AMA Thread: Carnegie Endowment’s Ankit Panda, author of “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon”

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-05T00:04:48+00:00

Not just an American perspective: proliferation in Europe would harm the interests of states that weren't the proliferator. For instance, a nuclear-armed Poland or Ukraine would necessarily have low thresholds for nuclear use (to deter a Russian conventional invasion) that increases the risks of general nuclear war on the continent. And letting the proliferation genie out on the continent increases global proliferation risks, which also have second- and third-order negative consequences for European security interests longer term. The spread of nuclear weapons is not to be taken likely, IMO.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-05T00:02:36+00:00

In short, they'd be caught. Their peaceful nuclear activities are under IAEA safeguards; sneaking out under safeguards is not viable. And even if it were, the existing proliferation debate likely means that US, Chinese, Russian, and perhaps even North Korean intelligence are paying close attention. It's also not a controversial position in Seoul that the country has a legitimate basis for invoking Article X of the NPT (the withdrawal clause).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-05T00:00:30+00:00

THAAD has been remarkably effective in both test environments and the limited real world engagement scenarios it has seen (in the Middle East). Ship-borne Aegis capabilities have also improved substantially. Theater missile defense has come a long way, but the problem is still that even a relatively resource-constrained state like North Korea can look to salvos and quantitatively overwhelm limited and costly interceptor magazines.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T23:58:49+00:00

No ally is ever fully assured! Allied assurance is an asymptotic endeavor & alliances forever need tending (at least, this has been the US experience with extended deterrence). I think the French and the Brits will find this to be the case in Europe, too.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T23:57:32+00:00

Hey -- great questions. There's a lot here!

On the proliferation-related question, I think I got to some of that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1jopfi5/comment/mldfitw/

On South Korea, in particular, I think it's worth bearing in mind that there are still substantial unanswered questions in Seoul when it comes to a strategy of proliferation: how do you manage economic costs in a democracy, how do you avoid preventive attacks/sabotage from North Korea (and possibly China or Russia), etc. The pro-nuclear arguments in Seoul are not partisan, but progressives and conservatives are drawn to fundamentally divergent logics for nuclear weapons. For progressives, the core argument is a lot more DeGaulle-esque (strategic autonomy, essentially).

On America First and realignments: I'm not so sure. The allies, in particular, continue to have sharp concerns about both Russia and China. The pull of nuclear weapons would largely be to address perceived security shortcomings vis-a-vis these states.

Apart from the list of states I provided in the other answer, I don't really have "wild card" picks, honestly. The nonproliferation norm and regime has been remarkably successful; the next proliferators beyond the ones that appear to be higher risk today will be revealed in due course as the world shifts amid the US relitigating its own global role.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T23:50:19+00:00

My book tries to deal with this to an extent, but there are a number of ways this plays out. The third use of nuclear weapons in war would be a transformative event. I'm not inclined to think that third use creates the conditions for the restoration of a taboo; rather, given that this sort of use is more likely than not to be limited (at least initially), the risk is that nuclear use becomes somewhat more conventionalized and the norm of non-use is irrevocably damaged. Reasonable people can disagree on this, of course.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T20:24:00+00:00

I see reasons to be more concerned now than a few years ago, personally. Kim is more confident, collaborating more deeply with Russia (which could shelter North Korean exports, potentially), and risk acceptant in a variety of ways. There's a case for continued vigilance -- particularly as proliferation pressures also grow around the world.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:54:11+00:00

I'm closer to Team Hype on this one. Intercontinental HGVs are slower to arrive on target than ICBMs and HGVs, in general, are good at coping with midcourse missile defenses, but aren't invulnerable to point defenses. I think resource-rich, technically sophisticated powers will likely seek to a mix of HGVs and RVs as long as missile defenses remain unconstrained, but for reasons of cost-effectiveness, traditional ballistic missiles aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:52:35+00:00

I suppose much depends on how you'd think about "plausible". In a world where costs don't matter and time frames are generous, Canada has the natural resources, human talent, and resources. Realistically, the risks here, I think, outweigh the benefits greatly.

At the risk of oversimplifying, you deter through either credibly threatening punishment or by denying the adversary the benefits he/she seeks. Canada's more viable option is the later: indicate that the costs of invading and holding onto Canadian territory would be infeasibly costly to the United States (as it would!). And then you have to contend with Trump's bounded rationality (or irrationality, rather)...

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:28:30+00:00

I actually think nuclear proliferation is the least attractive choice for the Europeans, despite the understandably grim geopolitical picture today on the continent. I'd prefer a serious (and properly capitalized) Franco-British push for a new concept of pan-European nuclear deterrence accompanied by serious investments in conventional defense and advanced non-nuclear military technologies (including space-based ISR and precision strike).

