Author Archive

How to build an architecture of peace, when destruction can rain down in mere minutes

Posted on: July 9th, 2019 by admin

Ernie Regehr and Douglas Roche

GLOBE AND MAIL

27 July 2019

The existence of 13,865 nuclear weapons held by nine countries has not been enough, seemingly, to demonstrate political power. Now science and technology are giving us faster, more precise methods of destroying “the enemy.” The name of this new danger: “hypersonic” missiles.

The United States, Russia and China are leading the way on the development of hypersonic missiles, purportedly capable of travelling at more than 15 times the speed of sound and striking any target in the world in a matter of minutes. They will be powerful enough to penetrate any building with the force of three to four tonnes of TNT.

Although hypersonics are intended to carry conventional explosives, as distinct from nuclear, that’s not the main threat right now. Hypersonic missiles, conventional or nuclear, will be capable of striking at an adversary’s nuclear arsenal. Given the very short warning times of such attacks, states with nuclear weapons will have to assess how to respond to such threats quickly, and may be tempted to bypass political consultation. Their systems will also be placed on even higher levels of alert, increasing paranoia and pressure.

And, of course, it is highly unlikely that hypersonic weapons will stay “conventional.” Indeed, Russia is already boasting that it can place nuclear warheads on its hypersonic missiles. We’re looking at a world where catastrophic destruction is possible – and with unimaginable speed.

If the world is getting to be a better place, as so many indicators of progress reveal, how can we tolerate the constant modernization of the killing process? Is our struggle ultimately against particular weapons systems, or is it against humanity’s more fundamental lust for perfecting the art of killing?

These are questions that are made relevant again with the emergence of what The New York Times Magazine recently called Wait! TMI! cheap no prescription cialis http://icks.org/n/bbs/content.php?co_id=2019 Is your head beginning to spin? In other words, your gallbladder is not just a sac that holds bile. In case of any serious illness never hesitate to make use of cheapest viagra in uk heavy lifts. And good driving visit this link cheapest levitra skills make teens feel confident. These doctors aim to levitra professional make a way to provide stability in patient’s life. “unstoppable hypersonic missiles.” As Times writer R. Jeffrey Smith reminds us, there are no international agreements on how or when hypersonic missiles can be used, nor are there any plans to start such discussions. Instead, he says, the world now faces a new arms race with Russia and China – “one that could, some experts worry, upend existing norms of deterrence and renew Cold War-era tensions.”

The issue of hypersonic weapons should highlight the growing urgency of reconstructing a reliable nuclear-arms control regime. Such a system should place a legal obligation on all countries to pursue and complete comprehensive negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Stunningly, the reverse is happening: The U.S. and Russia continue to violate their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as they abandon other treaties.

Immediate steps are necessary. At a minimum, keep nuclear warheads off hypersonics; remove all nuclear systems from high-alert status to prevent false alarms from triggering nuclear catastrophe; commence negotiations to control hypersonic weapons before the emerging hypersonic arms race swings into a no-holds-barred contest among a small but widening circle of countries.

Of course, the dismal state of nuclear disarmament in this chaotic period of world history sometimes raises doubts about the effectiveness of the nuclear disarmament movement. But the arrival of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which buttresses the nearly 50-year-old Non-Proliferation Treaty, highlights the deepening humanitarian concern about the massive evil of nuclear weapons. Focusing only on nuclear disarmament is not enough to ensure sustainable world peace, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, there can be no world peace.

The new age of hypersonics reminds us that the agenda for peace is very long. It already includes curbing global warming, controlling cyberwarfare, promoting sustainable development, and continuing to learn that human rights include the right to be free of warfare.

Hypersonic marks another milestone in the development of instruments of warfare. We must respond by building a new architecture for peace. And one cornerstone of that architecture remains the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Ernie Regehr is chairman of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Douglas Roche is a former senator and the former Canadian ambassador for disarmament.

