Humanity faces three catastrophic, if not existential, threats—a pandemic, climate change, and nuclear war. In 2020, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has precipitated a global disruption, while the harbingers of climate change have been manifest in unprecedented extreme weather, wildfires, and polar melting. In contrast, the nuclear threat does not similarly command attention through disruption of our daily lives. Yet a nuclear event would be a global game changer—and the risks of that have risen to their highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In his latest book, Managing Nuclear Risks, Dr. Robert Litwak, the Wilson Center’s Senior Vice President, critically assesses the heightened risks across the three major nuclear categories: relations among the existing nuclear-weapon states, the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states, and nuclear terrorism.

Please join Congresswoman Jane Harman and moderator Helene Cooper, Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times, as she leads a conversation with Dr. Litwak and Mitchell Reiss, a Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow and the State Department’s former Director of Policy Planning.