U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Moscow this week to meet with Russian officials and missile defense will be high on the agenda. NATO leaders agreed at the November summit to work together on missile defense against a possible future threat from the Middle East. NATO also agreed to consider cooperation with Russia.
Publication
Trident Commission
Since 2011 BASIC has been running an independent, cross-party commission to examine the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons policy and the issue of Trident renewal. Its final report and background papers were published on 1 July 2014.
Getting to Zero Update
BASIC has been engaged with two major developments in nuclear weapons policy: U.S. ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and the results of NATO’s summit in Lisbon, including the release of its new Strategic Concept. See below for BASIC’s press releases and for more information on these topics, please scroll down to the sections on Commitments to Arms Control and Disarmament, and Missile Defense.
North Korea nuclear tensions rise
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are again running high. BASIC Intern Taek Jin Han summarizes the most relevant developments on North Korea’s nuclear program and the broader security situation – with a more detailed account than what is available in BASIC’s Getting to Zero Updates.
To read the North Korea backgrounder click here.
Getting to Zero Update
The Obama Administration was hoping for the U.S. Senate to ratify the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) now that the U.S. mid-term elections are over.
The Shadow NATO Summit II: Civil Society Perspectives on the Lisbon Summit and NATO’s New Strategic Concept
In this second Shadow Summit, NATO officials, civil society and policy experts again gathered to examine the organization’s future and explore how civil society groups and parliamentarians could advance NATO-related policies and actions.
Click on the hyperlinks below to view the agenda and presentation documents from this event that was organized by NATO Watch, BASIC, Bertelsmann Stiftung, and ISIS-Europe, with support from the Marmot Charitable Trust.
Current NATO Nuclear Policy
Des Browne argued that “while there is no case for NATO giving up all its nuclear forces unilaterally, there is also no real case for continuing with the status quo….. The question for NATO as it revises its Strategic Concept ahead of Lisbon is what can it do to add to the disarmament momentum without either undermining alliance cohesion or taking unnecessary risks with alliance security?
Polish and Central European Priorities on NATO’s Future Nuclear Policy
In the present debate over the future of NATO’s nuclear policy, and especially the stationing of the U.S. sub-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe, the countries of Central Europe (understood here as the Baltic Three – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – plus Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) are usually presented as the staunch supporters of the nuclear status quo, in favour of the permanent deployment of the U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe out of the fear of Russia.