Issue: Arms & Technology -- Ensuring accountability, transparency and rights protection in the use and export of arms and emerging technologies

Ensuring accountability, transparency and rights protection in the use and export of arms and emerging technologies is a key principle of progressive foreign policy.

Arms Without Leverage: Rethinking US Security Assistance to South Asia

In November 2025, the US State Department approved a $93 million arms sale to India that included Javelin anti-tank missile systems and Excalibur precision-guided artillery munitions. While the deal is a relatively modest one in financial terms, it reveals the evolution of Washington’s security assistance strategy in South Asia.  

This Foreign Military Sales (FMS) package is designed to enhance India’s precision strike capabilities and battlefield effectiveness, while reinforcing interoperability with US-origin systems already in service, such as the M777 howitzer. Unlike earlier high-profile deals focused on major platforms — maritime patrol aircraft, helicopters, or transport fleets — this sale prioritizes precision, integration, and sustainment, signaling a strategic shift in US thinking about how best to support India’s military modernization. 

The timing of the sale is equally important. It comes after both signed the 2025 Framework for the US-India Major Defense Partnership and amid a broader push by Washington to deepen defense ties with India as part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, even as political frictions persist over trade, India’s relationship with Russia, and “strategic autonomy.” US officials framed the deal as supporting India’s role as a “major defense partner” and contributing to regional stability, especially in regard to countering China. 

1. Prioritize Restraint-Oriented Systems Over Offensive Platform Sales to encourage information-sharing, escalation management, and responsible military modernization. 2. Link Arms Transfers to Crisis Management Mechanisms to shape how that capability is used under stress—particularly in a nuclearized environment. 3. Re-engage Pakistan at a Functional Level to preserve limited channels of influence and reduce the risk of strategic miscalculation. 4. Integrate Arms Transfers into a Broader Regional Strategy that includes crisis diplomacy, economic ties, and multilateral coordination.

The US has also signed a new $686 million package arms sales deal with Pakistan that the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved in December 2025, and which is almost entirely focused on upgrading and sustaining Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jet fleet rather than providing new weapons systems. The inclusion of Link-16 enhances coordination with US and allied forces, particularly in joint operations and counterterrorism missions. Washington emphasized that the deal with Pakistan would not alter the region’s balance, where India maintains its military muscle.

Globally, the United States remains the dominant arms exporter, accounting for roughly 42 percent of total global arms exports in 2021–25, far ahead of competitors. This dominance gives Washington unmatched leverage — but that leverage is unevenly distributed across regions. South Asia is not the largest destination for US arms, but it is among the most strategically sensitive. Asia and Oceania account for roughly one-third of global arms transfers, with India and Pakistan consistently among the top importers. India alone has remained one of the world’s largest arms importers for decades, while Pakistan’s imports have surged in recent years. Data from the Security Assistance Monitor (SAM) at the Center for International Policy, which tracks US security assistance dating back to 2000, complements this picture. SAM data demonstrates that US involvement in South Asia extends beyond major weapons systems to include FMS, Foreign Military Financing (FMF), training programs, and counterterrorism assistance. This broader ecosystem of assistance matters because it fosters relationships, builds interoperability, and shapes the military doctrines of both India and Pakistan.

Yet, what does the United States want to achieve by these arms sales to India and Pakistan? SAM data reveals a pattern: US arms sales are not simply about equipping India and Pakistan, but also influencing the regional order. However, India’s diversification and Pakistan’s pivot to China indicate that US influence through arms transfers is constrained, as it cannot change either state’s behavior. To remain relevant, US policy must shift from transactional arms sales to a more integrated approach that prioritizes systems, crisis management, and political strategy.

India: The Selective Customer

The US–India defense relationship transformed dramatically since the early 2000s. Arms transfers outline the shape of this shift, but they do not tell the whole story.

US arms sales to India are best understood in terms of the capabilities they enable rather than the platforms themselves. From SAM Data, across maritime, air, and land domains, US transfers strengthened India’s maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare capabilities through systems such as the P-8I and naval helicopters, while also enhancing precision-strike capabilities with guided munitions such as Excalibur artillery rounds and Javelin missiles. At the same time, heavy-lift aircraft such as the C-17 and C-130 expanded India’s strategic mobility and logistics reach, particularly for high-altitude and rapid-deployment operations. More recent acquisitions—including drones and data-linked systems—underscore a shift toward networked warfare, where sensors, shooters, and decision-making are increasingly integrated in real time. Taken together, these sales indicate that the United States is not simply supplying hardware but helping India build a more integrated force.

Yet, India remains a selective buyer, not a dependent client. Historically, Russia has been India’s greatest supplier of arms, a persistent thorn in US–India defense relationships across administrations. Despite increasing diversification among suppliers and growing US sales — including transport aircraft, helicopters, and surveillance platforms — Russia continues to supply the most arms to India, followed by France and Israel. The efforts at diversification reflect a deliberate strategy rooted in strategic autonomy. India has reduced its reliance on Russia—from roughly 70 percent of imports in the early 2010s to around 40 percent more recently—but has not replaced that dependence with a US monopoly. Instead, it has created a multi-vendor procurement model.

For Washington, this creates both opportunity and limitation. Arms sales remain a key pillar of the broader strategic partnership, reinforcing initiatives such as interoperability agreements and maritime cooperation. Yet, the US cannot fully shape India’s military posture through arms transfers alone. Also, focusing only on the mix of arms suppliers overlooks the other dominant trend governing India’s military spending. India’s growing domestic defense industry is gradually reducing its reliance on imports altogether. This trend suggests that US arms sales to India may plateau—not because of political friction, but because of structural shifts in India’s defense economy.

Pakistan: The Uncertain Partner

SAM data highlights the cyclical nature of US assistance to Pakistan. In recent years, US arms transfers to Pakistan increasingly focused on maintenance, sustainment, and counterterrorism, rather than new high-end capabilities. During the post-9/11 period, Pakistan was a major recipient of US military aid, including aircraft, helicopters, and counterterrorism support. However, since the mid-2010s, US assistance has declined sharply, reflecting growing mistrust and shifting priorities. Two incidents in 2011 forced Washington to view Pakistan through a critical lens, especially in the realm of counterterrorism: the raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden and the Salala incident where NATO airstrikes killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghanistan border. In addition to these high-profile incidents, the formal conclusion of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2014, the US combat mission in Afghanistan, reduced the strategic rationale for expensive military aid to Pakistan. The Resolute Support Mission, which succeeded Enduring Freedom, simply did not have the capacity to provide Pakistan with a high level of US military aid. 

 

Figure: Deliveries of US Arms To Pakistan, 2009 – 2017

Graph: Deliveries to Pakistan through November 2025, Source: Census 2025 Y-axis: $0M to $1600m 2010: $1.1B 2011: $550.0M 2012: $1.6B 2013: $305.8M 2014: $340.9M 2015: $20.0M 2016: $163.4M 2017: $169.8M 2018: $82.2M 2019: $92.3M 2020: $124.7M 2021: $176.0M 2022: $148.2M 2023: $37.3M 2024: $44.7M 2025: $52.5M
Click here to see full size. Source: SAM

The relationship also drew negative political attention, prompting pushback from Members of Congress. In May 2016, a State Department spokesperson cited congressional opposition as the main reason why the Obama administration had decided not to provide FMF, or in other words, US taxpayer-provided money, to Pakistan for purchasing F-16s. Instead, the US welcomed Pakistan to raise its own funds for the jets. Since Pakistan was unable to raise the funds, the deal was eventually scuttled. 

As US security assistance waned, Pakistan deepened its defense relationship with China, which now accounts for roughly 80 percent of its arms imports. Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied arsenal emphasizes advanced airpower and air combat dominance, anchored by platforms like the JF-17 (jointly developed) and J-10C fighters, along with long-range air-to-air missiles and supporting radar systems. These are complemented by integrated air defense capabilities, including systems like the HQ-9 and LY-80 surface-to-air missiles, which provide layered protection against aircraft and drones. China also significantly strengthened Pakistan’s naval and maritime warfare capabilities, including the transfer of modern frigates (such as Type 054A vessels) and submarine technologies, enabling better sea control and anti-access operations in the Arabian Sea.

The result is a bifurcated regional landscape. The United States is a major—but not dominant—supplier to India, and a declining—though still relevant—supplier to Pakistan. China, by contrast, is becoming Pakistan’s primary external defense partner, reinforcing a broader geopolitical alignment.

How Arms Transfers Fuel the India–Pakistan Rivalry

The most enduring driver of arms transfers in South Asia remains the India–Pakistan rivalry. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data consistently identifies both countries among the world’s largest arms importers, with their competition serving as a central driver of regional militarization. US arms sales have played a complex role in this dynamic. On one level, Washington has sought to maintain a degree of balance, historically supplying both India and Pakistan at different times. On another level, US policy has increasingly tilted toward India, reflecting broader Indo-Pacific priorities.

Figure: Comparison of US Arms Sales Capabilities: India vs. Pakistan

Comparison of U.S. Arms Sales Capabilities: India vs Pakistan Y-axis: Relative emphasis (1 - 5) X axis: Capability Areas Precision Strike (Pakistan 2 India 5) ISR/Surveillance (Pakistan 2 India 5) Air Mobility (Pakistan 2 India 5) Networked Warfare (Pakistan 4 India 5) Airpower Sustainment (Pakistan 5 India 2)

This shift has implications for strategic stability. While US arms transfers to India are often framed as part of a broader effort to counter China, they inevitably affect the India–Pakistan balance as well. Pakistan, in turn, responds through its own procurement — largely from China — creating a triangular arms dynamic. The nature of the arms transfers also matters. As the May 2025 crisis indicated, modern warfare is focused on networks, long-range precision-strike capabilities, and airpower integration, as well as beyond-visual-range engagement. These trends suggest that arms transfers are no longer about platforms alone but about systems integration — something that US assistance is particularly well-suited to provide. 

Compared to China and other major sellers, US arms transfers come with end-use monitoring, congressional oversight, and political expectations attached to security assistance. While these tools often fall short of meaningful restraint, they nonetheless introduce political considerations into the transfer process. Also, unlike private defense firms in the United States that remain institutionally separate from the state, and where US arms manufacturers compete for the same contracts, Chinese firms operate within a political framework that allows the state to direct or integrate commercial innovation into national security objectives. As a result, Pakistan is not simply buying weapons from China but is becoming integrated into China’s technology architecture, which could accelerate elements like military adaptation, networked warfare, and AI-enabled decision-making in future crises with India. This also complicates traditional confidence-building measures in South Asia, which were designed around visible state-controlled military systems rather than commercially enabled, dual-use technologies.

At the strategic level, US arms transfers operate within the constraints of nuclear deterrence. Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, and their rivalry is structured around mutual vulnerability, which relies on two presuppositions. First, conventional arms transfers do not fundamentally alter the deterrence balance. They may shift tactical or operational dynamics, but they do not change the underlying strategic equilibrium. The US Arms Export Control Act acknowledges the role that conventional arms transfers can play in overall stability by requiring that export control decisions “take into account whether the export of an article would contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction…or prejudice the development of bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements.”

The second assumption of US deterrence policy is that external actors have a limited ability to shape escalation pathways. The most critical decisions in a crisis — whether to escalate, de-escalate, or signal restraint — are made in New Delhi and Islamabad, not Washington or Beijing. SAM data reinforces this point indirectly. It shows that arms transfers fluctuate with political relationships, but regional crises persist regardless of those fluctuations. In other words, arms sales are not a stabilizing force in themselves.

Policy Prescriptions: From Transactions to Strategy

If US arms transfers to South Asia generate access but not control, the policy challenge is to convert access into meaningful strategic impact. Four concrete steps can help achieve this shift.

