Former diplomats gather in Minneapolis to discuss nuclear proliferation amid war in Iran

KELLY GORDON: This is Minnesota Now. I'm Kelly Gordon in for Nina Moini.

This morning in Minneapolis, a group of former diplomats and foreign-policy experts shared a stage to discuss a sobering topic, the potential spread of nuclear weapons around the world. The Great Decisions Conference by the nonprofit Global Minnesota comes during a tense moment in global security. Nuclear weapons are a major part of the equation in the United States and Israel's war with Iran, and a nuclear-arms treaty between the US and Russia expired earlier this year.

Joining me now is one of the panelists from this morning's discussion. Mary Curtin is a former diplomat in residence at the University of Minnesota. Before that, she worked for more than two decades in the Foreign Service, with posts at places like the European Union, Poland, and Tunisia. Hi, Mary. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

MARY CURTIN: Hi, Kelly. It's really an honor to be on the show.

KELLY GORDON: Well, I understand the panel that you were speaking on ended just a few minutes ago.

MARY CURTIN: It did, yes.

KELLY GORDON: So what are some of your takeaways from that discussion and the conference overall today?

MARY CURTIN: So I just wanted to make clear that this conference that was cosponsored by Global Minnesota and the Humphrey School is part of what's called a Great Decisions Program in which ordinary citizens at schools, churches, retirement communities get together monthly to discuss key foreign-policy issues. And so this is sort of the flagship conference on that.

So what we talked about is the fact that, as the title suggested, Ruptured Alliances and the Risk of Nuclear Proliferation, that the instability and lack of trust that has now emerged between our allies and the United States, but also with some of our adversaries, is threatening some of the longstanding nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament agreements that were very carefully constructed and very carefully adhered to over decades, with a lot of problems, and that we need, as citizens, to think about-- as Americans, to think about how the actions of our government and this administration are undermining trust in the United States and thereby increasing risk of a resumption of nuclear proliferation.

KELLY GORDON: So I have a question for you here kind of about the negotiations that are ongoing when it comes to that. President Donald Trump has used social media in his approach to the war with Iran, like something we don't normally see in diplomacy.

MARY CURTIN: Of course not.

KELLY GORDON: Last week, he posted the threat that, quote, "a whole civilization will die tonight." And then this week, he criticized the pope for speaking out against the war. He posted a photo depicting himself as Jesus. I'm curious about your thoughts. Do these statements have any material impacts on negotiations?

MARY CURTIN: I think that they do have material impact. It is absolutely unprecedented to have a president use the kind of profanity and, for a lot of religious people, sort of blasphemous statements, in addition to making direct threats against another civilization-- so not just a government but a civilization. And I think that it impedes the opportunity for any kind of negotiated resolution. If you were Iranian, even Iranians who don't like their government, do not like either the rhetoric or the actions of the bombarding of their country.

But if I could add, it's not just Iran. Other countries, including our allies in Europe, are watching this, and they also are very disturbed by what they're seeing, and it makes them lose trust in the United States.

KELLY GORDON: Well, that's a perfect segue. I was going to ask, how do you describe the state of US alliances right now with some of our allies, like the NATO alliance? What does that mean, what's happening right now, for our nuclear security?

MARY CURTIN: Yeah, so as we discussed at the conference, if we had been having a conference about global nuclear security a year and a half ago, we wouldn't really even have talked much about European allies because there was so much trust in the United States over the decades, despite lots of differences, that our friends, as well as our adversaries, we didn't want our friends to get nuclear weapons either because the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more dangerous the world is. And so for decades, NATO allies agreed to be under the umbrella of the United States' nuclear system. Of course, France and the UK have very small nuclear weapons capabilities, but it was the United States that wanted our allies not to talk about it.

And what's happened just in the last few months is that our allies, because of the threats to Greenland, Denmark, Canada, and things like the tariffs and the unpredictability of the United States, have started to talk to each other about whether or not maybe they should create their own nuclear umbrella. That might include ideas like France getting more nuclear weapons and protecting countries like Sweden. Or you have Poland, a very solid NATO ally, saying that maybe one day they should think about nuclear weapons.

And so the rhetoric from the United States that undermines trust has led to countries talking about getting nuclear weapons. That is very destabilizing. And there's similar conversations going on in South Korea and Japan for the same reasons, that they don't know now if they can trust the United States.

KELLY GORDON: So given that, what are effective approaches, from your perspective, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons? Is this just inevitable now?

MARY CURTIN: I don't like to think that anything is just inevitable, and I think it's appropriate that I'm still here at the Humphrey School because a lot of people don't know Senator Humphrey was one of the earliest advocates and tireless advocates for arms-control agreements and negotiations and for the creating of an agency that would be staffed by professionals. He was instrumental in getting the open-air nuclear testing. That was a huge fear when I was a child, that we would be poisoned by this radiation, that we would die in nuclear armageddon.

And it didn't seem then anything could happen, and it did. There were agreements that came into place that led to a lot of progress. And so I think, though, that it requires a lot of hard work on the part of our political leaders. It requires a lot of delicate diplomacy.

And our primary speaker today, who herself negotiated the New START agreement during the Obama administration, said that over the decades, citizen action lobbying for nuclear-arms-control agreements has always played a critical role, both in prompting political leaders to undertake them and then to get them ratified through the Senate. And so I think that citizens coming to events like this so they can learn about these kinds of things and then thinking about how they ask their political leaders, their elected leaders to address these issues is really important. And so it was great to see more than 130 people across the Twin Cities-- high school students to senior citizens-- deciding that this was really an important thing for them to come out and do today.

KELLY GORDON: Yeah, that's really great. One thing in our last minute here, can you just give us an update? I mentioned in my intro the treaty between the US and Russia. You said it's the START Treaty. It expired in February. Can you tell us what the status is of the efforts to replace it?

MARY CURTIN: So I had that same question, and our primary speaker-- who, as I said, was a senior arms-control negotiator throughout her career-- seemed to indicate that she is hearing that there are still conversations going on quietly. And it can be difficult to believe that these can go on even when there is so many difficult things going on in the world, but let's not forget that it was during the Reagan administration, when Cold War tensions seemed at their worst, that some of the most significant treaties were signed.

And so there are undoubtedly discussions going on between Russia and the United States about this. There has been reference to that by President Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner during some of their recent discussions in the Gulf, that conversations about some type of new negotiation based on the status quo might be looked at. So I think that there is always hope, and we have to continue to understand what's going on and to understand the importance of deep expertise in moving these things forward.

KELLY GORDON: Mary Curtin is a retired Foreign Service officer and former diplomat in residence at the University of Minnesota. Thanks so much for joining us today, Mary.

MARY CURTIN: Well, thank you so much for having me on.