BASIC News

BASIC News: May – June 2012

NATO leaders met at their summit in Chicago on May 20-21 to agree on, amongst other things, the text arising from the Deterrence and Defence Posture Review that had been 18 months in process. BASIC has been organizing roundtables around Europe, Moscow and Washington alongside the Arms Control Association, IFSH (Hamburg), and local partners to discuss nuclear-related issues with officials and others to influence the discussion. The DDPR does not close this debate, but rather opens it up over the next few years.

BASIC News: March – April 2012

BASIC made headlines this spring at a two-day conference in Doha on Nuclear Non-Proliferation in the Gulf and from the second BASIC Trident Commission report on the defense-industrial issues of the UK Trident nuclear weapons system.

MAY – JUNE 2011

Nuclear diplomacy in London and Paris

Whilst the momentum in intergovernmental negotiations on nuclear disarmament has not been maintained into 2011, the pace of non-governmental activity continues, with a flurry of meetings over the summer. The BASIC Trident Commission met with George Shultz and others from NTI prior to the top level NTI-ELN-Hoover seminar on deterrence in Lancaster House the following day (May 20). Discussion ranged around the tensions of showing movement on disarmament whilst maintaining for now a robust nuclear deterrent.

APRIL 2011

BASIC held the fourth of its roundtables this last 12 months, on NATO’s nuclear policy, under the grant from the Hewlett Foundation on April 28th. This time it was in non-NATO Helsinki, in collaboration with the Peace Union of Finland and the Foreign Ministry. Gathering participants from Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Netherlands and Britain, we discussed the deterrence review, relations with Russia and the prospects for NATO contributing more actively to the agenda of global nuclear disarmament.