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Prime Minister confirms Trident decision delayed “until around 2016”

Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed before Parliament today that based upon a completed “value for money review” of the United Kingdom's deterrent, “the decision to start construction of the new submarines need not now be taken until around 2016.”

The Prime Minister also highlighted other changes in the nuclear posture:

Leading Experts on NATO’s Nuclear Policy and Turkish Security [JTW Interview]

“The threat perceptions of Turkey and the other NATO alliances are overlapped to some extent but not completely……. That's where the real debate inside NATO comes from; it's from differing threat perceptions.”

Dr Ian Kearns, BASIC's Research Director was interviewed after the roundtable along with other particpants.

Read more: “http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/108218/-jtw-interview-leading-experts-…“>

“NATO’s Deterrence Posture & Turkish Security” Seminar Held at USAK

This roundtable meeting, jointly organized by the Arms Control Association, the British American Security Information Council, the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg, International Strategic Research Organization, aimed to evaluate the role that deterrence and nuclear weapons play in Turkey's security policy and NATO's defense posture.

Read more:

Arabs seek to challenge Israel’s nuclear program at energy summit

“The Israelis and the Americans point to the fact that the Iranians have made a very public commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty – not to acquire nuclear weapons – whereas Israel is legally able to develop its arsenal.”….. “But the legal defense and the defense that Israel developed its weapons a while ago is hardly a defense in terms of justice”

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes to send New START to the full Senate

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed by a 14-4 vote to send the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to the full Senate for advice and consent to ratification.

The treaty requires support from two-thirds of the full Senate. It is uncertain whether this process will be completed by the end of the year. If the treaty is approved by both Russia and the United States, it will limit their arsenals to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads on each side.

For more information on the New START agreement and the U.S. Senate, see:

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Latest on the Trident replacement delay

Suggestions surfaced publicly today that the UK Ministry of Defence is considering a delay to the main gate for Trident replacement – the point at which a decision is taken to start actual construction of the submarines – until 2015/16, after the next election.

BASIC understands that these discussions have been ongoing throughout August, and that the decision has been made on the basis of accountability and the political context.

The thinking goes something like this.