  1. Prioritize Restraint-Oriented Systems Over Offensive Platform Sales: Rather than emphasizing additional platform sales that risk fueling regional arms competition, US policy should focus on capabilities that enhance transparency, situational awareness, and crisis management, such as ISR, maritime domain awareness, secure communications, and data-sharing architectures. These systems align with the evolving character of warfare while also supporting restraint by improving early warning, reducing uncertainty, and strengthening command-and-control reliability during crises. Instead of measuring influence through the volume of hardware transferred, Washington should prioritize embedding itself within partner militaries’ operational networks in ways that encourage information-sharing, escalation management, and responsible military modernization.
  2. Link Arms Transfers to Crisis Management Mechanisms: Arms sales should be tied to the development and reinforcement of crisis management tools. This includes supporting nuclear confidence-building measures that are already in place, such as missile pre-notification agreements, strengthening military hotlines, and conducting joint simulations. The goal is not just to enhance capability, but to shape how that capability is used under stress—particularly in a nuclearized environment.
  3. Re-engage Pakistan at a Functional Level: While a full restoration of US–Pakistan defense ties is unlikely, a complete disengagement is strategically counterproductive. The United States should maintain targeted cooperation in areas such as aviation safety, disaster response, and nuclear risk reduction. This approach will not reverse Pakistan’s alignment with China, but it can preserve limited channels of influence and reduce the risk of strategic miscalculation.
  4. Integrate Arms Transfers into a Broader Regional Strategy: Finally, US arms sales must be embedded within a broader political and diplomatic strategy for South Asia. Defense cooperation with India cannot substitute for regional engagement that includes crisis diplomacy, economic ties, and multilateral coordination. In other words, arms transfers should support—not substitute for—a coherent regional policy.

Arms and Ends

US arms sales and transfers to South Asia are best understood not as a standalone policy tool, but as part of a broader strategic framework. They are used to build partnerships, signal commitment, and shape regional dynamics, but they cannot, on their own, determine outcomes.

SAM data underscores this point. It shows that US security assistance is deeply embedded in political relationships and that its effectiveness depends on alignment, trust, and shared strategic objectives. In South Asia, those conditions are uneven. India is a partner but not an ally while Pakistan is a partner of convenience, increasingly aligned elsewhere. Both countries are nuclear-armed, domestically capable, and strategically autonomous.

For US policymakers, the lesson is not that arms sales are irrelevant, but that they are insufficient. Used wisely, they can reinforce relationships, enhance interoperability, and support stability. Used in isolation, they risk becoming an expensive substitute for strategy. In South Asia’s nuclearized and increasingly multipolar landscape, the United States must move beyond the illusion that arms transfers alone can deliver influence. The challenge is not to sell more, but to think more strategically about what those sales are meant to achieve.

Sahar Khan is a 2026 nonresident fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs and a co-host of a new podcast focused on South Asia in the new nuclear age called “Beyond the Lines of Control.” Previously, she served as the deputy director and senior fellow of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center, a research fellow in Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute, and managing editor of Inkstick Media. Her research focuses on restraint, deterrence, and South Asian regional security and politics. 

Exiting American Hegemony Under A French Nuclear Umbrella 

Transatlantic relations since World War II have followed a familiar, and often toxic, pattern: one side pushes, while the other insists it wanted to be pushed all along. As Europe recovered after 1945, its leaders, particularly in France, periodically declared their plans and wishes for greater autonomy, while American presidents urged Europe to take on more responsibility. Yet in practice, this dynamic has resembled an unhealthy family relationship: a parent demanding independence from a child, but resisting it when it happens, and a child that ultimately returns when faced with real life constraints. While this struggle has repeated about once a decade since the 1960s, it is time for Europe to grow up, and move out of the American nuclear umbrella and into its own stable shelter against catastrophe. 

Donald Trump began 2026 straining US relations with Europe. His stated desire for a US annexation of Greenland, often dismissed as a meme on the campaign trail, suddenly became a stark possibility, rather than just an attention-grabbing remark. In response, European decision-makers presented a strong and united front and said, “absolutely not”. 

France led the conversation, from Emmanuel Macron’s sunglasses in Davos to his “for sure” speech and even private messages leaked by Trump. Close behind was the UK’s Keir Starmer, who, alongside the wave of TikToks, shared an AI-generated meme of himself and Macron as Top Gun characters. Germany joined in as well, with Foreign Minister Wadephul and official institutions posting a nihilist penguin edit to showcase European unity. Sunglasses sales soared, memes circulated, and political popularity followed, drawing even younger audiences, however briefly, into conversations on European unity and strategic autonomy.

This unity was not only shown through social media, but also through military deployments to Greenland from Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, UK, Finland and Netherlands. While this deployment was framed as a joint exercise against Russian and Chinese threats, diplomats and analysts also concluded that it was meant to show an example of NATO defence without the US. Furthermore, at the Brussels’ ambassadors summit on January 19, European officials planned an anti-tariff retaliation, while the ratification of the US trade deal was paused. This has led to Trump taking a step back from the Greenland idea, at least for now, and to Europe catching a glimpse of what coordinated messaging and unity can achieve.

Draft a concise, independent ESS that sets Europe’s priorities rather than reacting to the US. Develop contingency plans to support and protect Ukraine if US backing falters. Define a coherent Middle East strategy based on European interests, not American imperatives. Coordinate with France and the UK to outline the scope, obligations, and operational rules of a potential joint nuclear umbrella, with an emphasis on No First Use in keeping with best deescalatory practice. Ensure that smaller European powers are protected and not overshadowed by leadership from stronger states in the bloc.

All of this was followed by foreign relations enthusiasts’ favourite holiday: the Munich Security Conference. In the shadow of last year’s J. D. Vance’s speech, the more polished one delivered by Marco Rubio still sent the same message: the US would pursue its own interests, and Europe needed to get on board. France, under Macron, placed the European project at the centre of the debate, urging Europeans to take pride in their values, noting that “a stronger Europe would be a better friend to its allies.” He also moved beyond Charles de Gaulle’s traditional anti-Anglosaxon and go-it-alone approach, instead emphasizing the indivisibility of European and British security and calling for greater coordination and spending. While Keir Starmer reaffirmed the importance of the US alliance, he also supported reducing dependence on it, pointing toward deeper UK–EU defence integration and a more European NATO, which certainly is a turn in their foreign policy, which previously relied upon being the closest American partner in Europe, at the cost of their relations with fellow Europeans. Chancellor of Germany Friedrich Merz struck a more cautious tone. Although he acknowledged the breakdown of the international order and supported greater European cooperation, he ultimately prioritized Germany’s role as a reliable partner to the United States, suggesting that European strategic autonomy should not come at the expense of alignment with Washington. 

The Umbrella of Île Longue

On March 2, Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech in Brittany, one that is perhaps the most significant speech on nuclear policy by any Western leader since the end of the Cold War. Speaking at Île Longue, the base for France’s nuclear submarines, Macron outlined a strategic shift. Notably, the original French nuclear deterrence, force de frappe, was never meant to be able to defeat Russia (USSR at the time) in a nuclear stand-off, but rather to be able to inflict enough damage and guarantee that the United States would have no choice but to come to European’s defence, with full force. Charles de Gaulle never trusted Americans to defend Europe as they would their own country, no matter who was in the office. Force de frappe was created as a symbol of national pride and independence, part of de Gaulle’s bigger plan to restore French grandeur after World War II. Through the Cold War and beyond it evolved pragmatically: de Gaulle pulled France from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966; Mitterrand in the 1990s and post-Soviet collapse cut costs by scrapping land missiles and reducing subs, but kept the core – no first use, defensive only, and total control in Paris. Hollande and earlier presidents reaffirmed this amid terrorism and new threats without big shifts. While Macron continues to uphold Gaullist independence and the policy of no-first strikes, since 2020 he has introduced a response to multi-domain threats that go beyond state borders, such as cyberattacks, into the French nuclear doctrine. Alongside this, he has announced arsenal growth, for the first time since 1992.

What Macron is offering is broadly familiar: the shelter of a French nuclear umbrella for Europe is the offer that has been on the table since the 1960s. What is new this time is that Europeans seem more inclined to accept it. The UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark have agreed to participate in a new “advanced deterrence” strategy. Macron set to increase the size of the French nuclear arsenal, and to no longer share with the world what that arsenal contains. This is another example of him breaking away from the past French doctrine, that has since 2008 meant a self chosen obligation to have less than 300 warheads. Unfortunately, this opacity aligns with the lapse of bilateral arms control agreements like New START (expired in February 2026), mirroring US and Russian trends toward reduced disclosures. France frames it as enhancing “strict sufficiency” deterrence without proliferation risks, maintaining its NPT commitments and abstention from stockpile growth races. Macron has declared that the reduced transparency is just a dynamic update to the previous doctrine, now needed in order to keep scaring away the enemies, but without entering into an arms race. He has also emphasized that the new goal of the arsenal is that “no State, however powerful, could shield itself from it; and no State, however vast, could recover”, in case of France’s red lines being crossed. Notably, the concept of red lines has been kept deliberately vague, except saying that they do go beyond France’s national borders, in contrast to being strictly defined during the de Gaulle era. 

This proposal ultimately reinforces a return to power politics and spheres of influence. And while Macron presents it as a path to peace, Ronald Reagan’s warning still holds: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. Moreover, the concept of the nuclear umbrella relies on enemies fearing it, and allies trusting their guarantor. In a context where great powers are increasingly moving away from transparency, as Emmanuel Macron calls on middle powers to unite in response to the dominance of the United States and China, and as Europe seeks to reassert its role on the global stage, France, together with its partners, would be better served by setting a stronger precedent of transparency and cooperation, and by upholding and reinforcing the non-proliferation community, rather than following in the footsteps of the prevailing hegemons.

Prime Minister Robert Golob is on a working visit to Paris, where he met with French President Emmanuel Macron. They stand under French umbrellas

A few days before Macron’s speech, Germany officials stated they would not be footing the bill for an arsenal that is only French, and recent issues with the Franco-German-Spanish project FCAS (Future Combat Air System) go to show they mean it. FCAS is a joint €100 billion project, launched in 2017 to build a 6th-generation fighter jet by 2040, as well as drones and a “combat cloud” network. At the beginning of the year German officials stated that they would not pay equal share for a fighter customized to French needs: nuclear-armed and carrier-launched. Macron himself stated that the usage of the nuclear arsenal remains solely at France’s discretion, more precisely, the President’s – hence, his. One of the main reasons why this concept has never come to fruition before certainly is because Europeans trusted the external ally, the US, more than they trusted each other. And even if they have overcome this, France is set to hold presidential elections in 2027, and Macron cannot run. So, what happens when someone new is in his office? While most French presidents have ridden the de Gaulle wave of foreign policy, no one more than Macron, there is no guarantee that his successor will be of the same beliefs. The umbrella could contract as easily as it was unfurled.  

Many have urged the UK to act as a second guarantor, the only other European country with a nuclear arsenal. Yet while France’s force de frappe has always been independent, the British arsenal was built for NATO use, with sovereign UK authority limited to cases of “immediate grave danger”, a term never fully defined. Still, London has noticeably shifted away from the US and closer to continental Europe. Case in point: their backing of Macron’s nuclear umbrella project and the cooperation agreement signed with France last July, which has created an Anglo-French “oversight committee”. Germany, meanwhile, published a joint statement on March 2, showing alignment with France, but the very next day while Merz was in Washington, Trump used this occasion to publicly berate Spain, as their prime minister strongly refused the possibility of the US using Spanish military bases for attacks on Iran. The German chancellor stayed quiet and did not defend its European ally at all – although he later claimed he did so in private. When Merz visited the UK only a day after Macron last July, it was seen as the return of the E3 group, as the driving force of European security. If we take the history lessons into consideration, it would most likely be Germany to back away from any real European autonomy and go right back to the US. After all, if European countries do go through with it, the place of the American closest ally within Europe will be available, and Trump has already favored Merz in comparison to other European leaders.

Strait Talk

The beginning of March also brought the US and Israeli war against Iran, a true test of Europe’s united front and its seriousness about independence from Washington. Remarkably, European leaders have stood firm: this is not their war, and they will neither participate nor allow the US use of their bases. True to form, Trump expressed disappointment, warning that their choices could imperil NATO, a body he has long treated as little more than a burden. Yet even if Europe stays out of the fighting, the consequences ripple across the continent: soaring oil and gas prices, and a missile striking Cyprus in early March. While it starkly resembles 2003 and European discontent with the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, this moment will reveal whether European unity is performative theater or the first steps toward genuine strategic autonomy.  

