East Asia

“All Roads Lead Through China”: The Clinton Administration, Climate Diplomacy, and China’s Environmental Awakening

Washington, D.C., September 17, 2026 - As U.S. officials prepared for the landmark 1997 Conference of Parties (COP) climate negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, they increasingly recognized a simple reality: no meaningful solution to climate change or environmental stewardship would be possible without China, according to declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive.

80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings: Revisiting the Record

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2025 - Newly published documents and photographs concerning the radiation and blast effects of the August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide graphic details on how U.S. and British officials first assessed the deadly impact of the atomic weapons. These and other records published today are among the data and evidence that helped undermine the public claim made at the time by Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie Groves that radiation sickness was “a pleasant way to die.”

The Movement and the “Madman”

Washington, D.C., March 24, 2023 - On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, PBS’s “American Experience” program premieres “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” a documentary that tells the story of how the intensity of the U.S. anti-Vietnam War movement forced President Richard Nixon to abandon plans to escalate the conflict in the fall of 1969 and instead implement his “madman” theory, approving a secret alert of U.S. nuclear forces around the world to project the idea that he was “crazy” and force adversaries to back down.

77th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings: Revisiting the Record

Washington, D.C., August 8, 2022 – After years of research and planning, U.S. officials and scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project were startlingly unprepared for the emergence of evidence of the long-term effects of radiation generated by the atomic bomb – even after the Trinity test in July 1945 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77 years ago this week, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. 

New Evidence on Clinton Administration Negotiations with North Korea

Washington, D.C., June 18, 2020 – American and South Korean assessments of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il shifted during the course of negotiations in the 1990s over the North’s controversial nuclear program, according to recently declassified documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive at The George Washington University.

China's First Nuclear Test 1964 -- 50th Anniversary

Washington, D.C., October 16, 2014 – Fifty years ago today, on 16 October 1964, the People's Republic of China (PRC) joined the nuclear club when it tested a nuclear device at its Lop Nur test site in Inner Mongolia. For several years, U.S. intelligence had been monitoring Chinese developments, often with anxiety, hampered by the lack of adequate sources. Early on, opinions within the U.S.

Nuclear War Planning and the Challenge of Civilian Oversight

Washington D.C., January 22, 2020 - On 24 February 1972 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s inbox included a Joint Chiefs of Staff message concerning the ongoing efforts by military planners to develop a “Communist Chinese Nuclear Package” for the Single Integrated Operational Plan, the Pentagon’s nuclear war plan. Laird’s office was mistakenly included in the message’s routing.