This primer explores how Nuclear Weapon States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States have invoked the concept of “responsibility” in the context of the NPT, analysing its evolving use to address security challenges, foster shared norms, and promote collaborative efforts for nuclear risk reduction amidst rising threats and strained global relations.
In March 2024, in partnership with Rethinking Security, BASIC hosted a track 1.5 workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania to discuss the present and future of European security.
This report details how emerging technologies will drastically change the world in which nuclear weapons exist, but not the weapons themselves.
This report presents findings and policy recommendations from four EVN focus groups on interconnected existential threats and explores legislative strategies for collective mitigation.
The EVN Anthology ‘Strengthening the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons Agenda within the NPT’ presents a range of policy recommendations and valuable insights in the context of strengthening the HINW agenda within the NPT.
This report shows that different states have different approaches to climate change and security. It suggests that some states still consider climate change effects on security of less importance than traditional considerations, or perhaps that some states believe that adapting their war fighting ability to the effects of climate change is detracting from its primary responsibility of protecting and defending the state.
Read the Emerging Voices Network’s (EVN) latest report, in which five EVN Working Groups provide a range of policy recommendations and valuable insights into the current challenges and issues that concern emerging researchers and young professionals in the nuclear policy field.
Nine early career leaders from across the globe steered an early-career / youth consultation on the NPT review processes over the past four months. The aim of this project was to explore the regional barriers to, as well as opportunities for engagement of early career professionals with the NPT.
In 2022, BASIC, the University of Bristol, Imperial College London, The Open University and Rolls-Royce jointly convened a multistakeholder roundtable. After the policy case explored in the first roundtable in 2021, the purpose of the 2022 roundtable was to identify whether there were technologies that might conceivably meet the policy case.
‘Crisis Communications: Indian and Pakistani Perspectives on Responsible Practices’ is a compendium of essays written by Indian and Pakistani nuclear policy experts and journalists that explore how the two countries can communicate in ways that help prevent crisis escalation at different levels of interaction. Edited by Rabia Akhtar, Chiara Cervasio, Ruhee Neog, Alice Spilman, and Nicholas J. Wheeler.
Between May 2022 and January 2023, BASIC and Emergent Change facilitated three roundtables on the Stepping Stones Approach. Read the report here.
In March 2023, BASIC and the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security (ICCS) at the University of Birmingham organised ‘Nuclear Responsibilities and Nuclear Crises in Southern Asia: Preventing Escalation through a Responsibility-Based Regime in the Asia-Pacific’. Read the report here.
In November 2022, BASIC and ICCS organised ‘Nuclear Responsibilities at Sea: Exploring Policy Proposals for Maritime Risk Reduction in the Asia Pacific’. Read the report and the policy proposals that emerged from the dialogue.
Over the past 18 months, BASIC has undertaken in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Phase 2 Applying as Systematic Approach to NATO-Russia Risk Reduction that aimed at advancing the understanding of workable options for risk reduction and fostering new relationships between NATO and Russia.
In September 2022, BASIC held a track 1.5 workshop in Sofia to discuss risk and threat assessments in South-eastern and Northern Europe. The workshop is part of the two-year project ‘Phase 2: Applying a Systematic Approach to NATO-Russia Risk Reduction’ that BASIC is undertaking in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This report argues that climate change will exacerbate the challenges Canada faces in the recapitalisation of the Victoria-class submarine fleet.
In this report, Dr Gry Thomasen argues that avoiding or mitigating conflict over resources and the sea routes in the Arctic is crucial for a peaceful Arctic in the future.
In this report, Dr Chiara Cervasio and Eva-Nour Repussard address existing and emerging threats to human security in the Arctic and investigate the utility of different risk reduction measures in mitigating such risks.
This report is the second in a series of four reports that address the current threat assessments and perceptions of nuclear and conventional escalation risks in Eastern Europe and Russia.
In June 2022, BASIC held a roundtable with Russian experts to discuss risk reduction and crisis de-escalation in general terms. In this roundtable report, Dr Gry Thomasen outlines these findings and presents a set of policy recommendations.
This report encapsulates the salient themes of discussion of the dialogue on Nuclear Responsibilities held in Dubai in March 2022.
The Stepping Stones Approach to Nuclear Disarmament Diplomacy Report provides a brief explanation of the core features of the Stepping Stones Approach, written by Paul Ingram, one of the Approach’s designers.
Paul Ingram’s new report provides his in depth account of the background to the philosophy underlying the Stepping Stones Approach — and responds to some common questions and criticisms around the SSA.
The Emerging Voices Network presents the policy recommendations from its first policy working cycle.
Publication of the Nuclear Responsibilities Toolkit (2021), a conceptual and practical guide to policy communities who would like to experiment with the Nuclear Responsibilities Approach.
