Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament

Obama at the UN

Obama\’s chairing of this historic UN Security Council session has increased the chances of success in moving towards the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, said Anne Penketh, Washington Program Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC).

Britain ready to put Trident on the table

PM announcement at G8 Summit

Gordon Brown announced today in Italy at the G8 Summit his willingness to put Britain\’s nuclear arsenal on the table in negotiations at Obama\’s nuclear summit next March. Paul Ingram, BASIC\’s Executive Director said: “This very concrete offer from the UK is clearly designed to create a spirit of multilateral cooperation between the nuclear weapon states in advance of the NPT Review Conference. It is to be strongly welcomed and we hope that other nuclear weapon states can respond accordingly.”

Political developments around nuclear weapons and the “butterfly effect”

During the past month or two, getting to zero has seemed to resemble the early phase of the butterfly effect of Chaos Theory. The thinking goes as follows: the movement of air caused by a butterfly flapping his wings could contribute to the formation of a hurricane, or other major weather event. Without that one extra factor of the flapping of the butterfly's wings, the event may not have occurred. Of course, the flapping of a butterfly's wings alone cannot cause a weather event.