to have those debates and those discussions. I mean, if abolition is in fact the right answer and an absolute moral imperative for us all then why not engage on those policy programatics of how to actually get there in a much more concrete way than we appear willing to have tried to do in the past because if you do, presumably those merits will become clear. On the other side of the coin, if you think it's a bad idea or just unavailable as an option or some kind of an unhealthy distraction from the real world matters of statecraft that we should all be concerned with, if that's your view then having the debate and having that engagement is presumably also a good idea. Either way, I think it would almost be irresponsible not to examine the question and I get that it makes people uneasy that we are officially asking the question but I feel we have a responsibility to do so and I'm looking forward to engaging with many of you out there to make sure that whatever the right answer is we jolly well get there. Oh, forgive me. Yeah, I don't have the list of, I don't have a clear guidance on how to approach that except that we are certainly committed to our alliance relationships and I certainly as a matter of fact it remains the case that those alliance relationships on the security guarantees that we provide and the security relationships that we have with them both in terms of nuclear extended deterrence and also in terms of broader questions of conventionally augmented deterrence. It's been a fundamental aspect of that alliance relationship for a very long time that it is part of that effort to reassure them and help provide for their security that in the hope that it will not be necessary for anyone ever to have those kinds of thoughts. God willing, we can keep it that way. It's been that way for a long time and it certainly our objective to make sure that those questions never need to arise on their own merits and to make sure that the circumstances that might drive that kind of consideration don't come about. That's not just our responsibility, it's a collective responsibility I think. The nonproliferation advantages and the nonproliferation aspects of US extended deterrence are something that I think is often overlooked in the disarmament community. I am not entirely sure that walking away from our nuclear commitments to our allies is something that people would actually want if they could see where it might lead. So I would implore all of you to work with us on trying to get these answers right because they really do matter. Let's take another round. There's a question from the cheap seats over there. Oh my God, that's a huge television. Good Lord. One right here. That is deeply disturbing. I'm glad I didn't see that before. And this gentleman, the one behind, not you, but the one behind you, will be number, will be number three. Ilan Goldenberg with the Center for New American Security. Chris, thanks for being here today. I want to ask you a question about Iran. You talked about both tough enforcement and also pushing back on other issue, other Iranian behavior in the region or elsewhere outside of the nuclear agreement. I want to ask about another tool, which is engagement. Will the administration still be willing to engage with Iran? Obviously multilaterally through the Joint Commission but bilaterally to try to work out some of these problems, whether it's in the nuclear arena or elsewhere. Thank you very much, Dr. Ford. My name's Anthony Musa with the Monterey Institute and the U.S. Congress. And I have a question about U.S.-Russian relations. One of the big problems, I think, is that the U.S. relations with Russia is always under a very strong microscope now by the media. Yeah, I'm wondering how the administration plans to approach Russia to get them to be in compliance with the INF Treaty and then also how they plan to work with Russia in the future on bilateral relations. Yes, thank you. This is Ed Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists. I have a very specific question. So is the administration reconsidering the previous administration's position to cancel the mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River site, which is a boondoggle, which is going to cost taxpayers a pretty penny over the next several decades if it's continued, and it's primarily protected by Senator Lindsey Graham. So could you provide any insight on the current thinking on that project? Thank you. Over to you. Okay, try. This is gonna be a series of punts on these answers, I'm afraid, my apologies in advance. On the issue of Iran engagement, I don't wanna get out in front of my colleagues in the regional world who are dealing with those very issues right now. What I do generally in the NSE is only an input into those broader questions of Iran's strategy and engagement. We try to provide helpful input, but at this point with reviews underway, and I don't consider myself to be the right person to even speculate on that. So my apologies for that. And I'm afraid the same answer will have to come on Russia. As you might imagine, these are issues that are very much in the forefront of our thoughts on how we put these pieces together. I've been spending a lot of time issues like INF and the strategic stability thinking and that kind of stuff, but that's only a piece of the broader question of Russia policy and we have a new, I've forgotten what it's called now, Russia, Europe and Russia, you're Russia, if you will, part of our new reorganization at the NSE and I would defer to them if they were here, but they're not, so I should be very cagey, sorry. And on mocks, don't have an answer there either, I'm afraid, although rest assured I'm quite painfully aware of the history of that struggle. As I said, I used to work on the Appropriations Committee and I am personally familiar with some of the debates and discussions you're familiar with and I got nothing to say right now, sorry. Professional longevity is a narrowly balanced thing. You're very clear on that answer. Sharon is over here, yes. Okay, you've been patient. You're next, where else? And in the back of the room there, third. You've blocked this until like five o'clock in the afternoon, right? Yeah, let me, before we start, James, this clock here is telling me 11 minutes and 15 seconds. On the other hand, this note tells me finish at 10.15. End at 10.15, okay. So we, this may be the last