The very quiet failure of this year’s Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee to agree any final document and the daunting challenge of the treaty Review Conference next year mean frustration is growing about the pace of progress by the nuclear-weapons states to disarm—so slow it feels like we are going backward.
UK Nuclear Weapons Policy and Diplomacy
The Scottish referendum: a chance to challenge our nuclear assumptions?
With just under six months to go until the referendum on Scottish independence, there is still little clarity about how any independence agreement would shape up in practice. A myriad of issues remains on the table, ranging from the everyday – Will there be border control? How will the postal system function? Which television stations will be available? – right up to the most complex strategic questions over currency and economic independence, membership of international organisations, and the future of the UK and Scotland’s defense policies.
A progressive nuclear weapons policy for the next Labour government
The UK has now embarked on an expensive, long and controversial programme to replace Trident, beginning with a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines to carry the US-designed and built Trident missiles into the 2060s.
Britain’s political parties and their nuclear postures
In 2016, for only the second time in Britain’s history as a nuclear power, Parliament is expected to vote to decide the future of the United Kingdom’s strategic nuclear deterrent. Britain’s nuclear policy is heavily influenced by the ideological positions of Britain’s three dominant political parties. Each of the parties has a spread of opinion within them.
Scottish referendum: update & implications on Trident
This morning, the Scottish government published the long-awaited White Paper on Scottish Independence as promised. Scotland’s Future – Your Guide, it is hoped, will act as a comprehensive manual for an independent Scotland. But apart from formally setting out the manifesto points which have already been widely discussed, there are no new surprises concerning the future of Trident concealed within its 670 pages.
Cost and benefits to US strategic interests from UK renewal of Trident
BASIC’s last Strategic Dialogue on nuclear weapons was held on November 12 in Washington, DC.
Liberal Democrat Conference 2013
Policy Motion: Defending the Future – UK Defense in the 21st Century – When the Liberal Democrats were out of government, their party conferences were lively affairs with policies being debated passionately, with a little less concern than the two other main parties over issues of achievability and credibility of such policies. Ideology was less tempered by practicality. Poetry, not prose.
Trident: the vanguard of the UK’s defence policy?
The Voice of Russia's Scott Craig interviewed Paul Ingram and a panel of experts on the subject of Trident and the UK's defence policy. Paul Ingram stressed that nuclear policies in Europe are based on fear and a legacy that we are struggling to overcome. We need to look forward towards the 21st century and out of Cold War mentality where war can no longer be contemplated and nuclear weapons can be abolished.