The central question remains: is Europe’s new push for sovereignty real, or merely an illusion crafted to capture Washington’s attention? The answer will emerge in the coming months, but policy must act now. Recommendations for the European Commission, as it develops a new European Security Strategy (ESS), are clear: 

  1. Draft a concise, independent ESS that sets Europe’s priorities rather than reacting to the US.  
  2. Develop contingency plans to support and protect Ukraine if US backing falters.  
  3. Define a coherent Middle East strategy based on European interests, not American imperatives.  
  4. Coordinate with France and the UK to outline the scope, obligations, and operational rules of a potential joint nuclear umbrella, with an emphasis on No First Use in keeping with best deescalatory practice.  
  5. Ensure that smaller European powers are protected and not overshadowed by leadership from stronger states in the bloc.

What emerges from this analysis is that a more militarily autonomous Europe has the potential to act not as a destabilizing force, but as a moderating one. Moving beyond its longstanding role as a deferential ally, Europe must begin to trust in its own collective strength and in the reliability of its partners within the continent, rather than defaulting to external guarantees. For too long, both European foreign policy and, at times, internal political dynamics have been shaped by electoral cycles in the United States, with each new one bringing a recalibration of priorities. Strategic autonomy would allow Europe to break from this pattern and act with greater consistency and confidence, engaging the United States as an ally when interests align and as a competitor when they do not. Freed from automatic alignment with Washington’s strategic choices, Europe could position itself as a more cautious and deliberative actor on the global stage, one less inclined toward interventionism and more committed to diplomacy, multilateralism, and restraint. Unlike in past decades, where European support often enabled US-led wars of choice, a truly independent Europe could instead serve as a counterweight, slowing escalation rather than facilitating it. In doing so, Europe would move from being a geopolitical battleground for great powers to an actor in its own right, contributing to a more balanced, stable, and predictable international order.

Tijana Bauer (Tijana Bauer | LinkedIn) is a researcher and writer working on European security, transatlantic relations, and nuclear deterrence, with a Master’s degree in Comparative International Relations from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her work combines primary-source research, OSINT, and policy analysis, and has appeared in academic and research publications on European autonomy, Balkan security, and intelligence cooperation.

Assessing The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran Deal: Its Provisions, Verification Results and Political Support

David Cortright is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and professor emeritus at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Read the companion piece here.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran Deal (JCPOA) was an historic agreement that established significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The core bargain involved the acceptance of nuclear restrictions and transparency measures by Iran in return for the lifting of nonproliferation sanctions imposed by the US and UN Security Council. It was the result of several years of intensive negotiations with Iran led by the US, with the involvement of with the involvement of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. Iran made significant concessions in accepting the agreement and complied fully with its terms. 

In 2013 Iran accepted and complied with an interim agreement, the Joint Plan of Action prefiguring the final accord, which required Tehran to restrict its uranium program and accept an enlarged International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime. Iran complied with the interim agreement, building trust and laying the foundations for the final, more extensive joint comprehensive agreement.1  

The JCPOA blocked Iran’s pathway to developing nuclear weapons and provided unprecedented monitoring and verification systems for assuring implementation. According to a 2017 public statement by dozens of former arms control officials and weapons inspectors, the JCPOA2

dramatically reduced the risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program and mandated unprecedented Iran Deal and transparency measures that make it very likely that any possible future effort by Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, even a clandestine program, would be detected promptly. By blocking Iran’s potential pathways to nuclear weapons, the JCPOA has also decreased the likelihood of destabilizing nuclear competition in the region. 

Details of the agreement

Under the terms of the JCPOA Iran dismantled more than 13,000 centrifuges and placed them in monitored storage. It shipped more than 11 tons of low-enriched uranium, 98% of its stockpile, out of the country. 

Iran also did the following:

  1. Dismantled most of its centrifuges and reduced the number of operating centrifuges to 5,060 IR-1 machines for a ten-year period.
  2. Agreed to cap the level of uranium enrichment for 15 years at 3.67 percent uranium-235, the threshold for medical use and far below the 90% level required for nuclear fission. 
  3. For 15 years, confined enrichment to the Natanz site.
  4. Ceased the production of additional IR-1 centrifuges for a decade
  5. Maintained a lowered stockpile of uranium of all types equivalent to 300 kilograms.3

Iran’s potential pathway to a plutonium bomb was shut down. The core of its heavy-water reactor at Arak was removed and disabled. The facility was reconfigured with Russian and Chinese assistance so that it could not produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.4 Plutonium production fell ten-fold. Iran agreed to refrain from research or work on reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium for potential weapons for at least 15 years.

The JCPOA provided guarantees that Iran would not be able to have a nuclear weapon for at least a period of 15 years. To verify these terms, Iran accepted “accept the kind of inspections that no other country in the world has ever accepted”the kind of inspections that no other country in the world has had to experience, as Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, stated.5

Verification

In signing the JCPOA Iran agreed to the most comprehensive and intrusive IAEA weapons inspection system ever negotiated.6 In all previous nuclear weapons inspections, the focus had been on fissile material, to verify that nuclear materials were being used only for peaceful purposes and could not be diverted to bomb production. The JCPOA went beyond this approach to look at potential bomb-making equipment. As Ali Vaez put it, inspectors examined “every nut and bolt” that could be used for centrifuges or other machinery involved in Iran’s nuclear production.

The Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol established with the JCPOA created procedures granting IAEA full access to Iranian nuclear sites and other sites where undeclared activities were indicated. Under the terms of the agreement, scheduled to last 15 years, the IAEA had the right to access any site in Iran, including prompt entry to suspicious sites, in some cases within 24 hours.7 The agreement “undoubtedly placed Iran’s nuclear program under broader and stricter safeguards than existed before the accord,” wrote Olli Heinonen.8 The nuclear material monitoring mechanisms of the agreement were “robust.”

When Iran confirmed its acceptance of these terms, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2231 (July 2015) lifting sanctions.9  The resolution created the legal framework for member states to engage in economic trade, investment, banking, and travel with Iran. The termination of sanctions was the quid pro quo that motivated Iran to accept these strict limitations to its nuclear program.

Compliance

The record shows that Iran complied with the terms of the JCPOA.10 In testimony before the US Congress, officials from the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the US intelligence community stated that Iran was abiding by the agreement. In April 2018, the State Department’s official report on the agreement said Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA” and reported no material breach of the agreement.11 

The IAEA issued more than a dozen reports on Iranian compliance from 2016 through 2018 and found no evidence of substantive Iranian violations of the agreement.12 The reports described consistent Iranian fulfillment of its obligations under the agreement. Typical was the IAEA report of June 6, 2018,13 issued soon after the announcement of US withdrawal from the agreement. The report made clear that, contrary to claims by the Trump administration, Iranian officials were still implementing their obligations. Its findings included the following: 

  1. Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium at that time was 123.9 kg, below the 300 kg limit set by the accord.
  2. The number of installed IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz remained below the 5,060 limit set by the agreement.
  3. Iran enriched uranium only to 3.67 percent uranium-235, the limit set by the deal. 
  4. The stockpile of heavy water of 120.3 metric tons was below the negotiated 130 metric ton limit.

IAEA monitoring extended to all nuclear facilities, research and development activities, and all associated mining, milling and industrial production facilities. It is significant that the IAEA was able to measure stockpiles to the nearest 100 grams and enrichment levels to 3 figures. This was an indication of accuracy and added intelligence value of enhanced IAEA inspections and reporting.14 

Official validation 

Many senior U.S. government officials and nuclear experts recognized the intelligence and security benefits of the JCPOA and urged the White House to continue to comply with the agreement. Former Republican Senator Daniel Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, stated in the directorate’s May 2017 Worldwide Threat Assessment that the JCPOA has “enhanced the transparency of Iran’s nuclear activities” and “extended the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon from a few months to about a year.”15 Prior to commencing negotiations with Iran in 2013, that timeline would have been 2-3 months.

In October, 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis confirmed that Iran was complying with the nuclear accord. When asked by then Rep. Ruben Gallego of the House Armed Services Committee if Iran was compliant, Mattis replied, “I believe fundamentally they are.”16 In September 2017, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran was complying with the JCPOA and that withdrawal would have “unfortunate” ripple effects.17 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell described the JCPOA as “a pretty good deal” with a “very rigorous verification regime.”18 These and other security concerns were brushed aside in the decision to withdraw from the accord. 

Positive assessments of Iranian compliance also came from the governments of Britain, France, and Germany. Conservative British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said breaking the agreement would be a “mistake.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran “kept the letter of the agreement quite systematically.”19 

In October 2017, President Trump charged that Iran “has committed multiple violations” of the agreement and was preventing IAEA inspectors from doing their job. The website FactCheck.Org thoroughly debunked the claims. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano issued a statement that “the IAEA has had access to all locations it needed to visit. … As I have reported to the Board of Governors, the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented.”20

Rejection

Evidence and informed opinion notwithstanding, on May 8, 2017 the White House officially reneged on the Iran deal and announced US withdrawal from the JCPOA.21 U.S. sanctions were reimposed and intensified. It was a day of infamy in the history of nuclear nonproliferation.

Iran continued to comply with the JCPOA into 2019, but in the face of continuing sanctions and hostility from Washington, Tehran abandoned its policies of nuclear restraint and began enriching uranium to higher levels. The country produced substantial amounts of higher enriched uranium, bringing their stockpile closer to levels that could be further enriched for the production of nuclear weapons. While IAEA inspectors remained in Iran, they issued alarming reports of Iran’s expanding enrichment program. A May 2025 BBC report cited an IAEA assessment that Iran possessed over 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity – far above the level used for civilian purposes. This was a nearly 50% increase in three months.22 

These were dangerous developments that increased tensions in the region. They provided the justification Israel and the United States used to attack Iranian nuclear production sites during the 12-day war of June 2025.23 Following the 12-day war, the Iranian government halted its cooperation with the IAEA and suspended verification visits at sites illegally bombed in June in violation of IAEA Safeguards agreements.24 Tehran allowed IAEA inspectors back for  site visits at the civilian Tehran Research Reactor.25 

Although Trump said the June 2025 attacks obliterated Tehran’s nuclear capacities, the US joined Israel on February 28 2026 in renewed strikes against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, launching a devastating war that continues as of this writing. 

Read the companion piece here.

1 Davenport, K.  2022, January. Implementation of the Joint Plan of Action, Arms Control Association. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/implementation-joint-plan-action-glance. 

2 Arms Control Association, Statement from Nuclear Nonproliferation Experts on the Iran Nuclear Deal September 2017, https://www.armscontrol.org/sites/default/files/files/documents/Experts-Statement-on-JCPOA-Sept2017.pdf

3 Arms Control Association, “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a Glance, Last reviewed February 2025, Kelsey Davenport, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/joint-comprehensive-plan-action-jcpoa-glance

 4 “Iran ‘fills nuclear core with concrete,’” BBC, January 11, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35285095

5 Ali Vaiz, “What Trump Didn’t Know About Iran,” The Ezra Klein Podcast, March 14, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ali-vaez.html

6 US Department of State. 2015, July 14. Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. https://2009-2017.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/. 

7  Institute for Science and International Security, Verification of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, July 28, 2015, https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Verification_of_Iran_JCPOA_Final.pdf

8  Olli  Heinonen, “Strengthening the Verification and Implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, November 2015, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/pantheon_files/files/publication/Heinonen_Strengthening_Verification_and_Implementation_of_JCPOA.pdf

9  United Nations Security Council. 2015, July 20. Resolution 2231 (2015). Adopted by the Security Council at its 7488th meeting. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/unsc_resolution2231-2015.pdf. 

10 United States Congress. 2018, June 6. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, U.S. House of Representatives. Protecting America from a bad deal: Ending US participation in the nuclear agreement with Iran. Testimony of James Walsh. https://oversight.house.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2018/06/Walsh-Iran-testimony-6.6.18-fin.pdf. 

11 United States Department of State. 2018. 2018 Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments. https://2017-2021.state.gov/2018-report-on-adherence-to-and-compliance-with-arms-control-nonproliferation-and-disarmament-agreements-and-commitments/#Iran3. 