round, but let's see, what's the speed round? Sharon Squasoni from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Good to see you, Chris. Thanks for being here, quick question. CTBT, there may be a real opportunity for a Republican president, Republican House and Senate. Can you give us some hope? Thanks. Okay, you're just waiting for that one, right? You're on. My name's Carlos. I'm a part of the CTBTO youth group and my question. Oh, all right, sit down, Carlos. No, no, no, if you've got a different, if you've got a different question and ask it quickly, if you're just gonna repeat Sharon's, then we'll see you at the next plenary session. No, my question is just, what are the, how would it benefit the United States to have that international monitoring system that has that verifiability to catch those nuclear explosions anywhere across the globe? Okay. My turn. Yeah. Yeah. Dieraster from the Plausers Fund and I have a question related to missile defense and Iran because Iran's missile tests have focused for a long time on improving the accuracy instead of rains and accuracy is not really needed for nuclear weapons. And there's also the Iran deal. So don't you think it would be time also to take a fresh look on the assumption that the Iranian threat is justification for expanding missile defenses in the US and in Europe, considering that Iran only has medium-range missiles that can't even reach Poland? Thank you. Thank you. All right, this one, let's take a fourth. Thank you. Bayzaonal from Chatham House. A very quick question on cybersecurity and nuclear power plants in NSS 2016, US and UK agreed on a joint declaration in a way, an initiative on cybersecurity and I know that UK is actually leading this and Obama administration kind of like stepped down on it. Will Trump administration will take a lead on this or not, that's my question. Cyber security, thank you. Okay, your turn, Chris. Okay. In, how about we do reverse order? On cybersecurity, I'm not really the cyber guy. The security nuclear plants, of course, of any sort is of huge concern to, and should be, to everyone. That's not an area on which I have any particular insight, but certainly from talking to people on the team, people seem very focused on cyber threats, on how we can work together most effectively to forestall the maturity of those threats and to deal with them should the mitigation challenges should threats actually materialize. There's been sort of a, not too great history of discovering cyber challenges, two issues related to critical infrastructure and that kind of thing of late. So we need to make sure that we're working great hard on it. I don't have fidelity on exactly what we're doing at this point and probably shouldn't speculate because I'm not the right person for that, but certainly don't think that we haven't noticed that there are challenges to be addressed here. On the issue of the plaschus question on missile defense in Iran, I don't wanna get out in front of the new ballistic missile defense review. I would imagine that all these range of questions are fair game within the construct of that review, but I don't know exactly where it's going to be going. And then a couple of questions on CTBT, I'll sort of match them together. The easy sort of cheat answer on CTBT is that obviously this is part of our review process. I would wager that any review of that question has to start from the fundamental issue of what it is that we think our security interests and security requirements actually are. Project those out into the future as far as we can and then try to lay the requirements of, the would-be requirements of the treaty against them and decide whether we think those are consistent. And if they are consistent, ask questions about how likely it is that we think that they would ever come into force in the first place. As everyone knows, we are hardly the only obstacle to entry into force. And I have heard US senators in public and not on just my side of the aisle. Public question whether or not they think it is ever likely to come into force, irrespective of our ratification. So these are all parts of the mix and I don't know the answers to them, but I just have to punt for now, I'm afraid. As to the monitoring system, I mean certainly, I'm tempted to sort of punt and say that's under review as well, but it's certainly factually the case that in the past, even the administration for which I previously worked, which was none too fond of the treaty itself, was able to conceptually distinguish support for the verification aspects and detecting nuclear testing aspects that the IMS and IDC were involved in on the one hand and broader issues of commitment to the treaty itself. It is certainly, that is conceptually available space. I couldn't warranty at this point where we're gonna come out, but others have looked at this before and come out that way. Still others have looked at before and come out very much in favor of both. We'll have to see. So watch this space and if we manage to get our reviews a little bit further along, I look forward to engaging with all of you all. Okay, maybe not all of you all at the same time, but all of you all in the seriatim perhaps on these kinds of things in the future when we have a bit more to say and I'm sorry I haven't been able to be more forthcoming today, but I have tried valiantly, gotten through our labyrinthine clearance process what I could and hopefully I'll have much more to say in the future. Thank you, Chris. Before we thank Chris, make a few announcements. We're gonna take a 30 minute break now for refreshments in the atrium. Then you'll be returning to this room for the morning plenary session, proliferation, prognostication, predicting the nuclear future. That's gonna begin promptly in this room at 10.45. I'm asked to remind you that you can download the official conference app so that you can fully participate in the next session. I'm not sure what that means, but download the app. Chris, when you tap danced, you did so artfully. When you wanted to be direct, you were very clear. You might even have kind of stretched the limits a bit in certain answers and we're grateful for that. I'm glad that I didn't advise you to not to accept the invitation. I think it's been a very worthwhile session for everyone, so we wanna thank you very much. I'm very grateful for the chance to come. Thank you very much. Thank you.