A number of world events, including global leadership transition, anxiety about the state of the nonproliferation regime, the threat of catastrophic terrorism and expectations of a global renaissance of nuclear energy, have provided a new impetus for nuclear weapons risk reduction.  The 2010 Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum seeks to contribute to this agenda by addressing strategic engagement and confidence building in the Euro-Atlantic relationship – steps that will be integral to advancing U.S. – Russian nuclear arms reductions and enlisting other nuclear weapons states to join in nuclear threat reduction and the disarmament process.

Senator Nunn has said, “The goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain.  It is tempting and easy to say:  We can’t get there from here.  It is true that today in our troubled world we can’t see the top of the mountain.  But we can see that we are heading down – not up.  We can see that we must turn around, that we must take paths leading to higher ground and that we must get others to move with us.”

The forum will integrate and build upon Senator Nunn's co-leadership of two projects. The first is the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Nuclear Security Project, which Nunn leads in concert with former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, and which, in cooperation with the Hoover Institution, aims to promote global steps towards reducing reliance on nuclear weapons.  Nunn also co-leads the Carnegie Endowment's Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative, which strives to foster new approaches to collective security.  It also builds upon new initiatives to assess future requirements for strategic stability under way at Georgia Tech's Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy.

Adam Stulberg, director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy and professor in Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, said, “With leaders from across the Euro-Atlantic space now seeking to recapture the promise of strategic partnership, the time is ripe for exploring fresh and pragmatic approaches to forging inclusive security architectures as a critical step towards bolstering strategic reassurance.”

The forum will highlight underlying political, security, economic and energy issues that currently complicate reassurance among Europe, Russia and the United States, as well as propose realistic directions for redressing these fault lines and strengthening cooperation. 

The biennial Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum is a day-long policy meeting presented by the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.  The forum brings together noted academic, government and private-sector experts on technology, public policy and international affairs for discussion of critical issues confronting the United States in the 21st century.  It was developed from Nunn’s vision of increasing understanding among policymakers, academic researchers, technologists and citizens regarding important issues facing them. Nunn is a distinguished professor at The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.