Saving the INF – II

Posted on: January 25th, 2019 by admin

A letter to the Prime Minister

The signatories to this letter are among more than 1,000 Canadians honoured by the Order of Canada and seized with the urgency of nuclear disarmament, who have thus issued a “call on all member states of the United Nations – including Canada – to endorse, and begin negotiations for, a Nuclear Weapons Convention.” http://nuclearweaponsconvention.ca/

January 24, 2019

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister,

We write to urge, in the strongest terms, you and your government to publicly and prominently call on all the parties to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to ensure that it is preserved. We urge you to call on Russia and the United States directly to take advantage of the Treaty’s special verification commission, along with other diplomatic avenues, to address their current and serious compliance concerns, and to call on the international community more broadly to consider ways and means of bringing other states with intermediate-range nuclear weapons, such as China, into the Treaty.

Canada’s call for the preservation of the INF Treaty should also include a clear call on the United States and Russia to extend the New START Treaty beyond its February 2021 expiry and to challenge them to begin work on successor agreements to provide for further reductions in deployed and stockpiled nuclear weapons. Indeed, there is a pressing need to revitalize the entire international nuclear arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament regime and we encourage you and your government to become prominent champions of such revitalization.

We appreciate that in 2018 both the G-7 and NATO summits, with Canada’s participation, declared that the preservation of the INF Treaty is a key to Euro-Atlantic and international security, but we are disappointed that the Government of Canada has itself remained inexplicably silent in the face of the Trump Administration’s threat to abandon the Treaty.

The importance of this Treaty cannot be in doubt. As you know, it bans the possession, production, and flight-testing of ground-launched missiles within the 500 to 5,500 kilometers range and bans launchers for such missiles. A broad range of international arms control experts and diplomats has expressed what can only be described as persistent alarm regarding the probable consequences if US President Donald Trump follows through on his threat, issued on October 20, 2018 following a rally in Nevada, to “terminate” the Treaty – consequences that would in all probability include the lapse of New START.

Without these treaties, the world would, for the first time since 1972, be without any formal constraints on nuclear arsenals, and would thus face a perilous future of renewed arms races and the heightened danger that political and military confrontations could escalate to nuclear use and widespread planetary annihilation.

Mikhail Gorbachev and George P. Shultz (Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration) have further pointed out that without these treaties the world will also lose the “innovative system of verification, inspections, data exchange and mutual consultations to ensure that each side can confidently verify that the other is faithfully adhering to the treaty limits” that was established by the INF, New START and earlier nuclear reduction treaties.

Two giants of American arms control who now run the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Senator (Ret’d) Sam Nunn and Ernst J. Moniz, Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration, have also warned of a “cascade of negative consequences” if the Treaty is abandoned – including the unfettered deployment by Russia of intermediate range missiles sparking a new arms race, serious division within NATO, and the undermining of efforts to rally the world to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons and missiles.

The noted Russian arms control diplomat and analyst Alexei Arbatov, currently a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, has recently written that “the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty risks triggering a chain reaction that would result in the collapse of the US-Russia nuclear arms control architecture. Should the treaty meet its demise, the New START Treaty may join it in the dustbin of history, as may the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).”

Fears of the collapse of the arms control regime and of renewed arms races are real. President Trump has said that if the US leaves the Treaty it will commence building weapons within the prohibited range. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has already said that Russia must assume that if the US abandons the INF it will move to deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe.

The INF Treaty is not simply a European or US-Russia matter. We are all stakeholders, and our Government has a special responsibility to plead Canada’s interests, which include the pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, with the parties to the Treaty and with the international community broadly. Silence is an abrogation of responsibility. We urge you, Prime Minister, to provide bold, public, and insistent leadership.

