As the year draws to a close, experts look at the multiple challenges that confronted the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament community this year.

Manpreet Sethi offers recommendations for policymakers in Southern Asia to better manage risks and challenges. And Rakesh Sood shows why new advanced technologies require a new approach to maintaining nuclear stability in that region.

Meanwhile, John Tilemann discusses the multiple threats emerging in 2022 weakening security norms and the nuclear taboo, and how to restore them. We also highlight our members’ activities.

We wish all of our members, partners, and friends a wonderful holiday season.

Manpreet Sethi, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, in New Delhi, offers recommendations for policymakers in southern Asia to better manage the risks and challenges inherent in nuclear deterrence in a new special report published in the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. She argues that consequent nuclear dynamics in the region have fair potential for crisis and arms race instability. As a way to address the regional nuclear challenges, Sethi explores the character of Pakistan–India and China–India nuclear dyads along three specific axes.

Rakesh Sood, a former Indian ambassador and Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, argues that new advanced technologies require a new look at maintaining nuclear stability in Southern Asia in a new special report published in the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. He says that in the China-India-Pakistan trilemma, policy proposals must be cognizant of new technological and political realities to break out of the cycle of mistrust and reduce risks of both misperceptions and miscalculation that could lead to inadvertent escalation.

John Tilemann, Senior Associate Fellow at APLN, shows how emerging threats to the global nuclear norms underscore the importance of the IAEA’s work in a new column published in the Korea Times. Despite increasing demands for its safety, security, and safeguards services, the IAEA remains under political pressure from some quarters and faces a significant funding shortfall. Though support for individual multilateral institutions waxes and wanes over time, Tilemann argues that the IAEA deserves continuing backing from the Asia-Pacific, a region of growing global influence and of immense expertise in nuclear energy and science.