Policy Briefs on Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament

This report captures the key insights and debates from a two-day international conference on the Pact for the Future, convened by the CCDP and the Toda Peace Institute on 30–31 January 2025. The conference explored pressing questions, such as: What role can the Pact for the Future play in strengthening global peace and security? How can it address the growing challenges of multilateralism at a time when international cooperation seems increasingly fragile? What opportunities does it offer for advancing inclusive governance and conflict prevention? This report sheds light on the Pact for the Future’s implications for peace and security and the opportunities it presents for more effective and inclusive global governance.

This report examines the idea of American exceptionalism and the move from a Biden to a Trump presidency. After World War II, the new international order was unthinkable without American leadership. The USA was indispensable. The perception of excellence made Americans distance themselves from the old world’s corruption and colonial entanglements, and belief in their own moral superiority convinced the rulers that the USA had to lead the world by setting a good example and by using force if necessary. Now, the new president believes that to make America great again, the relationship with the outside world must become less burdensome. With a presidency centred on domestic affairs and the combination of lack of respect for liberal values and norms; dismantling of international commitments; focus on military strength, but not on war; preference for bilateral agreements; and unpredictability—all of it underpinned by a strong political mandate at home—Trump believes the USA should become a showcase for the rest of the world to admire.

This report examines six key parameters that can be used for a realistic comparison of military capabilities between NATO countries and Russia: military spending, major weapons systems, troop strength, military operational capabilities, arms production and nuclear weapons. This assessment, based on reliable sources of the present military capabilities of Russia and NATO, describes the status quo. Thus, it is a static comparison that can change due to the dynamic rearmament processes on both sides. While this can only be a snapshot, it reflects the current military balance of power. The report concludes that NATO's relative strength and general conventional military superiority could be an entry point to prevent or stop the present new arms race in Europe and possibly even to resume the arms control agenda that lies in shambles. To make progress in this area, three levels should be envisaged: strategic nuclear weapons, intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe and conventional power relations in Europe.

This report examines the fall of the House of Assad—a regime built on terror, ruled by fear and sustained by foreign and proxy forces—which can be traced back to Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel more than a year ago. Except that instead of a Free Palestine, a Free Syria has come into being. It raises the puzzle: how does one impress upon nationalistically inflamed consciousness the enormous disparity between the goals sought, the means used and the results obtained? The second part of the article references the same discrepancy of goals, means and outcomes as a note of caution against the first instinct to euphoria over the downfall of the much-hated Assads. The third and fourth sections look at the implications for regional and global actors with significant footprints in Syria.

This report posits that the combination of emerging and disruptive technologies and strategic conventional weapons may have a revolutionary impact on the future of nuclear weapons. While emerging and disruptive technologies may yield additional arguments to keep relying on nuclear weapons to defend against them, they are often regarded as destabilizing for the global nuclear order, which makes it more likely that nuclear deterrence will fail and nuclear weapons will be used. At the same time, strategic conventional weapon systems (including hypersonic missiles) have deterrence characteristics comparable to nuclear weapons.  Because they could be used in a way that at least seeks to comply with jus in bello principles, by minimizing civilian harm (in comparison with nuclear weapons), they are also more credible as a deterrent. This may in turn increase political willingness to seriously consider fully delegitimizing nuclear weapons, and eventually replacing them with the default option: modern conventional weapons.