12 International Crisis Group, The Iran Deal at Two: A Status Report, Report No. 181/Midde East & North Africa, 18 January, 2018, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/iran/181-iran-nuclear-deal-two-status-report; see also Verification and Monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015)”, GOV/INF/2016/1, 16 January 2016; GOV/2016/8, 26 February 2016; GOV/2016/23, 27 May 2016; GOV/2016/46, 8 September 2016; GOV/2016/55, 9 November 2016; GOV/2017/10, 24 February 2017; GOV/2017/24, 2 June 2017; GOV/2017/35, 31 August 2017; and GOV/2017/48, 13 November 2017. Also see “Secretary-General report on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)”, S/2016/589, 12 July 2016; S/2016/1136, 30 December 2016; S/2017/515, 20 June 2017; S/2017/2010, 8 December 2017.

13 Arms Control Association, IAEA Report Confirms Iran’s Compliance with the JCPOA, n.d., https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2018-06-08/iaea-report-confirms-irans-compliance-jcpoa

14  Kelley, R. 2025, November…

15  Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Statement for the Record, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, Daniel R. Coast, Director of National Intelligence, May 23, 2017, https://www.intelligence.gov/assets/documents/archive/SASC%202017%20ATA%20SFR%20-%20FINAL.PDF

16 Iran Watch, “Defense Secretary James Mattis Confirms that Iran is Complying with Nuclear Deal,” October 3, 2017, https://www.iranwatch.org/library/governments/united-states/executive-branch/department-defense/defense-secretary-james-mattis-confirms-iran-complying-nuclear-deal 

17  Paul McLeary, ”Trump’s Top General Says Iran Honoring Nuclear Deal,” Financial Times, September 26, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/26/trumps-top-general-says-iran-honoring-nuke-deal/

18 Alexandra Jaffe, “Colin Powell: Iran Deal is a ‘Pretty Good Deal’”, NBC News, September 6, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iran-nuclear-talks/colin-powell-iran-deal-pretty-good-deal-n422551

19 All quotes from Walsh, United States Congress. 2018, June 6. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, U.S. House of Representatives. Protecting America from a bad deal: Ending US participation in the nuclear agreement with Iran. Testimony of James Walsh. https://oversight.house.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2018/06/Walsh-Iran-testimony-6.6.18-fin.pdf.

20 Kiely, E. 2017, October 13. Trump on “multiple violations.” FactCheck.Org. https://www.factcheck.org/author/eugene-kiely/page/50/. 

21 Mark Lander, “Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned,” New York Times, May 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html

22 Ghobadi, P. 2025. Iran significantly growing uranium stockpile, warns UN nuclear agency. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mg7kx2d45o. 

23 Mark Fitzpatrick, “Attacking Iran and Tempting Fate,” Survival Online, 1 August 2025, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/survival-online/2025/08/attacking-iran-and-tempting-fate/

24 Erika Solomon, “Nuclear Inspectors Leave Iran After Cooperation Halted With U.N. Watchdog,” New York Times, July 4, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/world/middleeast/nuclear-inspectors-iran-iaea.html

25 Arms Control Association, “U.S. Negotiators Were Ill-Prepared for Serious Nuclear Negotiations with Iran,” March 15  (updated), 2026, Kelsey Davenport, https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2026-03-11/us-negotiators-were-ill-prepared-serious-nuclear-negotiations-iran

Trump’s War on Iran is the obliteration of diplomacy

Trump’s most consistent stated objective for launching his war against Iran is to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. It is an end that many supporters of the war believe can only be achieved through force. Negotiations and diplomatic agreements were tried in the past, they argue, and failed. 

Trump never wanted diplomacy to have a chance. He made that abundantly clear during his first term when in 2018 he reneged on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That agreement was effectively blocking Iran’s path to the development of nuclear weapons when the White House pulled the plug. (A documented account of the JCPOA is provided here as an historical annex.)

The administration’s disregard for diplomacy was evident in the weeks preceding the February 28 start of war. Discussions were underway, with significant Iranian concessions on the table. Mediators and close observers of the talks believed progress was being made, but the US and Israel proceeded with military action. A similar pattern played out in June 2025 with the U.S. – Iran talks preceding the 12-day war. These negotiations were cut short when Israel launched military strikes on Iran and Iran retaliated. 

Last resort?

That negotiations were taking place up to days before the launch of the war undermines any claim that Trump’s war of choice was a last resort to avert future harm. The harm that the war was intended to prevent, Iran’s possible future development and use of a nuclear weapon, was not imminent, nor was stopping it only possible through the use of military force. Ethical principles on the use of force hold that military action against an adversary is permissible only as a last resort, if other viable means of countering aggressive threats have been tried and found wanting. 

Most successes in nonproliferation policy are the result of diplomatic bargaining and the deft use of threats, sanctions and incentives to induce cooperation from potential proliferating states. These means were working before Trump walked the United States out of the JCPOA, and they have been effective means to halt a nuclear program on other cases. Diplomacy should be thoroughly explored before any consideration of the use of force. This is especially true in the Iran case where diplomacy has been effective in the past, and active discussions were underway prior to the attack. 

Follow ethical principles on the use of force, including last resort, before making the grave decision to initiate military hostilities. Recognize that diplomatic bargaining and the use of sanctions and incentives to resolve political disputes are effective means of countering weapons proliferation. Rely on experienced diplomats and knowledgeable scientific experts to negotiate for arms control and nonproliferation.

If the threat from an adversary is imminent and the risk of attack is grave, diplomatic options may not be feasible or morally appropriate. If the adversary shows no interest in negotiated solutions, that may also reduce the utility of diplomacy in achieving the desired outcome. Neither of these conditions applied in this case. 

No imminent threat of nuclear weapons existed in Iran. Tehran increased the level of uranium enrichment in recent years and has a stockpile of near weapons grade enriched uranium, but it was not currently enriching and had made no conscious effort to create a nuclear weapon. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated on March 2 that his agency did not see a “structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons.” The 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US intelligence community stated “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” The recently released 2026 threats report omits that sentence, but it does not include an assessment that Iran made the decision to weaponize.

A potential breakthrough?

Twice in the last year the United States started military action in the midst of negotiations that might have placed tighter limits on Iran’s nuclear program. US military threats in each instance prompted backlash among certain factions in Tehran but they also quickened Iranian diplomatic activity and in the recent round prompted concessions to avoid war. 

The Geneva talks prior to February 28 were significant in showing Iran’s apparent willingness to curtail its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi told reporters after the last round of talks on February 26 that the parties made “good progress” in reaching agreement. Araghchi reported that technical teams would meet the following Monday in Vienna to work out the details. “It was one of our best negotiating sessions,” he added. The mediator of the talks, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, also reported hopefully, by declaring that the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal. IAEA Director Rossi was less optimistic in his assessment but said there was a possibility of an agreement and confirmed that technical talks were scheduled.

Indications from press statements and interviews at the time suggest that Iran offered significant concessions that went beyond anything they had proposed previously, in some respects surpassing the limits established in the 2015 JCPOA. On offer was a plan for substantially curtailing uranium under international inspection. 

  1. Negotiators offered a three-to-five year pause of uranium enrichment and a pledge not to accumulate enriched uranium gas. They agreed that no stockpiles of highly enriched uranium would be built up in the future.
  2. They agreed to blend down highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the IAEA, irreversibly reducing their 440kg stockpile of 60% uranium to lower levels. 
  3. They accepted comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversight.

Al Busaidi summarized the Iranian package this way: “zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification.” Iran’s proposals were presented in a seven-page memo and accompanying annex, which Araghchi showed to US envoy Steve Witkoff but did not allow him to keep. 

The British security adviser and experienced mediator, Jonathan Powell, was present in Geneva at the talks. British officials who were briefed on the Iranian offer said they were impressed that Iran was prepared to make the proposed deal permanent, unlike the JCPOA, with no cut-off dates or sunset clauses.

In addition, Iranian diplomats dangled the option of a “commercial bonanza” if the US signed an agreement, no doubt appealing to Trump’s penchant for trade deals. Deputy foreign minister Hamid Ghanbari told Iranian businesspeople that the US would be given the chance to participate in a future civil nuclear program in Iran, as well as joint interests in oil and gas, investments in mining, and even the purchase of civilian aircraft.

It is impossible to know how serious Iranian officials were in offering these proposals. They were negotiating with a figurative gun to their heads and multiple US Aircraft Carrier Groups in a threatening position, and were likely desperate to continue negotiations that would avoid war. No doubt there were nonstarters among their proposals, but they included an important gem: the offer to halt and curtail enrichment. The Omanis believed this proposal was a breakthrough that meant agreement was within reach. 

The Iranians were willing to give President Trump more than they gave President Obama in the JCPOA, said Ali Vaez. If Trump wanted a better deal than what Obama achieved, it was available.

The failure of the White House to follow up these Iranian diplomatic offers was a colossal act of diplomatic incompetence. It was a sign of the Trump administration’s willful disregard for negotiating a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

As reports of the talks were being circulated, Israeli and US bombing began, shattering whatever prospects existed for a diplomatic solution. The US-Israeli attack seemed intended to derail negotiations at a potentially crucial moment. The strikes that were targeted at sites in Iran were exploding at the bargaining table in Geneva.

Amateur hour

Trump’s disdain for diplomacy was evident in his choice of envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as US negotiators. Tehran sent its Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, an experienced diplomatic player. Washington sent the clowns, uninformed and inexperienced minions with no knowledge or interest in the matters at hand. 

When the latest round of talks began in Oman in early February, Witkoff committed the faux pas of inviting Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, to join him in full uniform. Witkoff’s explanation was that “he just happened to be in the neighborhood”. The admiral was politely asked to leave by the Omani hosts. 

In media appearances during the talks Witkoff made it clear that he did not have the technical expertise or diplomatic experience for effective diplomacy. His statements were riddled with errors and showed that he was out of his depth technically. 

At one point, Witkoff expressed surprise that Iran was producing centrifuges, which it has done for decades. He and Kushner wrongly described the use of 20% enriched uranium at the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) as a bomb threat. The facility, well known to nuclear scientists and nonproliferation experts, was built by the United States and has been used for civilian research for nearly six decades.

The ignorance of Witkoff and Kushner and their mischaracterizations of Iran’s positions and programs likely influenced Trump’s assessment that talks were not progressing and that Iran was not negotiating seriously. A Gulf diplomat who was close to the talks said the Americans acted as if they were “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war.”

The end?

The consequences of this war for the future of diplomacy are dire. Trump has poisoned the well once again, this time at the cost of more than a thousand Iranian lives and the deaths of the regime’s top leaders. It’s unlikely that the surviving leaders will rush to return to the bargaining table with Washington or accept a climb-down in their security objectives without countervailing US concessions.

US and Israeli assaults have reduced Tehran’s strategic options to survival and revenge. This may stir an impulse to play the remaining ultimate card. The tragic irony is that a war supposedly to prevent Iran from building a bomb may increase the propensity to do just that. 

David Cortright is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and professor emeritus at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

It’s the (drug) economy, stupid

There is concern among analysts about a potential civil war following the capture and killing, this past Sunday, February 22, of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes “El Mencho”, leader of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, in a military operation. The cartel’s violent reaction—burning vehicles and businesses simultaneously in more than 20 states—demonstrates not only their territorial presence but also a possible theater of operations for a dispute over the organization’s leadership.

The capture in June 2024 of drug lord Ismael Zambada “El Mayo”, now on trial in the United States, decapitated the Cartel de Sinaloa, provoking a struggle for leadership between two factions and a war that has left thousands dead and disappeared. If there is no consensual leadership within the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, the situation could escalate exponentially.

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Mexico has spent 20 years militarizing its drug policy—not just by bringing the army in to fight a drug war, but because cartels in response have transformed into armed criminal enterprises that not only sell drugs but also control territories through extortion, domination of local politicians, and many other criminal businesses, as already described by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. From the standpoint of peace and the rule of law, this policy has failed; from the standpoint of business, it appears to be a success, not only for the cartels.

The armed forces, like organized crime groups, have gained greater political and economic power as a result of a failed drug policy, and both are responsible for thousands of victims. According to official figures, from 2006 to 2025, there have been 497,446 intentional homicides—oscillating between 25 and 30 per 100,000 inhabitants—and as of today, 391,722 disappeared persons, of whom 131,819 remain missing.

