Arms control, risk reduction, and the art of the possible: Jack Kennedy in the Bulletin

Jack Kennedy, PhD candidate and Research Associate at the Hertie School’s Centre for International Security, has published an article in the May 2026 edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists digital magazine. The magazine, released six times per year, supplements the Bulletin’s regular online content and is published as a (non-peer reviewed) journal through Taylor & Francis.

Kennedy currently serves as the editorial fellow for nuclear risk at the Bulletin. The publication, founded in 1947 by former Manhattan Project scientists, is most famous for its Doomsday Clock which communicates the present existential risk posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, disruptive technology, and biological threats.

The May 2026 edition of the magazine is themed around “The Very Uncertain Future of Arms Control”, featuring perspectives from a range of experts on the state of nuclear arms control after the expiry of New START in February.

Kennedy’s article, “Arms control, risk reduction, and the art of the possible” analyses arms control historically and argues that such agreements have, to date, always been either responses to ongoing arms races or continuations of existing frameworks. Drawing on examples as far back as the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817, it makes the case that preventative arms control – forestalling an arms race before it begins – has never before been achieved.

Kennedy writes, “the nuance of the situation is that arms control now would be an unambiguous good, but structural conditions do not favor it, and everything possible should be done to prevent those structural conditions from coming about.”

He argues that political capital would be better spent on risk reduction measures, to mitigate the numerous emerging challenges to strategic stability, such as new technologies and the complex web of rivalries between nuclear-armed states. Kennedy concludes:

“Figuring out ways to reduce risk in the new strategic environment—and gaining a better understanding of the nature of that strategic environment, which remains under-theorized—is, for now, likely a better use of time and effort than trying to reinvent arms control."

The full article can be read on the Bulletin’s website or through Taylor & Francis.

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