“I wouldn't say it was dead. It's in emergency resuscitation” … “If there is hope, no, it's not coming from Washington. The leadership of this is not going to come from Washington.”
Paul Ingram, executive director of BASIC, was quoted in the Guardian. To read more see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/barack-obama-nuclear-hopes-f…
Des Browne argued that “while there is no case for NATO giving up all its nuclear forces unilaterally, there is also no real case for continuing with the status quo….. The question for NATO as it revises its Strategic Concept ahead of Lisbon is what can it do to add to the disarmament momentum without either undermining alliance cohesion or taking unnecessary risks with alliance security?
Ever since the Harmel report, NATO has been committed to a broad approach to security, including arms control, disarmament and other co-operative security tools as necessary complement to military capabilities. The declaration on Alliance security adopted by the 2009 Strasbourg summit reflects this twofold approach by restating that deterrence, including through nuclear capabilities, will remain a core element of NATO strategy, while at the same time NATO will continue to play its part in reinforcing arms control and promoting nuclear and conventional disarmament and non-proliferation.
At the UK-France summit in London earlier today, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy issued a declaration and signed a formal Defence Treaty that signalled a new era of defence cooperation. Letters of intent were exchanged and a Road Map agreed for deeper cooperation in the future. Three years in the making, the arrangement focuses on joint capabilities and procurement, but also to a limited extent, operations. There are two areas of specific note in the nuclear field:
“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-…“>
The Washington summit on nuclear security delivered some positive outcomes. But it is imperative that states do not now become complacent; there is much still left to do to ensure that nuclear weapons and material do not fall into the wrong hands. The ultimate gauge of the summit’s success will be whether actions now follow words. Published originally in the RUSI Journal, June/July 2010, Vol. 155, No. 3.
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