The decision last week to cancel President Obama’s September meeting in Russia with President Putin sparked a wave of questions among policy watchers.
Non-proliferation treaty (NPT)
Egypt & the future of the Middle East WMDFZ
What happens when the regional leader in WMD Free Zone talks suddenly undergoes a volatile regime change?
For years, Egypt, driven by a desire to avoid the insecurity and perceived imbalances that would stem from nuclear weapons proliferation, has been a strong advocate for a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East.
Cold War Thinking and Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century
BASIC’s This Week released on Monday July 29th focuses on the prevailing Cold War mentality that pervades strategic thinking in many of the nuclear armed states.
Why is NATO Stuck?
The recent publication of Nuclear Policy Paper No. 14, Countdown to Chaos?, marks the completion of a series of cooperative reports by BASIC, the Arms Control Association (ACA) and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) on NATO’s nuclear weapons and their future.
Egypt & the Middle East – Stability through Fairness
While we are witnessing ever-more violent clashes on the streets of Cairo, and Egyptians now contemplate their next moves in the long and faltering steps towards democracy, few are now thinking much about the regional efforts to establish a process with the objective of creating a zone free of WMD.
Counting on Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Today is the 45th Anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and also this week, Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Presidential announcement to extend the moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. These are admirable anniversaries, but what have they achieved?
The NPT has become the bedrock of the nuclear arms control regime, but back in 1968 when it was first signed, states had no clue how long it would last; and written into the Treaty was a 25-year lifespan.
The M51 missile failure: where does this leave French nuclear modernization?
The latest M51 ballistic missile test was a failure. The missile blew up minutes after emerging from the French submarine, Le Vigilant, in the Audierne Bay (off the coast of Brittany) on May 5. French leaders have always claimed that France has never participated directly in the Cold War arms race; but, the scale of its current modernization program of nuclear weapon systems, running for over fifteen years, is massive.
Open-Ended Working Group Furthers the Disarmament Agenda in Geneva
On Thursday and Friday, the UN Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on nuclear disarmament meets for the third time in Geneva. The OEWG was established in December 2012, under UNGA Resolution A/RES/67/56, to develop proposals for innovative and measured steps to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament for the achievement and maintenance of a world free of nuclear weapons.