BASIC’s This Week released on Monday July 29th focuses on the prevailing Cold War mentality that pervades strategic thinking in many of the nuclear armed states.
Blog
Time for Action in Iran
U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to change a great number of things in his first election campaign 2008, and among them was bringing peace to the Middle East. Long neglected during his first Presidential term, it seems that now, at last, Israeli-Palestinian relations may be rising to a higher level of political salience.
Why is NATO Stuck?
The recent publication of Nuclear Policy Paper No. 14, Countdown to Chaos?, marks the completion of a series of cooperative reports by BASIC, the Arms Control Association (ACA) and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) on NATO’s nuclear weapons and their future.
Give us genuine nuclear choices
Paul Ingram was featured in the Letters section of the Evening Standard as he called for political leaders in the UK to consider genuine steps down the nuclear ladder after the release of the government's Trident Alternatives Review on July 16th.
Read the article by clicking the PDF link below.
It’s crunch time on Trident for Miliband and his party
Nick Ritchie's op-ed in the Guardian highlights the political decisions that need to be made following the release of the government's Trident Alternatives Review. Ritchie refers to his recent co-authored report with Paul Ingram, 'Trident in UK Politics and Public Opinion'.
Read the op-ed on the Guardian's website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/17/crunch-trident-miliband-labour-statesmanship
Could the renewed focus on non-strategic nuclear weapons signal a new era in Euro-Atlantic security?
It is 22 years since the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives were announced soon after the fall of the Berlin wall. Presidents Bush and Gorbachev declared massive unilateral cuts to their holdings of short range tactical nuclear weapons, and their militaries set about the task of dismantling them.
The M51 missile failure: where does this leave French nuclear modernization?
The latest M51 ballistic missile test was a failure. The missile blew up minutes after emerging from the French submarine, Le Vigilant, in the Audierne Bay (off the coast of Brittany) on May 5. French leaders have always claimed that France has never participated directly in the Cold War arms race; but, the scale of its current modernization program of nuclear weapon systems, running for over fifteen years, is massive.
Friends, foes, & the unstable future: the impact of nukes on security relations in South Asia
The volatile security environment of South Asia has traditionally been dominated by on-going tensions and conflicts between Pakistan and India, who have held a tense and inimical relationship since their emergence as separate nations in 1947. The threat perception arising out of the historical tension and enduring rivalry between both countries has put them in a security dilemma in which the risk of nuclear conflict simply cannot be ruled out.