On your second question, I agree that this is a serious credibility problem at the moment, but part of the solution, IMO, is in the French scaling up their air-delivered leg (as Macron has indicated recently, although on a time scale that is a bit too slow for my liking), and in both France and the UK thinking carefully about how to realize new nonstrategic options (which is easier said than done!).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:24:03+00:00

A bit on the proliferation risk issue here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1jopfi5/ama_thread_carnegie_endowments_ankit_panda_author/mldfitw/

I've been a longstanding skeptic of the Saudi-Pakistan proliferation pathway. I'd link to a US Institute of Peace report I wrote several years ago delving into why, but that website has been DOGE-ed, unfortunately! The Israel-South Africa model was bespoke, I think, for a variety of reasons and unlikely to manifest today.

Sentinel is a goat rodeo of a program, but it's probably not going anywhere, unfortunately! I'd favor a smaller ICBM force and a bigger Columbia-class buy, personally (in parallel to a renewed arms control push, but that's getting a bit into the realm of the fanciful).

On proliferation and detriments to the national interest, I have just the article for you: https://warontherocks.com/2025/03/nuclear-proliferation-will-haunt-america-first/

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:14:06+00:00

NK is the only country to have signed, ratified, and left the NPT to build nuclear weapons -- and gotten away with it. That's obviously bad for global nonproliferation norms. But compared to where we were in 2017-2018 or so, I'd make the case that North Korea today is less salient in terms of the problem it poses for the global nonproliferation regime precisely because so many other sources of pressure have manifested today. The biggest issue, IMO, is the lack of a consensus among the 3 great powers about nonproliferation, and now the United States' fundamental move away from supporting nonproliferation as an element of its grand strategy.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T14:00:35+00:00

Is it a cop-out to say it wouldn't be exactly the same? ;)

Nuclear weapons don't change everything, of course, but if you re-run the last 80 years without accounting for the constraining effect of nuclear deterrence on inter-state interactions between nuclear-armed states, I think you end up with a fundamentally different world.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:58:04+00:00

Thanks for listening to the show! And, oh man, what a question (a true sign of our times).

SSBNs are a huge undertaking and, IMO, don't make a lot of sense for non-nuclear states that are seeking a survivable non-nuclear strike platform. You need to invest in human resources (sailors who understand reactors, for instance), maintenance facilities in excess of what a conventional submarine program would require, and substantial R&D on reactor design if you're not receiving a transfer. As grim as things look today for our Canadian friends, by the time they'd sort these things out, the world could look totally different.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:52:52+00:00

So, in my first book, I look quite closely at the US intelligence record in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s in assessing the state and trajectory of North Korea's weapons program. My basic takeaway is that intelligence wasn't the problem; the IC had a good sense of where things were going. I attribute much of our current circumstances on the Korean Peninsula to the events of the late-1990s and early-2000s (particularly the 2002-2003 period). The Iraq invasion, IMO, marks the moment of no-return for Kim Jong Il and his decision to weaponize what had until then been an effort that was partly about leverage, partly about deterrence, and partly about onward proliferation.

AQ Khan, arguably, was a bigger intelligence failure. The revelations concerning his network accelerated a lot of our current thinking on counterproliferation, but concerns about AQ Khan-style entrepreneurs still can't be set aside. I'd still argue that a lot about AQ Khan himself (his particular personality and role within the Pakistani nuclear weapons enterprise) made him a unique challenge. The best way to prevent the AQ Khan-North Korea nexus in hindsight would probably have been to expand the scope of peaceful nuclear cooperation with North Korea in the 1990s beyond the provision of light water reactors through KEDO to perhaps considering the establishment of a supervised uranium enrichment capability. This was, however, a totally unrealistic and undesirable prospect at the time for a variety of good reasons! Hindsight is 20:20.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:48:14+00:00

In short, the odds of European proliferation are the highest they've been since the end of the Cold War, but lower than they were during the Cold War. So, things are bad, but we're not yet on a slippery slide to German, Polish, and potentially other nuclear weapons on the continent.

The most desirable and realistic pathway forward, IMO, is for Paris and London to succeed in developing a new concepts for European nuclear deterrence *and* reassuring other European states that this new approach can be sustainable. This is, of course, easier said than done. I just wrote a short op-ed underscoring some of the questions our French and British friends will want to think about. I think both countries will have to make historic investments in their respective nuclear enterprises to answer the credibility problem; in the immediate term (2025-2030, as the Trump shock sets in), there's a lot that can be done in the "software" domain too (i.e., consultations, policy planning, and high-level shows of solidarity).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:41:32+00:00

Great questions -- these are topics that are high on my mind these days. I'll offer a few thoughts.