The conditions that enable the growth of lethal power on both the military and criminal sides include corruption among political elites who co-govern with organized crime, the impunity that leaves crimes on both sides unpunished, and the lack of transparency and accountability among the military, political parties, and public representatives. The fight against organized crime must use the tools of democracy and justice. Weapons have only brought more violence.

Mexico should honor the request by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances to address the root causes of human rights abuses due to the support, acquiescence, and collaboration between the authorities and cartels US Congress must adopt comprehensive legislation to restore authority over controlled weapons sales to the Department of State rather than Commerce. Congress should enforce stronger controls on public arms sales in the United States to ensure traceability and prohibit transactions involving individuals linked to criminals, including cartel members. Department of Justice should conduct serious investigations into collusion between U.S. businesses and cartels. Treasury should undertake greater oversight and monitoring to prevent transactions to criminal groups through banks, exchange houses, money transfers, and bitcoin.

The Secretary of Defense, General Trevilla, stated forcefully that the operation to capture “El Mencho” demonstrated the strength of the Mexican state. The truth is that the state’s strength lies in its civilian institutions. Instead of strengthening institutions of justice and transparency, the Mexican government and Congress have been dismantling them, creating conditions that undermine basic rights. This is why a group of Mexican human rights organizations has asked United Nations bodies to intervene to protect victims and guarantee their rights.

The current crisis of the multilateral system stems from the fact that the West, as Mark Carney noted at the most recent World Economic Forum, has been living in a “useful fiction” in which it pretends that the rules apply equally to all, including Mexico. The United Nations, and especially its member states, must embrace universal values for a “new world order” and demonstrate this through action by upholding human rights in any country, regardless of its degree of power. The authorization, support, and acquiescence of the Mexican government toward crimes committed by Mexican cartels must be a subject of discussion and decision-making in the UN General Assembly, as requested by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.

Additionally, criminal organizations are enabled by weapons manufacturers, particularly in the United States, due to the ease of access to firearms. Arms companies benefit from this militarized policy because they sell to all sides of the conflict. Approximately 80% of the weapons used by cartels are acquired in the US. Still, they are also the main suppliers to the armed forces in Mexico—a win-win business that the United States Congress allows by failing to regulate the domestic and international sales and traceability of weapons. Congress must adopt comprehensive legislation—such as the ARMAS Act—beginning with restoring authority over controlled weapons sales to the U.S. Department of State rather than the U.S. Department of Commerce, followed by stronger controls on public sales in the United States to ensure traceability and prohibit transactions for individuals linked to criminals, including cartel members.

Criminal structures require “legal” business networks to transfer and launder money, such as banks, money transfer companies, currency exchange houses, and bitcoin networks that the U.S. Department of Justice has already detected. These transnational criminal enterprises rely on transnational complicity networks to move drugs to end consumers and bring money back. The U.S. government does not appear interested in dismantling these networks or regulating money-transfer and bitcoin businesses that become complicit service providers to criminals in the United States. A criminal policy focused on dismantling criminal networks—not just capturing drug lords, which is often popular for winning votes but ineffective at stopping criminal enterprises and violence—is needed. Along with conducting serious investigations into collusion between U.S. businesses and cartels, there must be greater oversight and monitoring to prevent transactions to criminal groups through banks, exchange houses, money transfers, and bitcoin.

The effects of the capture and killing of “El Mencho” remain to be seen. Still, organized crime will continue operating as long as drug policy remains militarized rather than civilian-led and focused on strengthening institutions of justice, transparency, and anti-corruption in both Mexico and the United States.

Michael W Chamberlin is a CIP Senior Non-Resident Fellow.

Bringing Democratic Accountability To Remote Weapons

Warfare is increasingly conducted through sensors, networks, and remote platforms that keep their human operators far from danger. This distance has strategic, political, and ethical consequences that are only beginning to be understood. Erik Lin-Greenberg’s The Remote Revolution offers the clearest account to date of how uninhabited systems reshape leader behavior, crisis dynamics, and modern statecraft. His findings invite a second question. How should democracies design institutions that prevent unnecessary harm before it occurs and preserve accountability when conflict becomes remote?

Lin-Greenberg’s central insight is that remote systems introduce a predictable shift in how states initiate and manage the use of force. When leaders can act without risking their own personnel, their behavior changes. He writes that reduced risks “can lower the threshold for dispatching forces, creating a moral hazard that enables decision makers to launch military operations during interstate disputes when their state arsenals include drones.”1 His evidence spans wargames, surveys, and archival case studies. Participants accepted higher escalatory risk when uninhabited assets were involved. During the Cold War, both superpowers relied on remote reconnaissance for missions that would have been politically untenable with crews aboard. When Iran shot down a US Global Hawk drone in 2019, the absence of American casualties made it politically easier to absorb the loss and step back from escalation. These examples illustrate how distance alters strategic judgment, reducing both the barriers to initiation and, at times, the pressure to retaliate.

Lower risk expands what Lin-Greenberg calls the “menu of options.”2 Remote systems enable actions that fall between inaction and major escalation, including reconnaissance, limited strikes, and coercive signals that impose costs without creating public alarm. Azerbaijan’s reliance on drones in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war illustrates how remote tools expand operational choice while managing political exposure. Israel’s routine use of drones in cross-border operations against regional adversaries demonstrates how leaders create intermediate space between symbolic warning and high-intensity response. In episodes involving Syria and Hezbollah, remote systems have enabled calibrated signaling without the immediate risks associated with crewed aircraft.

Clankers and Casualties

One of Lin-Greenberg’s most distinctive findings concerns how states respond to attacks on uninhabited systems. Rivals often treat drone shootdowns differently from incidents involving inhabited aircraft. These losses rarely generate public pressure for retaliation. Decision-makers frequently see shooting down a drone as a low-risk signal of dissatisfaction.3 Cold War episodes show that remote-platform losses were treated as manageable setbacks rather than triggers for escalation.4 Israeli cases confirm similar restraint. These dynamics produce what Lin-Greenberg describes as “more but milder conflicts.”5 Remote systems do not eliminate escalation. They change its form, making crises more frequent but less likely to cross into major interstate war.

Public opinion plays a central role in this transformation. Lin-Greenberg notes that reduced risk “mitigates the political obstacles often associated with sending troops into harm’s way.”6 When political costs fall, strategic discretion expands. Drone campaigns in US counterterrorism operations illustrate this pattern. Casualty aversion remains a constant in democratic politics. Remote technology changes how leaders weigh those incentives.

For policymakers grappling with the expanding role of autonomous and remote systems, The Remote Revolution provides a rigorous and indispensable foundation.

Lin-Greenberg’s contribution is descriptive and theoretical. He explains how remote systems alter incentives and behavior. The next task is institutional. Democracies must translate this knowledge into preventive design. Recent analysis in the International Policy Journal has argued that compliance with the laws of war should be engineered directly into autonomous and remote systems. Embedding discrimination and proportionality requirements is a start. But engineering norms into code is insufficient without reforming the institutions that authorize and oversee lethal force.

Oversight and Operations

Oversight becomes more complex when remote operations move across statutory authorities. Military operations conducted under Title 10 are subject to armed services oversight and reporting requirements. Covert actions conducted under Title 50 are reported to intelligence committees and often operate under tighter secrecy. The migration of drone strikes between these frameworks during the post-9/11 era demonstrated how lethal authority can shift between oversight regimes with different transparency standards. Designing for prevention requires harmonizing expectations across authorities so that distance cannot exploit jurisdictional gaps.

Recent allegations of unlawful airstrikes against civilian vessels underscore the institutional stakes. When force is projected at distance against targets that are difficult for the public to visualize or verify, the risk is not only civilian harm but erosion of democratic accountability. The problem is structural rather than partisan. Any administration operating with remote tools faces incentives to lower political friction. The question is whether institutions are strong enough to resist that pressure.

A durable institutional response requires at least four changes:

  • Congress should require sunset provisions for semiautonomous lethal authorities, mandating explicit reauthorization every two years. This would prevent normalization of delegated force.
  • Agencies conducting lethal operations should submit public civilian harm prevention certifications before deploying new remote or AI-enabled systems, reviewed by an independent inspector general.
  • Lawmakers should codify a named human decision authority requirement for every lethal action conducted through remote or autonomous systems, with documented reasoning preserved for review.
  • Congress should establish automatic reporting triggers for the use of force against civilian vessels or non-state maritime actors, requiring public disclosure within a fixed timeframe.

These reforms do not prohibit remote warfare. They restore friction where political cost has diminished.

Designing for prevention also requires cultural change. Officers and analysts should be rewarded for surfacing uncertainty and slowing operations when civilian risk is ambiguous. Near-miss reporting should be protected from reprisal. Restraint must be treated as competence rather than hesitation.

Remote technologies are diffusing rapidly across state and non-state actors, normalizing distance in both surveillance and strike capabilities.7 The incentives Lin-Greenberg identifies are unlikely to remain confined to major powers. That makes institutional design more urgent, not less.

Distance changes what leaders see and what the public feels. Without institutional reform, it will erode the accountability that gives democratic uses of force their legitimacy. Democracies must build systems that prevent unnecessary harm, maintain human judgment at the center of lethal authority, and preserve moral clarity even when conflict unfolds beyond the horizon of public view. Remote systems may change the character of war. Deliberate design must determine how democracies respond.

Lucas F. Schleusener is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. You can follow him on Bluesky at @lfschleusener.bsky.social.

1 Erik Lin-Greenberg, The Remote Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2025), 5.
2 Lin-Greenberg, The Remote Revolution, 25.
3 Ibid., 33.
4 Ibid., 108.
5  Lin-Greenberg, The Remote Revolution, 5.
6 Ibid.
7  See, for example, Faine Greenwood’s reporting and analysis on the global diffusion of drone technologies and the regulatory lag surrounding remote systems.

Can Complementary Learning Methods Teach AI the Laws of War?

The Judge Advocate watched the feed from the tactical operations center alongside her commander. The screens, each attended by systems monitors, showed more than a dozen developments unfolding at once. An artificial intelligence (AI) led drone swarm was closing on the front line through the city, coordinating its movements faster than any human pilot could direct, an artificial flock of mechanical starlings like a cloud on the radar. A civilian aid convoy had stalled on the northern approach. An enemy artillery battery was repositioning south behind a residential block. In the nearby valley, friendly units were maneuvering under fire. All these pieces were in motion, lives and vehicles and weapons. The soldiers’ behavior would be determined by interactions between their commander and AI.

The challenge here is not as simple as claiming that AI cannot comply with the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the law of armed conflict. The fog of war complicates decision-making for both humans and machines, but does so in profoundly different ways.

For a human commander, the chaos of the battlefield is filtered through layers of training, doctrine, experience, and instinct. Even when overwhelmed, a person can weigh incomplete facts against their mental map of the situation, recall comparable past events, and fall back on moral and legal anchors. This does not mean humans do not make mistakes; they do, often with serious consequences. But even in error, their reasoning is shaped by caution, hopefully empathy, and the capacity to interpret ambiguous information in light of their own individual understandings of humanitarian obligations.

AI  processes that same chaos as streams of probabilities. Every sensor reading, target profile, and movement pattern is reduced to statistical likelihoods: how probable it is based on the training data that this object is hostile, how urgent its engagement appears, how likely a given action is to produce the “correct” result as defined in training. In its logic, the most probable option is the correct one. Under extreme operational pressure, the AI focuses on the statistically most plausible, while rare possibilities drop toward statistical zero, far less likely to be considered than they would by a human.

This difference in reasoning is why training environments must be built to include not just the probable, but the improbable: those outlandish, once-in-a-century battlefield events that stretch judgment to its limits. For AI, these scenarios must be constructed, repeated, and reinforced until they occupy a permanent place in the machine’s operational vocabulary.

A credible arms control position would be to prohibit or pause the development of certain autonomous capabilities. Nevertheless, this article proceeds conditionally because much of the stack is already fielded (AI-enabled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance triage, targeting support, and navigation), and because dual-use diffusion (commercial drones, perception models, planning tools) makes a clean prohibition hard to sustain. If states continue down this path with minimal international instruments the question becomes how to embed legal restraint so that rare, high-stakes judgments are not optimized away. What follows sets minimum safeguards if development and deployment proceed.

