The Stepping Stones Approach seeks to engage all members of the international community in a cooperative and inclusive process that nudges the nuclear possessor states away from arms racing dynamics and in a more positive direction, with the intention of reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in postures, achieving incremental disarmament and progressively building up the capacity for further steps.
Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament
Report: Reporting on Nuclear Disarmament – Success and Failure in 25 Years of Disarmament Diplomacy
Nuclear disarmament has fallen off the public agenda. Media attention is sporadic and reactive, focusing on short-term trends like summits with North Korea or sanctions on Iran. But the longer-term process of global disarmament rarely features in the news cycle and where there is reference it is treated with disdain as unrealistic. This has serious costs to public engagement and democratic accountability.
Pragmatic Leadership to achieve progress on disarmament: Finding Stepping Stones in the Step-by-Step approach
This is a roundtable report for the roundtable ‘Pragmatic Leadership to achieve progress on disarmament: Finding Stepping Stones in the Step-by-Step approach’, organised by BASIC in London on 22 November 2018.
NATO Leadership at the NPT: Finding Stepping Stones in the Step-by-Step Approach
The roundtable assessed the general health of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the state of nuclear disarmament and arms control, and what leadership means in creating a cooperative approach at the 2020 NPT Review Conference.
Prospecting for a Fissile Material (Cut-off) Treaty: Opportunities to Re-engage
Looking at the topography of the current global nuclear ‘order’, the casual observer might be…
Europe must defend the INF Treaty and restraint in international diplomacy
On 20th October, President Trump announced his intention to “terminate” the INF Treaty, indicating that the United States would abrogate the deal. His move comes as a blow to international arms control, and especially to US allies in Europe, showing a careless disregard for diplomacy.
Report: Negative Security Assurances: The Test of Commitment to Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament?
Nuclear armed states already offer some limited and conditional guarantees (NSAs) that they will not threaten nuclear attack on other states that do not have nuclear weapons. This report looks at the opportunities there are in building upon these guarantees.
NATO Needs a Declaratory Policy
NATO has never had a declaratory policy. Instead it has explicitly preferred thus far to rely on the three distinct declaratory policies of its nuclear member-states, despite their contrasting conditions-for-use.