Press the Button

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A new episode of Press the Button is available every Tuesday.

An engaging podcast on nuclear policy and national security, Press the Button is co-hosted by defense experts Joe Cirincione and Michelle Dover of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. This weekly podcast features top officials and experts discussing the latest developments on Iran, North Korea, nuclear weapons, military budgets and foreign policy. Press the Button offers diverse views on one of the most important issues of our time: preventing nuclear war.

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Towards a Feminist Foreign Policy in the US

In May 2020, Ploughshares Fund was proud to be one of the more than 70 organizations to endorse a white paper outlining what a US feminist foreign policy might look like: Towards a Feminist...

October 6, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
5 Great First Episodes

Here are 5 favorite episodes, great places to start if you are new to Press the Button, or podcasts in general. You can listen to any of these episodes, right now from this page. Press the Button is co-hosted by Ploughshares Fund defense experts Tom Collina and Michelle Dover. The podcast offers...

October 5, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
Why America Should Bring Home Its Nuclear Weapons

American tactical nuclear weapons in Europe have outlived their usefulness and should be brought home, argued Mike Sweeney, national security expert and fellow at the libertarian think tank, Defense Priorities. “It’s kind of a forgotten issue,” he explained in an interview with the podcast Press...

October 2, 2020 - By Zack Brown
A Narrow View of National Security Is Making America Less Safe

“They want to explode a bomb in the desert to show how scary it is,” said Laicie Heeley, CEO of Inkstick media, and host of the Inkstick and PRX podcast Things That Go Boom. “They want to make a big show of force that is credible and accountable. And there’s value to those strategies when they...

September 24, 2020 - By Will Lowry
Why the Next Shooting War Could Go Nuclear

Nuclear expert James Acton believes that we are entering into an era of what he calls “nuclear entanglement,” one that promises to be different from anything we’ve seen before. It’s main characteristic: an increasingly blurry line between nuclear and conventional weapons. “During the Cold War,...

September 18, 2020 - By Zack Brown
A Cold War with China?

Lora Lumpe, the CEO of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, believes the United States is “sliding seamlessly into the next decades-long era of superpower competition”—this time with China. For Washington to fall into another globe-spanning military confrontation would be a strategic...

August 31, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
The Politics of Pentagon Spending: Can the US Military Budget Be Cut?

Three weeks after the House voted against her amendment to the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act, Representative Barbara Lee (D-California) couldn’t help but evince a bit of residual exasperation. “It was so modest,” she said in an interview with national security podcast, Press The...

August 12, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
How the Navajo Suffered Thanks to America's Nuclear Weapons Build Up

Sunny Dooley’s first brush with the atomic bomb came from her father. When she was in seventh grade, her teacher asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Dooley, a Navajo Diné storyteller who lives in Chi Chil Tah, a small community nestled between oak-covered hills twenty miles south...

August 5, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
How Donald Trump's Nuclear Policy is Raising Old Debates over Nuclear Control

Former New York Times editorial board member and longtime foreign policy reporter Carol Giacomo says President Donald Trump has forced Americans to grapple with the nuclear responsibility the country has accorded to every chief executive since Harry Truman. “When I began covering the nuclear...

July 30, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund
Expert: If You Want North Korea to Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Start by Ending the Korean War

Korea expert and Women Cross DMZ founder Christine Ahn believes the United States needs to dramatically reshape its strategy on North Korea in order to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. For the last thirty years, Washington orthodoxy has held that the Kim regime must first...

July 23, 2020 - By Ploughshares Fund