In my experience at the U.S. State Department, those working on nuclear arms control and those working on resolving violent conflicts could not be farther apart – literally. The Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability and my office in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations were in separate parts of the building, with distinct reporting lines. Similar bifurcation exists in the United Nations and other international institutions. As a result, there are too few conversations or programmatic links between the range of peacebuilding practices, ideas, and innovations and ongoing work to bolster nuclear arms control initiatives. This needs to change.
Despite origins directly linked to arms control, peace studies and peacebuilding have drifted away from nuclear arms issues as the fields have become more specialized. In recent decades, the peacebuilding field has evolved and grown primarily around responding to intrastate and regional wars. Yet, to be relevant in this new era, the field must re-engage and channel new support for nuclear arms control. New, cooperative ideas are surely needed. Increasingly, schematics for nuclear deterrence do not inspire confidence with growing confrontations among global powers and an increasingly complex landscape shaped by artificial intelligence, cyber, and space domains.
A creative and broader arms control-peacebuilding conversation could yield new, cooperative approaches. Among several areas for convergence, three are essential: opening up new dialogues, creating incentives for leaders to take steps toward peace, and building a broader social movement for change.
First, opening up new space for and styles of dialogue. Deep mistrust between the United States, Russia, and China impedes prospects for formal arms control talks. But Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues can provide useful ways to increase mutual understanding and pave the way for future talks. Past dialogues between U.S. and Chinese experts about arms control have yielded some results and also offer lessons. There is experience from peacebuilding on how to structure such dialogues. Peacebuilding experience highlights the important roles that diverse mediators can play in fostering dialogue, especially non-governmental and religious actors.
Second, creating incentives for leaders to take difficult steps toward peace. Peacebuilding perspectives can help broaden analysis of the factors motivating how key actors approach nuclear competition and possible options to shift that calculus toward peace processes. Important study continues on how to raise the costs associated with nuclear weapons, whether through public shaming or targeted sanctions. Equally, focus is needed on how to update the economic, political, and even psychological incentives for individual leaders or governments writ large to engage seriously in arms control processes.
Third, building a broader social movement to support needed change. As my colleague David Cortright explains in his article for this issue, many of the earlier gains in the international nuclear arms control architecture were shaped by the “nuclear freeze” mass movement. The peacebuilding field has experience to contribute to bottom-up efforts that expand and amplify coalitions advocating for peace. There has been considerable study on what makes such movements grow and gain leverage. With efforts underway to build a renewed movement to stop a future nuclear arms race, the wider peacebuilding field can be a critical partner.
A recent report by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Nagasaki University scholars argues that public acknowledgements of “mutual vulnerability” – how any conflict escalating to the use of nuclear weapons would inflict catastrophic damage on all nations involved – could be a first step toward stabilizing nuclear competition. Indeed, peacebuilding, according to John Paul Lederach, calls on us to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships, including with enemies, and thereby take risks to transcend violent dynamics. As arms control and peacebuilding reunite, we can explore how to foster that kind of moral imagination, creative risk-taking, and cooperative de-escalation in this challenging moment. Our collective future depends on it.
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Peter J. Quaranto is a visiting professor of the practice and distinguished global policy fellow for 2025-2026 at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. Quaranto concurrently serves as a senior fellow for the future of peace and security with the Alliance for Peacebuilding.