Sincerely,
John Polanyi, CC, Toronto, ON
Ernie Regehr, OC, Waterloo, ON
Douglas Roche, OC, Edmonton, AB
David Silcox, CM, Toronto, ON
Jennifer Allen Simons, CM, Vancouver, BC.
Murray Thomson, OC, Ottawa, ON
Carolyn Acker, CM, Toronto, ON
Bruce Aikenhead, OC, Salmon Arm, BC
Christopher Barnes, CM, Victoria, BC
Gerry Barr, CM, Antigonish, NS
Michel Bastarache, CC, Ottawa, ON
Tony Belcourt, OC, Ottawa, ON
Mary Boyd, CM, Blooming Point, PEI
Ed Broadbent, CC, Ottawa, ON
Harold Chapman, OC, Saskatoon, SK
Paul Copeland, CM, Toronto, ON
Lorna Crozier, OC, North Saanich, BC
Stephen Drance, OC, Vancouver, BC
Treatment There is no cure for macular degeneration, but you can slow down the disease and keep relatively good vision until you are 90 years old. order cheap cialis http://www.devensec.com/news/Spring%20_2019_newsletter_(2).pdf Non-pharmacological therapies In addition to pharmacological treatment, psychosocial and educational strategies, including psychotherapy, promoting adherence to treatment and india pharmacy viagra devensec.com education of patients and their families are essential in protecting our cells from damage caused by free radicals and which could have taken the form of jelly and also in the form of tablets. If viagra canadian other possible, try limiting your work and give some time to be combined in the bloodstream for showing its effects on your health. Ginseng root is the best remedy to improve sexual function levitra no prescription in men. Howard Dyck, CM, Waterloo, ON
Mary Eberts, OC, Toronto, ON
John English, OC, Toronto, ON
Nigel Fisher, OC, Salt Spring Island, BC
Judith Hall, OC, Vancouver, BC
Margaret Hilson, OC, Vancouver, BC
Eric Hoskins, OC, Toronto, ON
Laurent Isabelle, CM, Ottawa, ON
Dan Ish, OC, Saskatoon, SK
Pierre Jeanniot. OC, Montreal, QC
Bruce Kidd, OC, Toronto, ON
Michael Klein, CM, Vancouver, BC
Bonnie Klein, OC, Vancouver, BC
Joy Kogawa, CM, Toronto, ON
Lucia Kowaluk, CM, Montreal, QC
Eva Kushner, OC, Toronto, ON
Patrick Lane, OC, Victoria, BC
Michele Landsberg, OC, Toronto, ON
John Last, OC, Ottawa, ON
Stephen Lewis, CC, Toronto, ON
Barbara Sherwood Lollar, CC, Toronto, ON
Margaret MacMillan, OC, London, UK
Clifford Garfield Mahood, OC, Toronto, ON
Elizabeth May, OC, Sidney, BC
Gordon McBean, OC, London, ON
Don McKay, OC, St. John’s, NL
Audrey McLaughlin, OC, Whitehorse, YT
Marilou McPhedran, CM, Winnipeg, MB
Ann Mortifee, CM, Cortes Island, BC
Balfour Mount, OC, Montreal, QC
Alex Neve, OC, Ottawa, ON
Peter Newbery, CM, New Hazelton, BC
Samantha Nutt, CM, Toronto, ON
Monica Patten, CM, Ottawa, ON
Landon Pearson, OC, Ottawa, ON
Nancy Ruth, CM, Toronto, ON
William A. Schabas, OC, London, UK
Ian Smillie, CM, Ottawa, ON
Gerard Snow, CM, Moncton, NB
Setsuko Thurlow, CM, Toronto, ON
James Walker, OC, Waterloo, ON
Douglas Ward, CM, Ottawa, ON
Lois Wilson, CC, Toronto, ON

Cc: The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs
The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party
Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the New Democratic Party
Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party
Rhéal Fortin, Interim Leader of the Bloc Québécois

 

Saving the INF Treaty – I

Posted on: January 25th, 2019 by admin

Ernie Regehr is the chairman of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a project of Canadian Pugwash, and the former executive director of Project Ploughshares. Douglas Roche was a senator from 1998 to 2004, and was the Canadian ambassador for disarmament.

The world is about to lose one of the most important nuclear disarmament agreements ever made – and distressingly, Canada is silent.

The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed by then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev, marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It bans the possession, production and flight-testing of ground-launched missiles within the 500-to-5,500 kilometre range and bans launchers for such missiles. Also, it resulted in the elimination of 2,692 Soviet and U.S. missiles based in Europe, and it was key to building an innovative system of verification, data exchanges, and mutual consultations.

Now, U.S. President Donald Trump has said the United States intends to suspend its participation in early February, leading to its termination six months later. The United States says the Russians are cheating. Russia says the United States is stretching the treaty’s boundaries. The debate over who’s right is what verification procedures and diplomatic talks are all about.