How AI Learns

If AI’s logic is built on statistical reasoning, the way it acquires those statistics determines the boundaries of its thinking. This is true for AI in general, whether in a medical diagnostic tool, a financial trading algorithm, or a targeting system on a battlefield. The patterns an AI recognizes, the probabilities it assigns, and the priorities it sets are all downstream from its training.

In the military domain, an AI’s training determines how it operates in relation to the law of armed conflict and the unit’s rules of engagement: what it accepts as positive identification (distinction), how it trades anticipated military advantage against collateral damage estimation (proportionality), when feasible precautions require warning, delay, or abort, and when uncertainty triggers a mandatory hand-off to a human. The two dominant machine learning paradigms, imitation learning and reinforcement learning, can both produce highly capable systems. Yet without deliberate safeguards, neither inherently preserves the kind of rare, high-stakes judgments that human decision-makers sometimes make under the fog of war, moments when they choose to forego an operational advantage to prevent civilian harm. Statistically, those moments are anomalies. 

Imitation Learning: The Apprentice Approach

Imitation learning (IL) is essentially training by demonstration. The AI is shown large datasets of human decision-making, each paired with the information available at the time. In a military targeting context, this might include annotated sensor feeds, mission logs, and after-action reports: strike approved, strike aborted, target reclassified, mission postponed.

The model’s task is to learn the mapping between conditions and human actions. If most commanders in the dataset abort strikes when civilian vehicles enter the target zone, and there are enough entries of this behavior in the dataset to show that, the model will learn to mirror that restraint. 

IL captures the statistical distribution of decisions in the training data. Rare but important choices, such as holding fire in a high-pressure engagement to comply with proportionality, will be underrepresented unless deliberately oversampled. Left uncorrected, the AI may treat those lawful restraint decisions as statistical noise, unlikely to be repeated in practice. Additionally, because much of the data on which machine learning models reflects past military experience, many AI models will echo the implicit bias shown in the past human decisions on which they train.

A Quadrupedal-Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) goes over rehearsals at Red Sands IEC in the CENTCOM AOR Sept. 18, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Dean John Kd De Dios)

Reinforcement Learning: The Trial-and-Error Arena

Reinforcement learning (RL) works differently. Instead of copying human decisions, the AI is placed in a simulated environment where it can take actions, receive rewards for desirable outcomes, and penalties for undesirable ones. Over thousands or millions of iterations, the AI learns policies, decision rules that maximize its cumulative reward. At scale, this training is highly compute– and energy-intensive. That matters because it concentrates capability in a few well-resourced programs, slows iteration and red teaming, and creates pressure to trim the very rare event scenarios that protect civilians and support compliance, while adding a nontrivial environmental footprint. Programs should, therefore, set minimum scenario coverage and doubt-protocol testing requirements that are not waivable for budgetary reasons.

In a military context, this means an RL agent might repeatedly play through simulated scenarios: neutralizing threats, protecting friendly forces, and avoiding civilian harm. The way those objectives are weighted in the reward function is decisive. If mission success is rewarded heavily and civilian harm only lightly penalized, the AI will statistically favor the course of action that maximizes mission success, even if that means accepting higher risks to civilians.

RL’s strength is adaptability. Its weakness is that low-probability events, rare civilian patterns, and unusual threat behaviors will remain statistically insignificant unless the simulation environment repeatedly forces the AI to confront them. 

IL can pass down the shape of human judgment; RL can provide flexibility in novel situations. But each carries a statistical bias against rare, high-impact decisions, exactly the kinds of decisions that can determine the legality and morality of military action. Only by deliberately elevating those rare cases in training, through curated datasets and stress-test simulations, can either method hope to produce systems that behave lawfully and predictably under the fog of war. On the evidence of deployments to date, achieving this level of end-to-end compliance remains out of reach.

Soldiers don the Integrated Visual Augmentation System Capability Set 3 hardware while mounted in a Stryker in Joint Base Lewis-McCord, WA.

The Simulation Imperative

Actual combat records, produced by soldiers in logs, after-action reports, or targeting databases,  are skewed toward the typical patterns of engagement that happen often enough to warrant recording after the fact. Unprecedented and chaotic situations will strain both the law and the system’s decision-making, yet they appear so rarely in historical data that, in statistical terms, they are almost invisible. An AI, left to its statistical logic, will not prepare for what it has seldom seen. 

This is why simulation is the decisive safeguard1. In imitation learning, rare but critical decisions must be deliberately overrepresented in the dataset, so they carry enough statistical weight to influence the model’s behavior. In reinforcement learning, the simulated environment must be constructed so that “once-in-a-century” scenarios occur often, sometimes in clusters, forcing the system to learn how to navigate them. A humanitarian convoy crossing paths with an enemy armored column, loss of communications during a time-sensitive strike, sensor spoofing that turns friend into apparent foe, these cannot be treated as peripheral edge cases. They must be made routine in training.

The more frequently the AI encounters these manufactured crises in simulation, the more space they occupy in its decision-making horizon. If and when similar scenarios arise in operations, the system’s response should not be improvised.

The Lieber Code in the Age of AI

The concept that, in cases of doubt, the commander should err on the side of humanity is not new. It was codified in 1863, when Francis Lieber drafted the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, better known as the Lieber Code. 

This imperative has repeatedly been encoded under International Humanitarian Law. In the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions2, the obligation to take “all feasible precautions” and to cancel or suspend an attack if it becomes apparent that it would cause excessive civilian harm relative to the anticipated military advantage operationalizes the humane minimum in treaty law. Critically, however, many key decision-making states have not ratified all the precepts articulated in the Additional Protocols. Customary IHL Rule 15 similarly requires constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects, and Rule 19 codifies the requirement to cancel or suspend attacks when doubt or changing circumstances create excessive risk.

Faced with ambiguous intelligence or conflicting imperatives, human commanders can recall a doctrinal anchor and choose that privileges restraint over risk. Even when they err, that error is shaped by a human blend of caution and interpretation of context.

For AI, the same scenario unfolds differently. Without explicit design, there is no natural “humane fallback” in its logic. In the face of uncertainty, an unmodified reinforcement learning policy will still pursue the statistically most rewarding action, and an imitation learning model will default to the most common decision in its dataset. 

This is where simulation and legal doctrine intersect. Embedding the humane minimum into AI means that in every training run, whether through curated historical cases or artificially generated edge scenarios, the option that aligns with humane treatment under uncertainty must be given decisive weight. In imitation learning, that means oversampling “hold fire” or “switch to non-lethal” decisions until they are no longer statistical outliers. In reinforcement learning, it means structuring the reward function so that restraint in doubtful cases earns more cumulative value than aggression, even if aggression sometimes yields short-term operational gains. The aim is not to teach machines to imitate human morality, but to hard-code a structural preference for restraint even and especially when the law is unclear. 

Unmanned Ground Vehicles sketch, The Future Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of the Nation (November 2001), page 7, Gen. Paul F. Gorman, US Army Combined Arms Center
Risks of Omission

Systematic vulnerabilities in decision-making compound in coalition or joint operations. Different states may train their AI systems with different datasets, simulation designs (if any), and legal interpretations. When such systems operate together, the seams between them can become legal blind spots. A particular AI system might abort an engagement that another proceeds with, creating conflicting operational tempos and complicating attribution if civilian harm occurs.

The danger is not limited to catastrophic, one-off mistakes. Over time, small, repeated deviations from IHL in marginal cases, where human commanders might have exercised restraint, can erode the protective function of the law. The result is a slow normalization of riskier behavior, driven not by political decision or doctrinal change, but by the statistical inertia of machine learning models. This is the core paradox: without safeguards, AI systems can become more predictable in some ways, yet less reliable in the moments when unpredictability, when acting against the statistical grain, is essential for lawful conduct.

Finally, military AI does not fail or succeed in complying with IHL by accident. Its behavior is the predictable result of how it is trained, the data it is given, the scenarios it is exposed to, and the rules embedded in its decision logic. How AI functions and the choices it takes is downstream from decisions made by humans in developing, training, and fielding it.

Governance, Audit, and Human Control

Bridging the gap from promising lab results to lawful behavior in the field requires more than good training runs. It needs an end-to-end governance spine that links data, models, code, test harnesses, deployment configurations, operators, and independent oversight into a single chain of accountability. That spine assigns clear decision rights, specifies the artifacts required at each stage, and shows how evidence of compliance is produced and preserved. It starts with curated, documented datasets and explicit problem statements; runs through model specifications, reward functions, and constraint schemas; includes scenario-coverage plans, legal reviews, and red-team evaluations; and culminates in authorization-to-operate, humane control interfaces, and post-incident audits. Every hand-off, data steward to model owner, model owner to system integrator, integrator to unit commander, should be traceable, signed, and reversible. In effect, the system deploys with its own accountability case: a living dossier that ties design choices to legal obligations and links runtime behavior to reviewable logs. Without that spine, even a technically impressive model becomes an orphan in the field, fast, capable, and difficult to supervise precisely when the fog thickens. The pathway from design to deployment rests on a few non-negotiables.

  1. Data governance as policy, not plumbing. If models think with the statistics we give them, then data curation is a legal act as much as a technical one. Training corpora should be versioned and signed; every inclusion and exclusion choice documented; every oversampling decision for restraint labeled with a rationale. That record is what allows commanders, investigators, or courts to see how humane fallbacks were embedded by design rather than inferred after the fact.
  2. Test what you train, and then test against what you didn’t. A system that performs well on its own distribution can still fail in the wild. Beyond standard validation, mandate distribution shift drills: deliberately swap sensor suites, degrade GPS, introduce spoofed friend/foe signals, and remix civilian movement patterns. In each drill, the system should either preserve lawful restraint or trigger a doubt protocol that defers to a human. Where it does neither, the failure should feed back into simulation design and reward shaping.
  3. Non-overridable guardrails in code and command. Constraint layers (identification gates, collateral damage thresholds, no-strike lists) must be technically non-overridable by the model and procedurally difficult to override by humans. If escalation is necessary, require dual-key authorization with automatic logging. The goal is not to box out judgment but to ensure extraordinary actions leave extraordinary traces.
  4. Responsibility matrices are embedded in the system. Every deployed AI component – classifier, tracker, recommender, fire-control interface – should write structured, time-synchronized logs that include model version, data slice identifiers, intermediate confidence values, triggered constraints, and who approved or halted an action. Think of this as a living annex to rules of engagement: not just “what the machine did,” but why it “thought” that was permissible, and who remained on the loop.
  5. Human-on-the-loop that actually has leverage. Meaningful human control is not a checkbox; it is the ability to intervene in time with understanding. Interfaces must surface uncertainty (not just a single confidence score), show near-miss counterfactuals (“if civilians are within X meters, the system will abort”), and offer safe, low-latency actions (pause, shadow/track, switch to non-lethal). If the only human interaction available is “approve” under time pressure, control is nominal, not meaningful.
  6. Coalition interoperability without legal dilution. Joint operations will mix systems trained on different data and doctrines. Interoperability standards should cover not only communications and formats but also minimum legal behaviors: shared constraint schemas, common doubt thresholds, and audit fields. The safest path is least-common-denominator legality: when systems disagree under uncertainty, the coalition default is restraint.
  7. Pre-deployment red teaming and post-incident review. Before fielding, require adversarial evaluations by teams empowered to break things, reward hacking hunts, “blinking target” scenarios, and deception trials. After any incident with potential civilian harm, pull the synchronized logs, reconstruct the model’s decision path, and replay counterfactuals to see whether humane fallbacks would have triggered with slightly different inputs. Treat these reviews like flight-safety boards: technical, blameless, relentlessly corrective.
  8. Make restraint measurable. What we measure, we secure. Track deferred engagements under uncertainty, rate of doubt-protocol activations, guardrail trip frequency, and time-to-human-intervention. Trend them over time and across theaters. If these metrics decay as models “improve,” it’s a warning that optimization is outpacing law.

