Parliament has today voted in favour of the government’s plans to replace the four Vanguard class submarines with Successor submarines, based upon continuous submarine patrolling. This vote may have provided the country’s new Prime Minister Theresa May a quick and immediate opportunity to demonstrate business as usual, a new government keen to get things done post Brexit.
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The UK and its Role in the World
The fifth of BASIC’s 2016 Parliamentary Briefing series relating to the Trident debate focuses on the UK’s role in multilateral nuclear disarmament.
New Strategies for UK Leadership on Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
The fourth of BASIC’s 2016 Parliamentary Briefing series relating to the Trident debate focuses on the UK’s role in multilateral nuclear disarmament.
CASD: Options for Trident Patrolling
The third of BASIC's 2016 Parliamentary Briefing series relating to the Trident debate focuses on the issue of continuous-at-sea-deterrence (CASD).
David Cameron announced at the NATO summit in Warsaw on Saturday, “a parliamentary vote [to be held] on July 18 to confirm MP's support for the renewal of four nuclear submarines capable of providing around the clock cover”. Theresa May is expected to follow through with this decision.
Brexit: Impact on Trident
The potential fall-out from the UK vote to leave the EU cannot be over-estimated. The political, economic and constitutional implications are deeply uncertain. The market turmoil and the plunge in the value of the pound will translate into massive financial pressures on government spending. The pressures for constitutional referenda in Scotland and Northern Ireland have just strengthened dramatically.
The role of the nuclear test ban as a non-proliferation and arms control instrument
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was agreed in 1996 after more than 2000 nuclear tests had left a lasting, poisonous legacy. The treaty’s negotiations had already contributed to the indefinite extension of the NPT the year before (having contributed to the failures of the 1980 and 1990 NPT Review Conferences). Confidence in arms control and disarmament was high, and nuclear arsenals were falling dramatically. Strategic relations were good. But things look very different today, with high levels of distrust and low confidence in achieving further disarmament progress.
Brendan’s Call to Challenge Hate
We need to look again at identity politics. Horror, despair, rage, confusion: they and other emotions are all understandable reactions to Jo’s killing last week.
Moving the OEWG forward
Global multilateral nuclear disarmament has proven over the last 70 years to be a process characterised by stagnation, originating from a series of competing international interests.