Margaret Thatcher died Monday, and on Wednesday Parliament is recalled for members to pay their respects. The funeral will be next Wednesday, 17th April, and will be a spectacle watched by millions. Thatcher left a lasting legacy that sent ripples way beyond the shores of Britain, not least in her approach to the Cold War at the time.
Transatlantic Security
Ten ways Obama’s second term will shape Britain
Alex Stevensen from Politics.co.uk interviewed Paul Ingram in this article about the most important challenges facing newly inaugurated Barack Obama in his second term. On the issue of Middle East diplomacy, Stevensen writes that both London and Washington want to see engagement with Tehran, but Paul Ingram belives that Obama is 'boxed in' with anti-Iranian sentiment on the Hill.
Read the full article on Politics.co.uk:
U.S. defense decisions amid fiscal constraints
The U.S. Senate passed its long-awaited defense bill on December 4th, authorizing a billion budget for defense spending in FY 2013. During the coming week, the “conference committee” will be tasked with reconciling this bill with the House version. This process is taking place against the backdrop of intense debates over the looming “fiscal cliff”: the across-the-board cuts which threaten to come into effect if a deal on public spending is not agreed by January 1.
Hans Kristensen and Linton Brooks at third BASIC Strategic Dialogue
Amb. Linton Brooks from the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Hans Kristensen from the Federation of American Scientists engaged in a discussion on “Nuclear modernization”: What does it mean and what is required for U.S. security? at the third BASIC strategic dialogue held at the Capitol Hill Club on November 13, 2012.
Nuclear weapons beyond the election
The U.S. election season now draws to a close, and as expected, not too much was made of nuclear weapons during the presidential race. The economy, and near the end of the campaign season the mega-storm in the northeast, overshadowed almost all other issues.
Making sense of the nuclear posture
BASIC will hold the second of its bipartisan “strategic dialogues” on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, this time on “Making sense of the nuclear posture”. This week’s event is timely because President Barack Obama has recently concluded his oversight of the nuclear guidance, two years after his Administration's formal nuclear posture review.
Obama and Romney on U.S. Foreign Policy
Today, Barack Obama will speak about foreign policy at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention, followed by Mitt Romney who will speak at the same convention tomorrow. Romney, who has been criticized in the press for his lack of foreign policy and national security experience, is then scheduled to travel abroad, in an attempt to strengthen his reputation on foreign issues. He will go to London to speak at the start of the Olympics—an opportunity to build on the transatlantic relationship—and then to Israel and Palestine to speak with representatives of both nations.
Anglo-American (In)Dependence
Americans celebrate their Independence Day on Wednesday. It has been 236 years since they broke away from Great Britain, but the pair remain two of the closest allies in the world. But just how special is the so-called ‘special relationship’, and how much does this depend upon the cooperation between their nuclear weapons communities?