Letter of May 14, 2010 at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (signatories listed below):
As the United States and Russia negotiate reductions in their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons, the world is at an historic moment that provides unique opportunities to withdraw from deployment, reduce and eliminate the particularly destabilising class of short-range nuclear weapons variously described as non-strategic, sub-strategic, tactical or battlefield weapons.
BASIC is referenced in this IPS News article on the release of the new U.S. Nuclear Posture Review. The article surveys a range of reactions by security experts.
Read more:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50936
The stage is set for the signing in Prague of the first arms control treaty of the Obama era. It is the initial step on the road to the US President's declared goal of a world without nuclear weapons, which he vibrantly described in the Czech capital a year ago.
But now that the applause has died down after the US and Russia reached agreement on capping their deployed long-range nuclear weapons in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) follow-on pact, the treaty's limits have become apparent. T
The presidents of the United States and Russia have proclaimed that they will work for a world without nuclear weapons. Vice President Joe Biden reaffirmed that goal in a recent major policy speech. But the speech was more than that: Biden affirmed that a world without nuclear weapons would also be a compass by which the administration would steer current policy.
“The US military has a very established policy of bringing to the president all options they possibly can in a point of crisis.”
BASIC Executive Director Paul Ingram interviewed by RT News.
Read more:
http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-18/war-iran-weapons-mackinnon.html?fullstory
Keith Payne, a member of the US Strategic Posture Review Commission, has decried as folly the ongoing Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on negotiations between the United States and Russia.
During the past month or two, getting to zero has seemed to resemble the early phase of the butterfly effect of Chaos Theory. The thinking goes as follows: the movement of air caused by a butterfly flapping his wings could contribute to the formation of a hurricane, or other major weather event. Without that one extra factor of the flapping of the butterfly's wings, the event may not have occurred. Of course, the flapping of a butterfly's wings alone cannot cause a weather event.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's recent announcement that Russia will be upgrading its military forces in the face of Western encroachment (among other reasons) underscores the tenuousness of US-Russian relations. Despite enthusiasm shown by both sides for strengthening ties under President Obama, Washington and Moscow have very different, often conflicting, strategic interests.