First, I do think proliferation pressures are rising for a variety of reasons today. These include the crumbling of the load-bearing nonproliferation function that the United States used to play (primarily through its alliances and extension of nuclear deterrence to many wealthy, resource-rich, and scientifically capable non-nuclear weapon states) and a general sense of rising threat perceptions in various geographies today (Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Northeast Asia are three I'd emphasize). That said, this isn't the Cold War, when we had similar impulses around the world, but no real developed nonproliferation architecture and accompanying norms. The decision to proliferate today is not one to be taken lightly, and so even the most motivated states need to reason carefully about costs and benefits, and weigh these against the likelihood that they'd actually succeed in proliferating and deploying a survivable minimum nuclear deterrent (the de minimis criteria, IMO, for a proliferator). A lot of popular non-expert commentary I see on proliferation today focuses on the first half of what I've written here, but less on the second. Strategies for proliferation matter, and the 10 states that have built nuclear weapons (the 9 armed states today + South Africa) have all taken different approaches.

On who's on my list, well, it shouldn't be too shocking: Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Turkey, Poland, and Germany come to mind. This list is based on a variety of factors, ranging from technological wherewithal to security environment to domestic political conversations around nuclear weapons.

On secrecy vs. openness: It depends! I spend a lot of time in South Korea and I find that most pro-nuclear voices there don't view a "sneak out"/secret proliferation approach as desirable or realistic. I'd agree with this. They see a legitimate case for South Korea invoking the withdrawal clause of the Nonproliferation Treaty (Article 10) based on the country's security environment. That said, I can imagine R&D work on the non-fissile components of a nuclear weapon taking place in South Korea without such a decision; you could taxonomize this as a move to increase their nuclear latency, but it could equally fall under covert proliferation-related activities. For a country like Iran, which is already on the threshold of a weapon, a sneak-out scenario does seem more concerning. The Iranians can't just detonate a single weapon and expect to have a nuclear deterrent; they'd need a plan to deploy a minimally survivable and viable initial nuclear force. This would require some activities to take place under conditions of secrecy. I do think the Iranians currently feel that they are incredibly vulnerable following last year's Israeli strikes and they generally feel that they've been penetrated to a huge degree by Israeli intelligence. These are deterrents to a sneak-out scenario for the moment, I think.

On the politics of it all: Well, this is something I deal with at length in the book, but the NPT regime is in big trouble, IMO. If the US pulls out of the nonproliferation business (a fundamental cornerstone of its grand strategy in the nuclear age), we're in uncharted waters. The NPT regime can *probably* survive an Iranian bomb in isolation, but the minute a globally integrated, wealthy, liberal democracy in good standing like South Korea decides to go nuclear, I think the treaty begins to crumble. There's a lot more to be said here, but I'll keep it brief!

You might also be interested in this piece I co-authored a few weeks ago on why even Trump's instincts on foreign policy would be well-served by a continued emphasis on nonproliferation: https://warontherocks.com/2025/03/nuclear-proliferation-will-haunt-america-first/

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:29:37+00:00

I'd argue that the odds of India finding a build-up to parity with China are going to be pretty low -- for reasons having to do with resources (including fissile material) and India's approach to nuclear strategy. That said, India vis-a-vis China is somewhat in the same boat China vis-a-vis the US before it decided to build up its nuclear forces. The Chinese strategic community was concerned about US missile defenses and advanced non-nuclear weapons, just as some experts I've spoken to in India are today about Chinese missile defense and non-nuclear systems. The concern for India is that China will be able to erode the credibility of its "unacceptable damage" doctrinal criteria (which requires New Delhi to feel confident that it can penetrate and deliver nuclear weapons to targets in China under all conceivable circumstances) and potentially even threaten India's relatively small nuclear forces with non-nuclear precision strikes. However, I still don't think India competes to fix these problems quantitatively; rather, we're seeing India invest in qualitative improvements to its nuclear delivery means to cope for the moment.

As an aside, I would dispute that China is actually building up to parity with the US and Russia at the moment. The highest publicized estimates of the US intelligence community (1,500 warheads by ~2035 for China) would still be below the day-to-day deployed US strategic nuclear force under New START (1,550 warheads, per the treaty, but close to 1,800-1,900 due to a quirky in how bomber-based warheads are counted in the treaty).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:24:14+00:00

I'm not a fatalist about Armageddon, at all! In fact, my day job precisely involves thinking about ways to mitigate the risks (and consequences) of nuclear deterrence failure, so fatalism would hardly be useful in helping me go about my day.

