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This Week – NATO Ministerial

NATO’s defence ministers meet in Brussels this week (Wednesday-Thursday), and will discuss a number of priorities for NATO. Longer term planning and the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) is likely to be eclipsed, in public at least, by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces’ last desperate attempts to resist the transfer of power and the role NATO has in the coming months, by the plans for withdrawal from Afghanistan and by the debates over NATO’s missile defense plans and proposals for cooperation with Russia.

This Week – Do we really need Russia to Tango?

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. 

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