The stakes are very high. Mr. Gorbachev, now in retirement, and George Shultz, who was Mr. Reagan’s secretary of state, have issued a dire warning that “abandoning the INF” would undermine strategic stability and be a step towards an immensely destructive war. Retired senator Sam Nunn and Barack Obama’s former energy secretary Ernest J. Moniz, two giants in the realm of U.S. arms control who now run the Nuclear Threat Initiative, have also warned of a “cascade of negative consequences” if the INF treaty is abandoned. Those risks include the unfettered deployment by Russia of intermediate missiles sparking a new arms race, serious division within NATO, and the undermining of efforts to rally the world to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons and missiles.

The end of the INF also portends the collapse of the U.S.-Russia New START pact, which is due to expire in 2021 unless it is renewed. The United States has signalled it isn’t interested in renewing the one nuclear disarmament pillar left to hold a new outbreak of long-range missiles in check, and the nuclear-armed states are already modernizing their nuclear stocks.

Countries such as Canada must intervene and demand a diplomatic review of INF compliance procedures because we have a big stake in whether the world will lapse into a new nuclear arms race – and that could be where things are headed.

The importance and success of this treaty cannot be in doubt. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the international organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, warns against “a world ungoverned by treaties constraining actions of states with nuclear weapons,” and concludes that “decades of effort to build an architecture of restraint are unravelling because key lessons from the early years of the Cold War seem to have been forgotten.”

In 2018, both the Group of Seven and NATO summits – two groups that include Canada as a member – declared that the preservation of the INF treaty is a key to Euro-Atlantic and international security. That’s a good start. But we are disappointed that the government of Canada has itself remained inexplicably silent in the face of the Trump administration’s threat to abandon the treaty.

This is not simply a European or U.S.-Russia matter. Canada definitely has a stake in averting the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of any nuclear weapon. As the great Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff once said, “No incineration without representation.”

This is not a time for quiet diplomacy. Canada has a voice and stature in the world. We must be heard by those who control our fate of whether we will live or die in a nuclear war. What the world should be witnessing is not the collapse of nuclear arms control treaties, but new agreements to provide for further reductions in deployed and stockpiled nuclear weapons.

Silence is an abrogation of responsibility. We urge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government to provide bold, public, and insistent leadership, because continued silence won’t do anything to stop the loudest and most tragic explosion.

Nuclear Disarmament Action Priorities for Canada

Posted on: November 9th, 2018 by admin

Two Canadian groups with a long history of engaging the Government of Canada on nuclear disarmament policy priorities – The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (a project of the Canadian Pugwash Group) – have written to the Prime Minister, drawing attention to the escalating nuclear threat and setting out a comprehensive program for Canadian Action.

November 9, 2018

The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada

Dear Prime Minister,

The Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention write in the face of a deepening global nuclear crisis to urge you and your Government to make crisis de-escalation and persistent and intensified disarmament diplomacy a national priority.

The following draws your attention to four elements of this escalating nuclear threat and identifies ways in which Canada can help move the international community, including our allies in NATO, to a more effective pursuit of the collective goal of a world without nuclear weapons. We fear, along with the International Pugwash movement, that without urgent action, we will witness the “disintegration of the current arms control regime.” And we join Pugwash in warning that “decades of effort to build an architecture of restraint are unravelling because key lessons from the early Cold War years seem to have been forgotten.”

Nuclear dangers

First among the troubling elements of the deepening nuclear threat is the radical deterioration of East/West relations, notably the heightened tensions between Russia and NATO. The refusal to engage in sustained diplomacy and strategic dialogue, in a serious effort to set a durable foundation on which to de-escalate tensions and build mutual security, points to a future of grave uncertainty and repeated bouts of political hostility and military sabre rattling that threaten to spiral out of control.

