“I wouldn't say it was dead. It's in emergency resuscitation” … “If there is hope, no, it's not coming from Washington. The leadership of this is not going to come from Washington.”
Paul Ingram, executive director of BASIC, was quoted in the Guardian. To read more see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/barack-obama-nuclear-hopes-f…
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.
The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), Bertelsmann Stiftung, International Security Information Service (ISIS), Europe and NATO Watch are organizing the NATO Shadow Summitt II in Brussels on 15-16 November 2010.
The Shadow NATO Summit II
Civil Society Perspectives on the Lisbon Summit and NATO’s New Strategic Concept
U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have issued a joint statement calling for “a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons” with a view to reducing the salience of nuclear weapons globally. In the statement, issued at the end of President Obama's visit to India, both leaders firmly stated their belief in a world free from nuclear weapons as well as expressing concerns over illegal smuggling and trafficking of nuclear material.
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?
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.
Ever since the Harmel report, NATO has been committed to a broad approach to security, including arms control, disarmament and other co-operative security tools as necessary complement to military capabilities. The declaration on Alliance security adopted by the 2009 Strasbourg summit reflects this twofold approach by restating that deterrence, including through nuclear capabilities, will remain a core element of NATO strategy, while at the same time NATO will continue to play its part in reinforcing arms control and promoting nuclear and conventional disarmament and non-proliferation.
The BASIC-TLG roundtable, which took place in the House of Lords on October 12, 2010, discussed current UK policy and Its implications, and alternative ways forward for the UK.
Chatham House Rules were applied to this meeting and notes are not attributed to particular individuals.