The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Open Nuclear Network or any other agency, institution or partner.
Rising risks
Humans are bad at risk assessment. For a variety of reasons relating to the evolved structures of our information processing systems, humans reliably tend to discount long-term and slow-moving risks and wildly overestimate the likelihood of more easily remembered or salient threats. As a result, human systems often reflect what in the pandemic field has been called a “panic-neglect” cycle. A similar tendency is visible in the nuclear arms control and disarmament community, which can display a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of nuclear conflict, such as through alarmist projections of imminent catastrophe at the onset of the Ukraine war. Another tendency is to underestimate it, as reflected in the steady erosion of funding across the sector and the fideistic endorsement of nuclear deterrence as an unquestionable cornerstone of strategic stability.
The community’s imperfect understanding of risk has intersected with a period of debate about the effectiveness of differing strategies and impact approaches in the field. Moreover, there has been a relative paucity of new ideas and new individuals entering the field. Together, this has generated a funding crisis. If allowed to persist, this crisis threatens to further erode analytical rigor and undermine the community’s capacity to respond effectively to nuclear risk.
At its core, risk is about uncertainty, specifically, the probability of a particular event occurring and the potential consequences, whether adverse or beneficial. Today, uncertainty pervades the arms control and disarmament landscape. With the expiration of New START early next year, the five recognised nuclear weapon states and the four additional nuclear-armed states will face few remaining legal constraints on the development and production of nuclear weapons. Compounding this uncertainty is the possibility that Iran may join their ranks, establishing yet another deterrence dynamic – this time in the Middle East.
The potential increase in the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed actors comes at a time when the propensity for interstate violence is high, arguably the highest since the end of World War II, and the credibility of security alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, appears increasingly in doubt. It also coincides with a new revolution in conventional warfare, characterised by advances in automation, drone operations, artificial intelligence applications and comprehensive battlefield surveillance.
Dangerous dissipation
The arms control and disarmament community has been experiencing institutional entropy for more than four decades. Its decline is not a new phenomenon by any measure. As early as 2001, Mitchel Wallerstein, an American educator, policy expert and at that time Vice President for the Program on Global Security and Sustainability at the MacArthur Foundation, observed that in 1984, 75 foundations were making grants in international security. By 1988, that number had dropped to 55, and by 1994, to just 25.
Multiple issues may have led to this decline. At the time, Kennette Benedict, former executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, observed that some funders perceived arms control and non-proliferation efforts as having stalled. Considering the successes that had happened, there was debate about what credit donors and NGOs could take: Wallerstein, talking about the end of the Cold War remarked that “Many analysts seem inclined to the view that private support probably did not have a major impact.” At the same time, the international security environment had changed, and the focus of international security programmes was increasingly turning to terrorism, civil wars and internationalised subnational conflicts. In the first decade of the century, major philanthropic foundations began to withdraw from the field, among them prominent funders such as the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the Ford Foundation. This shift prompted many organisations to pivot toward statutory fundraising by partnering with governments – a logical step, given that managing nuclear risks ultimately serves the public interest. However, these public funds also began to diminish over time.
Donors, whether philanthropic or government, are often thought to have freedom of action in how they approach funding. As a result, it is easy to see these decisions as arbitrary or unnecessary. However, institutions and the individuals within them are constrained by the limits of their governance structures and formal processes. Hence, the decline in funding can be seen as funders reassessing their priorities in a context where they were weighing immediate perceived need and the effectiveness of their interventions – and perhaps not weighing the scope of risk posed by nuclear weapons. (See, for instance, Barclay’s report “Barriers to Giving” (2019) which goes through many of these arguments, albeit in general terms). The arms control and disarmament community did not appear to adapt to these demands or adjust its approach in response to the rapidly changing policy environment. As funding became scarcer and more fragmented, organisations struggled to expand their influence and instead found themselves competing for limited resources. Meanwhile (perhaps as a consequence thereof), arms control, once regarded as a bipartisan concern, became increasingly politicised.
In July 2021, the MacArthur Foundation announced that it would wind down its significant support for the arms control and disarmament sector. The board stated that achieving its specific goals – halting production and eliminating weapons-usable nuclear materials by 2025 – was no longer realistic. Rather than publicly reaffirming or adjusting their objectives, the Foundation opted to discontinue its efforts altogether, although a USD 30 million capstone effort will keep some organisations on life support through the next year or so.
Required reignition
The combination of diminished strategic foresight, rising instability in international affairs and the erosion of institutional capacity to manage nuclear risks should be cause for serious concern. These trends highlight the urgent need to reinvest in the arms control sector and to reassess prevailing assumptions about its potential impact. One fact remains clear: without sustained efforts to control, reduce and ultimately eliminate the risks posed by nuclear weapons, no progress can be expected. However, increased investment will remain unlikely unless government and nonprofit donors adjust their expectations about impact or priorities, have their concerns addressed, or are incentivised by stakeholders or changing conditions to boost funding. New models of donor coordination may help achieve this.
On 22 April 2025, Carnegie Corporation of New York announced the establishment of a USD 10.2 million consortium, initially slated to operate for two years, to support collaborative initiatives aimed at reducing nuclear risks. The initial set of funders includes Founders Pledge, Longview Philanthropy, PAX sapiens and an anonymous donor. Carnegie will lead and administer the initiative, distributing proposals to consortium members. The consortium allows partner funders to retain full control over their application assessments and funding decisions, while offering coordinated support through the possibility of matching funds for proposals they choose to finance.
This mechanism offers a means of countering the funding decline. By using matching funds while allowing consortium members to make independent decisions, the approach attracts donors by improving funding efficiency. Coordinated application reviews may also enhance donor confidence by enabling comparison of theories of change and facilitating the exchange of lessons learned. Over time, the consortium may generate insights that can be shared more broadly to highlight effective strategies for achieving impact.
The arms control and disarmament community stand at an inflection point. The Carnegie-led consortium presents an opportunity to reverse a long-standing trend of institutional atrophy. But of course, it must be acknowledged that philanthropic support alone will not suffice. Philanthropy can help surface key questions, highlight outcomes and feed insights back to nonprofit and governmental sectors. It can also invest in developing new capacities across the field. But a true revitalisation will require the field itself to commit to meaningful change. A reassessment of its assumptions, a willingness to confront difficult realities and a commitment to methodological and strategic change, will support more impact and likely lead to an increase in funding in the future. If the arms control community is to contribute meaningfully to global security, it must reimagine both its mission and its means.
Andreas Persbo is the Director of Open Nuclear Network (ONN), a programme of PAX sapiens. Andreas is a recognized expert in arms control and its verification, and in particular, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Over the last few years, he has also sought to expand his knowledge of great-power relations, specifically West-Russia dynamics. He is the author of some 60 book chapters, research reports and briefing papers and has delivered lectures and presentations at several dozen conferences and workshops.
Contact: apersbo@paxsapiens.org
Dr. Conor Seyle is the Chief Operating Officer at PAX sapiens. Dr. Conor Seyle focuses on developing strategic goals for the organisation and overseeing project-specific strategies for achieving these goals. In addition, in the current organizational structure he manages the organization’s grantmaking activities across the different areas of organizational impact. Conor is the author or co-author of several dozen academic articles or analytical pieces on issues relating to systemic approaches to peace and political psychology.
Contact: dcseyle@paxsapiens.org
