This Tuesday will mark the 20th anniversary of President George H.W. Bush’s announcement of the U.S. Presidential Nuclear Initiative (PNI). The U.S. PNI was a unilateral measure taken to reduce nuclear deployments with a focus on tactical nuclear weapons, in expectation of reciprocity from the Soviet Union.
Content Type
Workshop on WMD-free zone in Middle East
Plans are afoot for a major conference next year on a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East. BASIC held a small workshop in Malta for officials and experts in the region on the key issues involved, and here we publish the facilitator’s key issues from the meeting.
Testing Times for the Test Ban
This Friday, at the United Nations, foreign ministers from 100 countries will adopt a declaration promoting concrete actions to ensure the entry into force of the global treaty banning nuclear tests.
IAEA and Iran
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will hold its fall Board meeting this week, and as usual Iran’s nuclear program will be on the agenda. Though some news reports have played up the Agency’s latest assessment as final proof that Iran is on the fast track to a nuclear weapon, others have pointed out that the IAEA’s indicators reveal a program that is moving more slowly
Revising NATO’s Nuclear Posture: The Way Forward
Dr Oliver Meier argues that NATO’s Strategic Concept did not live up to the expectations put forward earlier under U.S. President Barack Obama’s Prague Agenda. Meier proposes four steps that the Alliance should take through the ongoing Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) in order to improve its nuclear stance.
“Concern Grows Over Prospects for Middle East Disarmament Meeting”
BASIC's Program Director Anne Penketh is interviewed by Elizabeth Whitman in this article covering the slow pace of progress toward holding a conference on a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East in 2012.
A South Asian Nuclear Reconciliation?
South Asia is often cited as the most intractable bilateral nuclear dispute on the planet. Even setting aside the divisive issue of Kashmir, the dispute between India and Pakistan has the added complexity that it involves at root the very identity of the two states.
Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe
An event at the Brookings Institution tomorrow will highlight the future of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.
Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at Brookings, will discuss his recent paper “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control”, which sets out recommendations to achieve the eventual removal of the estimated 180 B61 gravity bombs in five European countries. He will be joined on the panel by experts Hans Kristensen, from the Federation of American Scientists, and Frank Miller of the Scowcroft Group.