Watch: Owen Harries Lecture US–Russia–China: The nuclear triumvirate of the 21st century

Owen Harries Lecture 2025: US–Russia–China — The Nuclear Triumvirate of the 21st Century

For the first time in history, the United States faces not one but two nuclear peers. The implications are profound — and largely uncharted.

In this year's Owen Harries Lecture, Rose Gottemoeller — the Lowy Institute's 2025 Distinguished Fellow for International Security — examines a new and unprecedented era of nuclear competition. With China rapidly expanding and modernising its arsenal, and Russia deploying nuclear sabre-rattling as a tool of war in Ukraine, Gottemoeller explores what a world of three nuclear peers means for strategic stability, deterrence, and the future of arms control.

Drawing on her extraordinary career at the highest levels of NATO and US diplomacy — including as chief negotiator of the New START treaty with Russia — Gottemoeller brings rare authority and insight to one of the most consequential security challenges of our time.

The Owen Harries Lecture has been held annually since 2013, honouring the lasting contribution of Owen Harries to foreign policy debate in Australia and the United States. Harries was a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute.

About the speaker

Rose Gottemoeller is the Lowy Institute's 2025 Distinguished Fellow for International Security and William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She served as Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the US State Department. In 2009–10, she was the chief US negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.