In combination, these measures transfer human judgment (IL), secure robustness under uncertainty (RL and simulation), and institutionalize restraint via governance, constraint architectures, and independent audit, so that compliance is an engineered property rather than an assumption. The result is a verifiable accountability chain, datasets that show why restraint was learned, reward functions that make it valuable, guardrails that make it non-optional, and logs that make it reviewable. And because what we measure we secure, the system ships with metrics for doubt-protocol activations, deferred engagements, and guardrail trips, so commanders can see whether lawful caution is holding under stress. Only then does lawful behavior become the default under pressure, an engineered property of the system, rather than a hope we place in the gaps between probabilities and intent.

The autonomous system, Origin, prepares for a practice run during the Project Convergence capstone event at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, Aug. 11 – Sept. 18, 2020. Project Convergence is the Army’s campaign of learning to aggressively advance solutions in the areas of people, weapons systems, command and control, information, and terrain; and integrate the Army’s contributions to Joint All Domain Operations. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Carlos Cuebas Fantauzzi, 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

Growing a Governance Spine

Military AI will not “grow into” compliance with the law of armed conflict. It will do what it is trained, rewarded, permitted, and audited to do. In the fog of war, humans and machines both falter, but in different ways. Human commanders can depart from statistical expectations to privilege restraint; unmodified systems, bound to their learned probabilities, will not. That is why the humane minimum cannot sit at the margins of development. It has to be engineered into the center of learning, testing, and command.

Imitation learning can transmit judgment; reinforcement learning can build adaptability; simulation can force the improbable to be routine. Around that technical core, a governance spine, constraints that do not yield under pressure, doubt protocols that default to caution, signed datasets and reward functions, synchronized logs and metrics, turns legal aspiration into operational behavior. In coalitions, common constraint schemas and reviewable audit trails keep interoperability from becoming a legal blind spot.

At this point, two mistakes will sink this project: treating compliance as a software patch added after performance, or assuming that speed and scale will eventually smooth away edge cases. They will not. The edge cases are where the law does its most important work.

Compliance with the law of armed conflict must be an engineered property of the system: competence built through training, judgment transferred via imitation learning, robustness under uncertainty secured by simulation, and a non-derogable humane floor enforced by constraints and audit. What ultimately matters is evidence, datasets, reward functions, constraint triggers, and synchronized logs, showing that restraint prevailed when uncertainty was greatest. Only on that basis can militaries credibly claim that lawful conduct remains the default under operational pressure.

Davit Khachatryan is an international lawyer and lecturer focusing on the intersection of armed conflict, emerging technologies, and international law. 

1Where states choose to pursue development and fielding, simulation is the decisive safeguard. A different policy path is to forgo development or to prohibit particular applications outright.

2Articles 57(2)(a)(ii) and 57(2)(b)).

Enforce the War Crimes Act Against Americans Who Committed Them In Gaza

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a Palestinian-American political analyst, host of the Uncharted Territory Podcast and a Marcellus Policy Fellow alum at the John Quincy Adams Society advocating for a restrained U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East centered around American laws and respect for Palestinian human rights.

Following the October 7th, 2023 attacks, Israel embarked on a series of military operations that human rights organizations, legal experts, and U.N. special rapporteurs recognize as constituting a number of war crimes and other violations of international law, including the crime of genocide. The involvement of US citizens as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel in Gaza–and possibly in other roles in the territory–has raised questions of whether Americans may have committed war crimes in Gaza.

The Guardian published a report in September 2025 on Daniel Rabb, a U.S.–Israeli citizen from Chicago operating as a sniper in Gaza. Raab is part of the Paratrooper Unit 202, a sniper division of the IDF, for which Raab’s parents helped fundraise over $300,000. Raab, reports the Guardian, says he shot Salem Doghmosh “simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.” This goes against International Humanitarian Law regarding the recovery of the dead. The Guardian story also quotes Asa Kasher, co-author of the Israeli Defense Forces’ ethics code, stating that “if you see someone recovering a body or helping a wounded person, that’s a rescue operation, it should be respected. Someone like that should not be shot.” 

Accusations that Americans committed war crimes in Gaza have not been limited to those US citizens who served in the IDF. While allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza, Israel’s government prevented the United Nations from delivering aid for much of 2025, instead disbursing lifesaving supplies through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), created with the involvement of the U.S. Department of State and Israel. However, the United Nations estimated that, by August 1, 2025, over 850 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed near GHF distribution sites, largely from fire by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). 

On May 27, 2025, the New York Times reported that the opening of aid distribution sites by the GHF was marred by chaos and gunfire near some of the sites. On June 2, CNN reported that hundreds of Palestinians had received gunshot wounds outside an aid site run by GHF. On July 2nd, the Associated Press reported that two US contractors speaking on condition of anonymity claimed that fellow GHF contractors had “regularly lobbed stun grenades and pepper spray in the direction of the Palestinians.” AP reported that one of the contractors “said bullets were fired in all directions — in the air, into the ground and at times toward the Palestinians, recalling at least one instance where he thought someone had been hit.” Videos provided by one of the contractors “include conversation between English-speaking men discussing how to disperse crowds and encouraging each other after bursts of gunfire,” according to the AP report.

In July 2025, Democracy Now interviewed U.S. Army Veteran Anthony Aguilar about his experience in Gaza with UG Solutions, the security subcontractor working with the GHF. He told Democracy Now that the aid distribution sites had “become death traps.” He also said “[w]e are using indiscriminate force, targeting civilians, escalation of force that goes far beyond the measures of appropriate, against an unarmed, starving population.”

In August, CBS News interviewed another individual claiming to be a GHF whistleblower under the alias “Mike,” who also asserted that American subcontractors and the IDF deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians near aid sites. The GHF vigorously denies the claims that its contractors fired on any Palestinian civilians.

Under the 1996 War Crimes Act, Congress and the Department of State have the authority to investigate and charge citizens and dual nationals who facilitate war crimes. While federal level action is unlikely under the Trump administration, members of Congress, civil society, and groups leading strategic litigation should press to use U.S. law to hold both the Israeli government and individual perpetrators accountable.

The War Crimes Act

Although the United States’ engagement with international war crimes prosecution is complex, under statutory law, U.S. nationals can be held domestically accountable for war crimes. The War Crimes Act, passed in 1996 by unanimous consent in the Senate and voice vote in the House, criminalizes a range of conduct constituting “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, when committed by U.S. nationals or members of the U.S. armed forces. The scope of the WCA is significant: conduct committed overseas is not exempt from prosecution under U.S. law if the perpetrator is an American national.

Conduct by U.S. citizens and dual nationals in Gaza, like firing on civilians, could constitute a “grave breach” under the Geneva Conventions. This offers a legal basis for the Department of Justice to open WCA investigations against Americans credibly alleged to have committed war crimes.

The DOJ should immediately create a War Crimes Task Force, which would actively investigate credible allegations of war crimes committed by U.S citizens in Gaza. This task force should have expertise in international humanitarian law, open-source forensics, and conflict-zone investigations. This step would make clear that American citizenship is not a means to evade responsibility, and would allow the U.S. government to enforce the War Crimes Act to help prevent future impunity. Such an effort would also likely clear the path for a long-overdue accounting of war crimes committed by people serving in the US military, such as the 151 cases uncovered by The New Yorker and the Pulitzer Center in 2024.

Disarming Dangerous ‘Allies’

While the War Crimes Act allows for charges to be brought against perpetrators, the State Department and Department of Defense are obliged under the Leahy Laws to prevent continued military aid to foreign military units “where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”. There is potential for overlap: if an American is serving in a foreign military unit committing abuses, they could be charged under the War Crimes Act, and their unit should be flagged for rigorous vetting under the Leahy Laws, though the crimes need not overlap for either measure to be useful.

The Leahy Laws offer another tool to prevent the use of American weapons in human rights abuses. Initially passed in 1997, and expanded/reaffirmed since, the Leahy Laws prohibit U.S. security assistance to any foreign security force unit “about which” credible information exists of gross violations of human rights, including but not limited to torture, extrajudicial killing, and enforced disappearance. The Leahy laws prevent specific military aid from continuing to be provided to units found in violation, but the laws do not at present ensure such units are barred from receiving assistance given to the foreign country’s military as a whole, after which the distribution of that aid makes it non-traceable, and can leave it in the hands of specific units that violate human rights. Patrick Leahy, the former Senator whose name the Leahy laws bear, argued in spring 2024 that the laws should be applied to Israel. “Unlike for most countries,” he wrote, “U.S. weapons, ammunition and other aid are provided to Israeli security forces in bulk rather than to specific units. The secretary of state is therefore required to regularly inform Israel of any security force unit ineligible for U.S. aid because of having committed a gross violation of human rights, and the Israeli government is obligated to comply with that prohibition.”

To date, the Leahy Laws have been used to impede funding to suspect units in Colombia, Pakistan, Egypt, Ukraine, and elsewhere, but as Leahy himself noted, since “the Leahy law was passed, not a single Israeli security force unit has been deemed ineligible for U.S. aid, despite repeated, credible reports of gross violations of human rights and a pattern of failing to appropriately punish Israeli soldiers and police who violate the rights of Palestinians.”

Congress and State should end that double standard. Accountability and integrity under US law demands that the Leahy conditions should be upheld in every instance, even and especially when friends and allies commit war crimes. 

Daniel Raab’s Israeli Sniper Unit 202 should be subject to rigorous Leahy Law vetting, reasserting that U.S. military assistance—training, intelligence, equipment, etc.— can and will be withdrawn on credible allegations of unlawful attacks. Other units responsible for war crimes, like the targeting of civilians, should be identified in the open source or news reporting and similarly be made ineligible for U.S support under the Leahy Laws.

Policy Recommendations 

Congress must do its job to ensure oversight and transparency. It should require the State Department to make regular public reports on investigations of U.S. nationals under the War Crimes Act, as well as the results of Leahy vetting. Congress can and should hold oversight hearings to demand the executive branch take action (or explain its inaction) when such violations come to light. The U.S. government should coordinate with U.N. fact-finding missions, NGOs, and international prosecutors and share evidence it has that can be used to corroborate allegations. It should be absolutely clear, through public messaging by the State Department, that U.S. nationals are not exempt from accountability mechanisms for violations committed anywhere.

Enforce U.S. Law on U.S. Nationals who commit war crimes Increase Leahy Vetting on units seen in open source to be violating human rights Ensure Oversight, Transparency, and International Cooperation when it comes to withholding arms and prosecuting war crimes

As the second anniversary of October 7 passes, and the tenuous terms of a ceasefire are once again agreed to, the genocide in Gaza remains a humanitarian and legal crisis. American citizens and nationals have been directly implicated in the violence, raising profound questions of accountability. Washington possesses legal tools, like the War Crimes Act, and legally mandated procedural obligations, like arms withholding under Leahy Laws—but has lacked the political and moral courage to utilize them. Enforcing these statutes, such as conditioning aid, arms embargoes and enhancing transparency, are essential steps toward upholding international law, deterring future violations, and ensuring that American citizenship is never misused as a shield for war crimes. 

The United States cannot credibly demand accountability for atrocities in other conflicts (e.g Russian war crimes in Ukraine) while it simultaneously shields Americans who may be complicit in war crimes in Gaza

If serving in a foreign military is a free pass to immunity, then citizenship, and by extension the law, loses meaning. The U.S. must not create that precedent. The threat, however small, of prosecution or conditioned assistance will have a deterrent effect: knowing that one’s military actions may later have legal and reputational consequences will push compliance with IHL. 

While the present administration may disregard the harm done to national reputation as undermining U.S. strategic interest, unaddressed accusations of grave human rights violations by U.S. citizens abroad carries real diplomatic risk for Washington. Ignoring it erodes trust with allies and partners that expect and demand the U.S. to uphold its own laws. 

Editor’s note: This piece has been updated for clarity and to include the GHF’s denial of claims by cited sources.

Think Big to Rein in the Arms Trade 

John Ramming Chappell is an Advocacy and Legal Advisor at Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC).

The arms trade and its human consequences have had an outsized impact defining U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era. The United States sells more weapons than the next seven countries combined. For progressives, the use of American-made weapons in atrocities in Yemen and Gaza has been at the center of moral and strategic debates. While the grave consequences of U.S. arms sales are indisputable, the policy debate around U.S. arms transfers has been relatively narrow. Progressives are right to interrogate the human and strategic costs of the U.S. arms trade. But when it comes to solutions, they should think bigger.

The Congressional Right To Withhold Arms

The framework governing the U.S. arms trade today is articulated in the Arms Export Control Act, and, to a lesser extent, the Foreign Assistance Act. Under the current framework, the State Department is generally free to sell weapons, or grant licenses to companies to sell weapons, without congressional input, although it may seek legislators’ input as a courtesy or out of respect for norms. For sales exceeding a specified dollar threshold ($50 million for many countries and weapon types), the President must inform Congress of the proposed sale before entering into an agreement or granting an export license to a company for the weapons in question. Congress nominally has an opportunity to block a notified sale through a joint resolution of disapproval using privileged procedures that allow any senator to seize floor time. 

In practice, blocking a sale requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate, and Congress has never managed to block a sale in this way. In addition to the basic structure of the congressional-executive relationship, Congress has enacted laws to prohibit arms sales to specific countries or countries that meet specified criteria, although implementation of the latter falls to executive branch officials.

Solutions Distilled Congress should reintroduce the National Security Powers Act and National Security Reforms and Accountability Act, or other legislation to reassert congressional authority over arms sales, and work toward a mark-up. Advocates and researchers should connect crises to the structures that made them possible. Presidential aspirants should commit to working with Congress to overhaul the arms sales framework. Ultimately, arms sales should be guided by a “first, do no harm” ethos.

This framework is not inevitable. Under the Foreign Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, all authority to regulate the arms trade belongs to Congress. It has since delegated much of that authority to the President, but Congress could reclaim it by passing legislation at any time. This allocation differs from constitutional war powers, for example, which are shared between the president and Congress. There is comparatively little debate about the constitutional separation of powers over arms sales because it is clear-cut and in Congress’s favor. Due to Congress’s expansive power to regulate arms export, the possible arrangements for an arms exports framework are extensive.

Since the earliest days of the Constitution, Congress has passed laws to control and limit arms sales in the national interest. Congress prohibited all arms exports from 1794 to1795 and 1797 to1800. General prohibitions also took effect during the American Civil War and World War I. An 1898 law authorized the president to block exports of war materiel to Spanish territory during the Spanish-American War, and a law enacted in 1912 and then amended several times thereafter allowed for arms embargoes on Latin American countries during civil unrest. Under the Neutrality Act of 1935, a mandatory arms embargo applied to all countries engaged in interstate war. Since the 1970s, Congress has enacted universally applicable prohibitions on arms sales based on human rights and humanitarian criteria. Congressionally mandated country-specific embargoes have applied to dozens of countries since the 18th century.

Rifling Through The Recent Past

For the arms industry, arms sales bureaucrats at the State Department, and hawkish legislators, the problem with U.S. arms sales is that they are too few and too slow. In collusion with the Trump administration, House Republicans are pushing for fewer sales to require congressional notification and to make it easier to rush arms sales through the State Department faster. 

Advocates for accountability in the arms trade have mostly offered proposals that tinker at the edges of the existing arms export control framework. Legislators have sought the faithful implementation of restrictions already on the books. The top Democrats on the congressional foreign affairs committees have proposed a package of reforms to close loopholes and introduce some new restrictions within the existing framework. A new bill from Rep. Sara Jacobs and other House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats would require a system to track when American-made weapons are used to harm civilians or violate international law. These are much-needed efforts that, if successful, will lead to a better arms export system that better protects civilians and promotes accountability for human rights abuses. But they do not change the more fundamental issues of congressional acquiescence and presidential overreach.

Attention to the arms trade in the Trump and Biden administrations has centered on the use of U.S. weapons in atrocities in Yemen and Gaza. In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition used precision-guided munitions from the United States in attacks that killed civilians. In August 2018, a Paveway bomb manufactured by General Dynamics in Texas killed at least 26 children when it hit a school bus in Dhahyan, Yemen. The war also plunged Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Between January 2017 and August 2020, the State Department approved 4,221 arms sales to Saudi Arabia even as evidence mounted of atrocities by the Saudi-led coalition. Criticism of the US-Saudi relationship mounted after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, and congressional efforts to pass joint resolutions of disapproval followed. In July 2019, President Trump vetoed three such resolutions that Congress passed on a bipartisan basis. As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a pariah, and he announced early in his presidency that the United States would no longer sell “offensive” weapons to the kingdom. But by 2022, he visited Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in Jeddah, and in 2024, he lifted the ban on offensive weapons exports, citing improvements in Saudi civilian protection practices. The system that allowed sales to Saudi Arabia to continue throughout the Trump years remains intact.

Since October 2023, debates around the U.S. arms trade have centered on Gaza. After Hamas’ October 7 attacks in Israel, the Israeli government mounted a bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed at least 64,700 Palestinians. Investigators have repeatedly confirmed the use of American bombs in war crimes. The United States delivered 90,000 tons of arms to Israel from October 7, 2023 to May 2025 and provided almost $22 billion in taxpayer funds to Israel. Congressional attention has often focused on Israeli authorities’ sustained restrictions on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, which have subjected Palestinians in Gaza to famine. U.S. law prohibits arms sales to countries that restrict U.S. humanitarian aid, but the Biden administration refused to apply that law or to cut off aid to any Israeli military unit under the Leahy law, which bans military aid to units that have committed a gross violation of human rights. 

Under congressional pressure, the Biden administration issued a policy on February 24, 2024 requiring assurances that the Israeli government would facilitate humanitarian access and use weapons in compliance with international humanitarian law. But when it came time to report on the credibility of those assurances and Israeli eligibility to continue receiving U.S. arms in May 2024, the Biden administration concluded that weapons sales to Israel could continue. During his presidency, President Biden restricted U.S. transfers of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and held up a sale of rifles likely intended for settler militias, but otherwise kept weapons flowing. President Trump has reversed all restrictions and endorsed the forced displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza. During both the Biden and Trump administrations, Senator Bernie Sanders has forced three sets of joint resolution of disapproval votes on U.S. arms sales to Israel, with the most recent garnering support from a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus.

In the Yemen and Gaza arms debates, Congress criticized U.S. sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel without revisiting the structures that made U.S. complicity in atrocities possible. In the context of an ongoing rule-of-law crisis, Congress cannot trust the president to faithfully implement the law.  

This isn’t the first time the United States has experienced a rule-of-law crisis centering on arms sales – the Iran-Contra affair revolved around the Reagan administration’s efforts to evade a congressional ban on arms transfers to the Nicaraguan Contras. The congressional investigation that followed barely scrutinized the administration’s violation of the law, focusing instead on illicit transfers of funds. The ring leaders of the conspiracy thrived despite their involvement in the scandal, with Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, being elected president soon after.  

The human costs of U.S. arms sales have rarely drawn as much public attention as they do today. Preventing harm in the future requires looking at the big picture. Vigorous public debates about the U.S. arms trade should induce legislators to revisit the first principles of the arms export framework. Under the current arms export control framework, the game is rigged in the White House’s favor, despite Congress having all the constitutional power. Congress seems to have forgotten that it can rewrite the rules. They have tried before and should do so again.

The first version of the Arms Export Control Act that Congress passed would have created a very different system than the one that exists today. In 1975, Senator Hubert Humphrey introduced the International Security and Arms Export Control Act “one ofs his crowning final achievements,” according to his aide and later New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. The bill included a $9 billion annual ceiling on arms sales, a prohibition on security assistance to governments violating human rights, and required congressional approval for military advisory missions after 1977. President Ford vetoed it, forcing Congress to introduce a diluted version that forms the basis for the arms export oversight framework today. Some principles from Senator Huphrey’s original bill were incorporated into President Carter’s 1977 conventional arms transfer policy. But implementation of the policy was lackluster, and President Reagan quickly rescinded it upon entering office.

Long before he became the face of unconditional arms sales to Israel, Senator Joe Biden championed an effort to restructure the arms trade. INS v. Chadha, a 1983 Supreme Court case, had effectively raised the congressional threshold to block an arms sale through a joint resolution of disapproval from a simple majority to a two-thirds supermajority. Soon after, President Reagan vetoed a joint resolution of disapproval to block a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia, and the Senate failed to overturn a presidential veto. Before Chadha, a veto would not have been possible. Concerned about Chadha’s implications for congressional oversight of the arms trade, Senator Biden introduced a bill to require affirmative congressional approval for major arms sales to countries other than NATO members and a few other allies. The Reagan administration and the arms industry opposed it.

In 1993, Sen. Mark Hatfield and Rep. Cynthia McKinney introduced the Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Act as part of an international, civil society-driven effort to rein in the arms trade. In addition to requiring a code of conduct, the bill only allowed arms sales to countries if the president could certify that they promoted democracy, respected human rights, did not engage in aggression, and participated in the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. Unlike more common waiver provisions, the president had to request exemptions from Congress, which had to affirmatively vote.  

The most recent legislative effort to really shift the distribution of arms transfer authorities between Congress and the president came in the Senate National Security Powers Act and House National Security Reforms and Accountability Act, which adopted an updated version of the Biden approach in its arms sales-focused portion. Dubbed the “flip the script” approach to arms sales, the bill would restore congressional authority for controversial sales according to item and recipient, while allowing less-risky sales to continue. The sticking point for the bill, if it is reintroduced, will be Israel. The National Security Powers Act used a list of countries already in the Arms Export Control Act to determine which countries would be eligible for sales without express congressional authorization. That list includes Israel, and so the National Security Powers Act, as last introduced, would allow sales to Israel without express congressional approval. In light of the Israeli government’s pattern of atrocities, it should not receive this privilege if the bill is reintroduced.

Ban Bombs Better

An arms export framework has to answer four questions:

• What can the president do alone, without telling Congress?
• What does the president have to tell Congress? 
• What does the president have to ask for specific authority to do?
• What does Congress prohibit the president from doing? 

These days, most debates focus on implementation of laws pertaining to the final question, like the Leahy Law and Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act. But when it comes to the balance between Congress’s power and the president’s, the first and second questions are most important.

Congress has debated these questions before, most intensely in the 1930s as it reckoned with the role of the arms industry in World War I and again in the 1970s as it reasserted congressional authorities after Watergate and the American wars in southeast Asia. 

Since those 1970s-era reforms, congressional authority has slowly eroded. The first warning sign came in INS v. Chadha. Today, the erosion is only accelerating. As a workaround to Chadha, the process of informally notifying congressional committees of major arms sales before an official notification has long allowed committee leadership to hold up major arms sales to ask questions or request modifications. But the Trump administration has repeatedly overridden these holds. Meanwhile, the White House and congressional allies are pushing to require notification for fewer arms sales and reduce the opportunities that legislators have to question proposed sales. For decades, the Arms Export Control Act’s joint resolution of disapproval mechanism has been described as a deterrent to harmful arms sales, despite the practical impossibility of actually enacting such a resolution. Soon, that deterrent effect will be null. For progressives to meet the moment, they need to change the terms of the debate. 

With little prospect of enacting meaningful legislation in this Congress, legislators and advocates should envision a different system to promote accountability, human rights, and international law and develop a consensus around that vision. Congress should be working towards a reclamation of their constitutional authority and an end to the system that allows the president to sell weapons to war criminals and human rights abusers with impunity.

The dangerous new Washington consensus for more nuclear weapons

Board Member Joe Cirincione on why the new Washington consensus for more nuclear weapons repeats the oldest strategic mistake of the nuclear age.

Eighty years ago, Manhattan Project scientists warned that bigger and better atomic bombs would not make the United States safe from sudden attack. They were ignored.

Today, a new Washington consensus spanning both parties is making the same mistake. Two former Biden administration defense officials are calling for more, different, and better nuclear capabilities to meet what they describe as a “Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats.” The third nuclear build-up is already underway, at an estimated cost of $2 trillion and rising. At its core is a war-fighting doctrine that openly embraces the ability to fight and win a nuclear war as essential for national security. But what happens if we use them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? Cirincione warns that these views are now the dominant views in Washington, in both parties. Without a vibrant, persistent pushback, these policies will not only prevail in the current Trump administration but in future governments as well.

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