I'm John Bachelor with Andrea Stricker of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Andrea is the deputy director of the nonproliferation program at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies.

Stents the reason, Andrea, that because you're in a nonproliferation program, you would be the one accounting for the proliferation.

It certainly looks to me that no one is

persuaded that nonproliferation is an answer. Is that your experience? You know, John, nonproliferation

is often a good answer. Arms control is a positive solution, but only if it's in the national

interest, only if it makes sense for the U.S. to be able to deter

two near-peer nuclear adversaries who could join together ostensibly in a nuclear attack

against the United States in a doomsday scenario. We need to be able to assure our allies in

Europe and Asia that we will come to

their defense in the event of a nuclear attack, but better we want to deter that kind of attack

from happening at all to make Russia and China fear a massive strike in return should they do that.

And so I think today with both of these two powers on the

move as far as their arsenals and their delivery capabilities, it makes sense for the U.S.

to consider whether arms control is really in its interest or whether it needs to reassess.

You point in your article to an upcoming important meeting in 2026, I believe in the

springtime. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 11th Review Conference. This is United Nations

Run, Office for Disarmament Affairs. Is this a positive or routines, is this something where they can talk seriously about non-reliferation?

Or is this just about the top floors of the UN building?

It is an important conference.

It happens every five years to review the implementation of the NPT.

And under the NPT, of course, the nuclear weapon states

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