A group of experts, including former officials from offices of State, Defence and military services, have sent a letter to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to offer a series of recommendations for the Alliance's Deterrence and Defence Posture Review.
Recommendations from a report by BASIC board member Andrew Cottey were quoted in the Irish Evening Echo on July 11, 2010. The report was published to coincide with talks on multilateralising disarmament.
We concluded the first leg of our series of Hewlett-sponsored seminars with a two-day, high-level meeting in Brussels on May 23-24, 2011, shortly after the deterrence and defence posture review launch in Berlin. The timing was ideal.
Writing about the EU conference on a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East, Julian Borger in his Global Security Blog for The Guardian refers to BASIC’s Washington Program Director Anne Penketh’s article on the subject.
BASIC held the fourth of its roundtables this last 12 months, on NATO’s nuclear policy, under the grant from the Hewlett Foundation on April 28th. This time it was in non-NATO Helsinki, in collaboration with the Peace Union of Finland and the Foreign Ministry. Gathering participants from Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Netherlands and Britain, we discussed the deterrence review, relations with Russia and the prospects for NATO contributing more actively to the agenda of global nuclear disarmament.
NATO proceeded quietly with its Strategic Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, while U.S. and Russian disagreements over missile defense continued. The United States was also conducting a review of nuclear targeting. In the United Kingdom, the “successor” to the Vanguard-class submarine that carries Trident missiles officially entered “Initial Gate,” or the initial design phase.
If you have a nuclear addiction, Doctor Tad Daley has the cure. In his book “Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World,” Daley explains the risks from the most dangerous weapons known to man, describes a nightmare scenario of escalating nuclear non-proliferation, and sets out the steps for their abolition. Why? Because, he argues, nuclear weapons are not needed in the modern world.
This week has already witnessed a great deal of jubilation around the world for the rooting out and killing of Osama bin Laden, with the usual army of armchair commentators giving divergent opinions as the importance this has to the global threat, the project that used to operate under the name ‘War on Terror’, and ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.