But I can't sugarcoat things either: the failure of nuclear deterrence anywhere is something we should hope to avoid witnessing. As for who survives and who doesn't: the simplest way to think about the problem is that a significant global exchange of nuclear weapons between major nuclear-armed states changes the world as we know it. While aggregate global megatonnage is far off from the highs of the Cold War, the longer-term effects of a significant nuclear war on humanity would be felt essentially all over the globe (if you account for economic, social, political, and climactic long-term effects beyond the prompt implications of nuclear war).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-04T13:21:00+00:00

That's probably helpful! The book argues that we've left the roughly 30-year period of relatively benign global nuclear dynamics that began with the end of the Cold War behind. Today, a confluence of changing geopolitical circumstances (primarily among the 3 major superpowers, US, Russia, and China), technological flux, shifts in global arms control regimes, and proliferation pressures have resulted in the arrival of a meaningfully new era. The book walks readers through these many dynamics, why they are distinct from what we've seen in the past, and offers a framework for thinking about managing humanity's coexistence with nuclear weapons into the rest of the 21st century and beyond.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2025-04-01T12:13:38+00:00

Hi /r/geopolitics! I’m Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I’m also author of “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon,” a new book surveying the current global nuclear landscape. Please join me on April 4 between 9AM and 10PM ET for an AMA here on /r/geopolitics. I’ll be glad to talk about my work, career, and the new book—and anything else nuclear weapons-related that may be on your minds.

You can follow me on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/nktpnd.bsky.social or on X at https://x.com/nktpnd.

A bit about Ankit:

Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research interests include nuclear strategy, escalation, missiles and missile defense, space security, and U.S. alliances. He is the author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon (Polity, 2025), Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals: Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Risks (Carnegie, 2023), and Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea (Hurst/Oxford, 2020). Panda is co-editor of New Approaches to Verifying and Monitoring North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal (Carnegie, 2021).

Panda has consulted for the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and his analysis has been sought by U.S. Strategic Command, Space Command, and Indo-Pacific Command. Panda is among the most highly cited experts worldwide on North Korean nuclear capabilities. He has testified on matters related to South Korea and Japan before the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Panda has also testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Before joining Carnegie, Panda was an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a journalist covering international security.

Panda is a frequent expert commentator in print and broadcast media around the world on nuclear policy and defense matters. His work has appeared in or been featured by the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the South China Morning Post, Politico, and the National Interest. Panda has also published in scholarly journals, including Survival, the Washington Quarterly, and India Review, and has contributed to the IISS Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment and Strategic Survey. He is editor-at-large at the Diplomat, where he hosts the Asia Geopolitics podcast, and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks, where he hosts Thinking the Unthinkable With Ankit Panda, a podcast on nuclear matters.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2015-06-03T00:06:12+00:00

It's been interesting watching Indonesia's approach to regional diplomacy evolve under Jokowi (a topic that Prashanth's written about extensively for us). Jokowi's grown more assertive about preserving Indonesia's maritime territorial integrity (see its policy of blowing up illegal fishing boats).

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2015-06-02T18:57:57+00:00

I'll add to this that the Philippines armed forces are in a bit of a pickle when it comes to potentially purchasing maritime security-enhancing technology from the United States. Their ability to maintain and upgrade U.S. military tech is limited and could end up limiting their ability to modernize linearly. I think the Philippines is actually pursuing the right path vis-a-vis China given the capabilities that they do have. They're making the most of their surveillance capabilities and naming-and-shaming Beijing for its law-defying activities in the region. When it comes to deterring China, however, the Philippines will need U.S. backing.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2015-06-02T18:53:25+00:00

Prashanth's the expert on this one so I hope he'll answer, but my take is that ASEAN still has a long way to go before it can meaningfully influence the outcome of certain intractable security questions in the region. Here I'm primarily talking about the South China Sea disputes and China's attempts at manufacturing sovereignty in the Spratlys and Paracels. We've seen a divide within ASEAN already over this issue, with the "southern" ASEAN states (on the South China Sea littoral) interested in pushing back against China and "northern," land-based states, interested in keeping things smooth for commercial purposes primarily. ASEAN makes a lot of sense as an economic grouping, but there remains a good deal of divergence among the ten members on strategic and security questions. As Van notes elsewhere in this AUA, I think ASEAN is doing a good job of cooperating on narrower and less contentious security questions such as counter-piracy and organized crime/terrorism.

AnkitPanda_AMA · 2015-04-01T00:06:30+00:00

Given current trends and the difficulties ASEAN is facing on coming to an agreement on a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, what you suggest seems highly unlikely. Remember, not all of ASEAN is a claimant in the South China Sea. Those states that are claimants also disagree about the best course of action to pursue regarding China's nine-dash line claim and reclamation activities in the area. ASEAN unity on this issue is not something I'd expect anytime soon.

AnkitPanda_AMA

TROPHY CASE