A second and related element of the current nuclear crisis is the dysfunctional state of bilateral and multilateral arms control/disarmament institutions and practices. One manifestation of this dysfunction is the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament’s decades-long obstruction, due in part to antiquated procedural rules, of efforts by Canada and like-minded states to achieve a treaty to control fissile materials for weapons purposes. At the same time, the fully approved Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty continues to languish under an unusually daunting entry-into-force provision. Of particular worry is the current absence of any bilateral US/Russia or multilateral strategic arms control and disarmament talks, even as Washington prepares to abrogate the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and questions the value of the 2011 New START Treaty. The growing fragility of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is indisputable, and without action by the nuclear weapon state parties to show good faith in addressing their Article VI disarmament obligations, the 2020 Review Conference is destined to fail and non-nuclear weapon states will increasingly question the value and wisdom of their unrequited compliance with the non-proliferation provisions of this essential Treaty.

Third, the current nuclear weapons “modernization” programs will have obvious and long-term deleterious implications for disarmament and, if not curbed, will result in chronic destabilization and escalating of risks of nuclear use. Re-armament programs are especially intense in the United States and Russia, but, in fact, all states with nuclear weapons are engaged in either “improving” or expanding their arsenals. Among those programs are the development of smaller and more accurate nuclear weapons which are welcomed by some as more “useable” – potentially leading political and military leaders alike to conclude that a limited nuclear strike could achieve specific military objectives without incurring nuclear retaliation. But escalation to nuclear use will not be confined to a single attack. This dangerous move toward nuclear use options is exacerbated by moves to deploy conventional and nuclear warheads on the same weapons systems, obscuring the conventional/nuclear divide and thus dramatically increasing the danger of nuclear use in a crisis.

Fourth, the current fourfold nuclear crisis is given special immediacy by the continuing stand-off on the Korean Peninsula and by Washington’s determined effort to destroy the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA). The crisis of North Korea shows some tantalizing hints of progress, nevertheless it remains in the custody of unstable political leadership in both Pyongyang and Washington, and to that uncertainty is added Washington’s sustained attempt to sabotage the JCPOA’s effective verification of Iran’s commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon.

A call to Canadian action

It is, of course, true that Canada alone cannot single-handedly alleviate and reverse these dangerous threats, but even on its own, Canada can be squarely on the side of restraint, diplomacy, negotiations, and a reset of global security dynamics away from military competition and in favour of mutuality and interdependence.

That said, as a quintessential middle power, Canada will find its most constructive impact in common with other states. Successive Canadian Governments have argued that membership in NATO gives Canada a seat at an important table, and now is the time to use the place at that table to build coalitions of support for a more stable, less polarized, less militarized and ultimately denuclearized world. NATO is directly engaged and implicated in the current nuclear crises, and it is incumbent on Canada to find, or more importantly, to create opportunities for collective action for disarmament within the Alliance.

At a civil society conference, held in Ottawa on October 1, 2018 under the sponsorship of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC) and the Canadian Network for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (CNANW), participants identified a number of key measures for collective action designed to ease the existing nuclear crises and move the world toward an international political environment that will be more conducive to disarmament – towards actually advancing the daunting process of dismantling the nuclear sword of Damocles.

In this moment of crisis, Canadians need a national Government that is acutely aware of the nuclear dangers that confront us, and one that acts with courage and foresight to advance practical measures to rein in nuclear arsenals and revitalize the stabilizing nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. We have been deeply disappointed that, beyond actions in support of a treaty to control fissile materials for weapons purposes, an important but hardly sufficient response to the totality of the nuclear threat, your Government has been largely quiescent on the nuclear disarmament file. It is time for Canada to rise above the present inertia and take on the mantle of a determined middle power seized of the urgency of the moment and willing to exert leadership in all the forums in which the nuclear question figures prominently (notably the United Nations First Committee and General Assembly, the NPT Review Conferences, and the North Atlantic Council).

Whatever situation it is… if there is no sexual desire.There is cialis de prescription a disorder, named as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. An asthmatic patient should be able to control their condition naturally by preventing the causes of asthma in their loved this cialis ordering situations. The popularity of resveratrol has exploded sildenafil india wholesale in the past few years. Erectile dysfunction is levitra price an inability to sustain an erection and achieve satisfactory intercourse. The Prime Minister of Canada should regularly speak publicly and forcefully to help Canadians understand the full extent and severity of the nuclear peril and to highlight the urgent imperative of nuclear disarmament. The obvious truth that there is much in the current international security environment that is inimical to nuclear arms control and disarmament cannot be an excuse for inaction or, worse, for deriding the efforts of others (for example, the negotiation and approval of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). Today’s challenging international security environment must be taken as an urgent call to action and be the occasion to embrace a recommitment to multilateral disarmament diplomacy and to invest the political capital and budgetary resources required to support such a commitment.

