Global security

US-Russia rift threatens science ties that keep us safe

Amid increasing tensions between Washington and Moscow over Syria, Ukraine, cyber hacking, and military maneuvers in the Baltics, the Kremlin’s systematic termination of nuclear cooperation with the United States has gone relatively unnoticed. Both countries embraced such cooperation as a shared global responsibility after the end of the Cold War. A return to nuclear confrontation now sets the clock back, putting both countries at enormous risk and endangering global stability.

This fall, Moscow suspended the US-Russian agreement on the disposition of excess weapons plutonium, terminated an agreement on converting research reactors from highly enriched to low-enriched uranium, and ended a 2013 agreement to cooperate on nuclear- and energy-related scientific research and development.