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.
Analysis
Political developments around nuclear weapons and the “butterfly effect”
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.
Maintaining focus in negotiations for a START successor
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.
GTZ workshop in NYC
Sitting down before the start of the afternoon workshop on Getting to Zero yesterday I have to admit to being a little intimidated. I was to open before Michael Krepon, someone highly involved in the issue for many years and whose work I had read a great deal of.
India-US Nuclear Cooperation Deal: It’s baaaaack…
The supposedly dead US-India Nuclear Cooperation Deal resurrected itself during the first week of July.
McCain supports GTZ: Nuclear disarmament now mainstream
Republican presidential candidate John McCain earlier today gave a landmark speech on the responsibility to engage more seriously in disarmament. Given the two Democrat frontrunners have already explicitly leant their weight to the vision, this is the clearest indication yet that nuclear disarmament has now achieved the mainstream – and it is now out of touch to oppose it.
Toward true security
Some eight years into the 21st century, the threats to international security posed by the numbers, deployments and spread of nuclear weapons remain all too ominous. Disconcertingly, the possibility of a surprise attack – perhaps a tragic miscalculation or a criminal action – is an ongoing reality some six decades into the nuclear age.
A world free of nuclear weapons
The United States should take the lead in forging a new global consensus on nuclear disarmament, married to an action plan of urgent interim steps to control and reduce nuclear weapons, according to two Cold War veterans Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr, former General Counsel and acting director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Ambassador Robert L Barry, former ambassador to the Stockholm Conference on Disarmament in Europe and member of the board of the British American Security and Information C