The Gender, Think-Tanks and International Affairs Toolkit has been jointly developed and published by BASIC,…
We seek in this report to suggest ways, and crucially propose a new method, to gradually shift the nature of the contemporary global conversation on nuclear weapons away from one characterised by rights, blame, and suspicion towards one framed by responsibility, empathic cooperation, and even trust.
During the Cold War, hundreds of Navajos developed cancer and respiratory illness as a result…
In the last Pandemic Chronicle, we explored whether we are at war with COVID-19. This…
Using the language of war allows governments to use extraordinary measures to deal with the…
On 22nd November 2019, BASIC organised a half-day scoping workshop in New Delhi at the…
We are delighted to share this new short chapter, ‘Prospects for Game-Changers in Detection Technology’,…
This report arises from a roundtable on ‘European strategies for strategic risk reduction’ on 1…
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on Thursday 5 March 2020,…
Read our publications from 2019. Our reports cover developments in the Stepping Stones Approach to Nuclear Disarmament, strategic risk reduction, and the Nuclear Responsibilities framing.
In March 2019, BASIC and ICCS staff held a closed-door roundtable at the Geneva Centre…
This parliamentary briefing was issued in advance of the Debate on the report from the International Relations Committee ‘Rising nuclear risk, disarmament and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Tuesday, 16th of July 2019. This is an opportunity to consider the ways in which the UK can reduce nuclear risks globally, and engage in meaningful multilateral disarmament processes ahead of the 2020 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.
This report arises from a roundtable on ‘Developing European Perspectives on Nuclear Risks’ on 7 May 2019, hosted at the Polish Mission to the UN in New York and under the sponsorship of the Dutch Foreign Ministry during the 2019 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee.
The security environment in Europe has deteriorated in recent years, and nuclear risks have re-emerged as a prime concern for European governments.
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.
This report arises from a one-day roundtable on ‘nuclear responsibilities’ on the 6th March 2019, hosted by the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur.
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.
This history offers a chronological account of the WE 177 from 1959 through to the decision to provide a third variant of the design for the RAF in the 1970s, and then onto the late 1970s.
Read our publications from 2018. Our reports from this period include analysis of the implications of the Trump Administration on US nuclear policy, the costs associated with UK Trident submarines, and the Responsibilities programme’s first roundtables.
The Programme on Nuclear Responsibilities brings together Nuclear Weapon States and Non-Nuclear Weapon States to foster understanding and dialogue on the responsibilities of states and state leaders around nuclear weapons. Launched in 2016, the Programme is now moving into an exciting second phase – find out more here.
This report draws upon a mixture of publicly available data and estimates in order to outline both the current operating costs of the Trident nuclear weapon system, as well as the estimated costs of the current plans to renew the UK’s nuclear arsenal.
Despite strong rhetorical support on part of the government for Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD), a real risk exists that CASD could be interrupted in the early 2030s.
2017 was a tough year for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Read our latest Annual Report to find out how we worked towards creating a world free of the risk of nuclear weapons over now the course of 2017.
BASIC’s new report illustrates in clear detail the cost risk of Trident renewal to the UK’s Defence budget; Dreadnought’s through life costs are likely to be between £110-114bn.
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.
The wider international milieu should consider the risks posed by the Indo-Pak confrontation because they have both violated the ‘first law’ of nuclear politics: nuclear-armed states do not fight wars with each other.
By reforming its nuclear declaratory policy, the UK has an opportunity to demonstrate leadership by example on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation without negatively impacting its established nuclear deterrent posture.
‘Arctic Diplomacy at a Crossroads: Addressing Present and Future Geopolitical and Strategic Risk’ was written…
Flávia Salazar Sousa discusses the ruling from the ICJ in the case Ukraine v. Russian Federation on allegations of genocide under the Genocide Convention of 1948.
In this blog piece, Professor Andrew Futter and Dr Olamide Samuel discuss the lack of focus on civilian nuclear energy and the Global South in analyses of the Ban Treaty.
Dr Simone Papale and Dr Chiara Cervasio discuss how Western remote interventionism to counter Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine validates the stability-instability paradox.
The world appears to be looking to the United States to solve the current crisis…
In her latest piece for BASIC, Emily Enright discusses the relevance of the Stepping Stones Approach to Asia-Pacific states in their disarmament work.
BASIC believes in making progress on nuclear disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation through multiple complementary approaches. We continuously develop our programmes – streams of research – through sustained engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, collectively searching for the art of the possible.
Our current programmes are listed below. Browse our current programmes page by clicking here.
BASIC believes in making progress on nuclear disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation through multiple complementary approaches. We continuously develop our programmes – streams of research – through sustained engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, collectively searching for the art of the possible.
Our archive programmes are listed below. Browse our archive programmes page by clicking here.
