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...
On Aug. 9, 2025, I attended a Memorial Mass at Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral, which was destroyed by the atomic bomb of 1945 dropped only 500 meters away. At 11:02 a.m. – the same time the bomb nearly leveled the cathedral 80 years prior – both bells in the rebuilt...
President Trump ordered the U.S. to “test” nuclear weapons. While the actual impact of his order is still unclear, it is an escalation of risk. We are at the highest risk of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy estimated we faced a 1 in 3...
Over the past 50 years, existing nonproliferation treaties and initiatives have proved remarkably effective in preventing the emergence of additional nuclear-armed states. But nonproliferation efforts are at an inflection point: the risk of additional states...
Shielding the population of a nation from the devastation of an adversary nuclear attack is unquestionably a laudable goal for a national leader. Former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and now President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome Program...
Social movements – appealing to public concerns and ethics – have an essential role to play in halting the rebuilding and expansion of nuclear weapons systems today. They can fundamentally shape the public and political conversation around these issues. By reflecting...
At the heart of Afghanistan’s conflict lies a deep-seated tension between traditionalist and modernist forces, which has often escalated into violence and armed confrontation between these two groups. A sustainable solution to the crisis in Afghanistan requires...
The Taliban rule is characterized by scholars and policy analysts in different terms, ranging from systematic discrimination and oppression, to ethnic cleansing, gender apartheid, and Islamic totalitarianism. While all of these characterizations are valid, none alone...
The federalism-unitarism debate In today’s Afghanistan, few debates cut as sharply across ethnic lines as the one over whether the state should be federal or unitary. Many Pashtun elites have long favored a unitary state, arguing that federalism could lead to the...
Over the course of the last few decades, intersectionality has been an increasingly adopted framework within peace studies. Generated out of the insights of Black feminist thinking, intersectionality is a powerful lens for analyzing oppression, domination, and many...
In the End of Peacekeeping (Penn Press 2024), I argue that the foundational thinking and practices of United Nations (UN) are patriarchal, colonial and martial and that as a result, abolishing peacekeeping is the only way forward. The book proposes that peacekeeping...
Quite literally, values determine ‘what is worth fighting for.’ When fighting entails a willingness to kill and/or be killed, we must take codes of valuation seriously. My essay explores how dominant value codes – and the emotional investments and power relations they...
Building peace through theatre is not easy, and its effects are neither immediately nor readily evident.
The use, development and ambivalences of photography are widely debated, especially considering the digital revolution.
ᏅᏩᏙᎯᏯᏓ. Nvwadohiyada. What is peace, and what does it have to do with poetry?
“Considering your own location in colonial systems, as well as in the web of relationships, what next step can you and your organization take to nurture decolonial possibilities?”