Fissile material cut off treaty (FMCT)

Obama’s Brandenburg Speech, 19 June 2013

BASIC staff and consultants are available for comment on President Obama’s speech today at the Brandenburg Gate, 2pm London time, in which he is expected to lay out his agenda on strategic nuclear deterrence, disarmament and arms control for the rest of his Presidency.

Brandenburg Gate

What comes next for U.S. nuclear weapons policy?

This Wednesday, President Obama is slated to give his next big foreign policy speech at the historically significant Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. It was at this Gate – an enduring symbol of both the division and subsequent unity of East and West Berlin – that Ronald Reagan urged then-General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to “tear down this wall” in 1987, and President Clinton spoke of a free and unified Berlin in 1994, following the end of the Cold War.

Getting to Zero: Further Reading

Earlier Detailed Proposals for Nuclear Disarmament

  • Report of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms, (“Blix Report”), June 2006
  • Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Hiroshima Peace Institute and the Japanese Government, Report of the Tokyo Forum on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 1999
  • Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences,