Nuclear and Biological Nonproliferation: Lessons from Kazakhstan and Central Asia

In a world increasingly defined by bellicose rhetoric, nuclear nonproliferation is no longer taken for granted. In a post-COVID world, pandemics threaten public health the world over. Kazakhstan dismantled the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal and is a leader in global nonproliferation. Kazakhstan now seeks to create a global biological nonproliferation regime. How can these past successes enable the new initiatives and what can they teach us about the next stages of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction?

Speakers:

Alimzhan Akhmetov

Director, Center for International Security and Policy

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.

Managing Director, Energy, Growth, and Security Program, International Tax and Investment Center

Eric Gomez

Senior Fellow, Cato Institute

Lyazzat Yeraliyeva

Vice-President, National Academy of Science, Republic of Kazakhstan

Richard Weitz, Ph.D.

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis, Hudson Institute, security expert at Wikistrat, and author of The New China-Russia Alignment: Critical Challenges to U.S. Security

Moderator

Sebastien Peyrouse – Director of the Central Asia Program and research Professor, IERES, George Washington University. His main areas of expertise are political systems in Central Asia, economic and social issues, Islam and religious minorities, and Central Asia’s geopolitical positioning toward China, India, and South Asia.