BASIC staff and consultants are available for comment on President Obama’s speech today at the Brandenburg Gate, 2pm London time, in which he is expected to lay out his agenda on strategic nuclear deterrence, disarmament and arms control for the rest of his Presidency.
Analysis
What comes next for U.S. nuclear weapons policy?
This Wednesday, President Obama is slated to give his next big foreign policy speech at the historically significant Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. It was at this Gate – an enduring symbol of both the division and subsequent unity of East and West Berlin – that Ronald Reagan urged then-General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to “tear down this wall” in 1987, and President Clinton spoke of a free and unified Berlin in 1994, following the end of the Cold War.
They’re not the P5, so stop calling it the P5 process!
“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”– Ludwig Wittgenstein
The language we use affects the world as we interpret it. While many are all-too familiar with the “sticks and stones” of the nuclear world, less attention has been paid to the terminology around disarmament and nonproliferation.
Ward Wilson: The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan…Stalin Did
Ward Wilson was featured on the the front page of Foreign Policy with a popular article de-bunking the myth that the Second World War was won by nuclear weapons.
PAIS/BASIC Nuclear Weapons Conference: The Future of Nuclear Weapons – Between Disarmament and Proliferation
BASIC & the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) held a one-day conference on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. The conference brought together key thinkers from academia, policy-making, and non-governmental organsations to discuss the future of British nuclear weapons policy, and the prospects for non-proliferation and disarmament in the Middle East.
Iran’s presidential election: new possibilities for nuclear negotiations?
There is a certain fatalism surrounding Iran’s presidential election this Friday, June 14th, with many people having lost interest because of the limited field of candidates (eight) being allowed to stand. This is coupled with soaring unemployment and inflation in the Islamic Republic, caused by mismanagement and encroaching economic sanctions from the Western countries over its nuclear program. Many of the country’s young people, who constitute a very large proportion of the electorate, are disheartened by the diplomatic damage to Iran’s international reputation, and the economic hardship that is impacting on their everyday lives.
IAEA Board of Governors meeting and Iran
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors will meet this week, starting today in Vienna, and Iran’s nuclear program will be on the agenda. The May 22ndIAEA report concluded that little has changed since previous assessments of the nuclear program – with Iran continuing to enrich nuclear fuel and Tehran and the Agency at loggerheads over what is necessary to show that all of Iran’s nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.
Russia and the US: realising nuclear disarmament and building trust
According to the most recent estimate by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the world's combined stockpile of nuclear warheads stands at more than 17,000. The US and Russia have over 93% of the world's nuclear weapons, with about 1,800 on high alert, ready to unleash their devastating explosive power against each other at short notice.