Joe Cirincione's Blog Posts

Joseph Cirincione is President of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is the author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He is a member of Secretary of State John Kerry's International Security Advisory Board and the Council on Foreign Relations.
We are delighted to announce that the Ploughshares Fund Board of Directors on June 17, 2013 unanimously elected Mary Lloyd Estrin as the new chair. As a board member and president of the foundation, I am excited to work with her as we continue to build Ploughshares Fund as a smart, innovative and effective force for change. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 17, 2013
June 10 marks the 50th anniversary of one of JFK's most important speeches and one of the most powerful pleas ever given by a US president for nuclear disarmament. He touches on many issues that we still wrestle with today, including nuclear war, disarmament, banning all nuclear tests, and the defeatist belief that change is impossible.  Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 10, 2013
Susan Rice does not speak very often on nuclear policy, but behind the scenes she played a major role in shaping Barack Obama’s nuclear weapons positions in the 2008 campaign. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 5, 2013
On Thursday, Rachel Maddow asked me if President Obama was going to fulfill the visionary agenda he laid out four years ago in Prague. I paused. What should I say? I support this agenda to move us step by step towards what Obama termed "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." But progress has been slow. I took a deep breath and answered the only way I could: honestly. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on April 5, 2013
We've doubled down on a defense that doesn't work against missiles that don't exist. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on March 21, 2013
President Barack Obama has assembled perhaps the most knowledgeable senior nuclear policy team in American history. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on February 27, 2013
The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will stay at five minutes to midnight for the year 2013, say the scientists and experts at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who maintain one of the world’s most famous time pieces. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on January 15, 2013
On Monday, December 3, I was honored to be part of a select audience for President Obama's first national security speech since his reelection. That night, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rachel Maddow to talk about the President’s speech. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on December 5, 2012
For a sense of what's at stake for nuclear policy in this year's election, consider this: The U.S. government is on track to spend $640 billion over the next 10 years on nuclear weapons and related programs -- more than the military's budget for an entire year. The next president will make key policy decisions early in his term that will have an impact on these budgets and global security more broadly. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on November 6, 2012
When 19 Senators write the administration to demand funding for a pet project, they usually get what they want.  But not this time.  This time common sense, fiscal realities and the hard work of dozens of Ploughshares Fund grantees combined to kill a wasteful and unnecessary nuclear bomb factory. Read more »
Posted by Joe Cirincione on September 23, 2012