Small Steps At Nuclear Summit

At the conclusion of a two-day, biennial nuclear security summit last week, 35 of 58 country attendees signed a statement supporting further voluntary actions to increase the security of nuclear materials. In a joint statement, signatories agreed to meet the intent of nuclear security guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency and take other actions, including national nuclear security self-assessments. However, several key nuclear countries—Russia, China, India, and Pakistan—did not back the initiative. Many of the security-related discussions at the summit, which was held at The Hague, were overshadowed by concerns from summit attendees over developments in Ukraine and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.