In 1947, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, backed the Cold War strategy of Democratic President Harry Truman, asserting, "politics stops at the water's edge." Different approaches pulled the policy in opposite directions, but nuclear nonproliferation has been one of the signature achievements of American foreign policy and global governance ever since. That bipartisan ethos ended with the Cold War, yet the threat of that era—nuclear proliferation and nuclear war—remains.

Join us as we explore five propositions about nuclear weapons. Is the recent tension over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea the beginning of a new nuclear threshold? What will the world look like if more countries join the nuclear weapons club? The stakes are high, and, as recent events remind us, it is useful to review the future of nuclear weapons in world politics.