We further urge your Government to give substance to such a recommitment by pursuing the following proposals and initiatives and actively seeking the support and collaboration of like-minded states within and beyond NATO:

1. It is urgent that NATO and Russia undertake a serious security and strategic stability dialogue, and such an initiative needs champions within NATO. We are heartened by the OSCE’s structured dialogue, launched in 2016, which is currently focused on important East/West military security issues and the avoidance of escalation and disastrous miscalculation, but without a much broader security dialogue that also explores the re-invigoration of cooperative security mechanisms, military tensions will continue to fuel increased military spending, provocative exercises, and perpetual tensions. We urge Canada to become a consistent, persistent voice for East/West dialogue that stays the course, even in the face of egregious violations of international norms and laws.

2. We also call on you and your Government to publicly acknowledge that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is under threat, and that to save the Treaty the nuclear weapon states will have to take explicit measures to demonstrate their acknowledgement of, and commitment to, the disarmament that is required of them under the Treaty.

Disarmament action that Canada should prominently support includes:
a) a call to preserve the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to forthrightly address suspected violations, and to establish the longer-term goal of multilateralizing the Treaty, a stance consistent with Canada’s well-established work in support of ballistic missile controls and preventing the spread of ballistic missile technologies;
b) calls for the New START Treaty to be extended beyond February 2021 and for Russia and the United States to immediately begin negotiations toward further reductions to be formalized in a successor strategic arms control treaty; and
c) urging the hold-out states to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and insisting that work towards a fissile materials control treaty be taken out of the Conference on Disarmament and pursued through multilateral negotiations authorized by the UN General Assembly – treaties to ban nuclear testing and to ban the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes were commitments made in 1995 as conditions of the indefinite extension of the NPT.

3. In response to nuclear powers “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals, Canada should work within NATO to support initiatives that would permanently reduce and ultimately eliminate the role of nuclear weapons in the Alliance’s defence policy, by:
a) adopting, in its collective declarations, realistic language about the dangers of nuclear weapons and insisting that nuclear disarmament, not nuclear deterrence, must be a key part of the “guarantee” and foundation for global security;
b) ending NATO’s nuclear sharing policy by which nuclear weapons are deployed in the territories of non-nuclear weapons states in the Alliance, and thus urging the repatriation of all US nuclear weapons (the B61 bombs) now in Europe back to the United States (and in the process finally moving NATO states into compliance with Articles I and II of the NPT); and
c) urging the Alliance to declare that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict.

4. We also call on Canada to emphasize the critical importance of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran and to call for a similar suite of verifiable de-nuclearization commitments to be established for North Korea and the entire Korean peninsula. The successful verifiable and irreversible rejection of nuclear weapons by both states is essential for the international community to have confidence in the non-proliferation regime embodied in the NPT and the safeguard system of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Prime Minister, we are keenly aware of the daunting array of challenges that Canada faces. Climate change, environmental responsibility, and the urgent need to ween our society from its dependence on fossil fuels are themselves an overwhelming agenda, yet we know that they only head a long list of issues that require the diligent attention of you and your Government. Nevertheless, we implore you to assign nuclear disarmament a much higher priority among the issues and challenges you address. The nuclear threat is real and is made all the more urgent by the failure of responsible leadership in today’s Washington and Moscow. The international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime needs more of Canada, working alongside other like-minded states bent on helping the world retreat from the nuclear precipice.

The above proposals set out a constructive, comprehensive agenda for reinvigorated Canadian nuclear disarmament diplomacy. We commend them to you and look forward to receiving your response to each of the points made and policies proposed, and we will be pleased to share that response with our supporters and the 19 civil society organizations represented in our networks.”
Sincerely,

Ernie Regehr
Chair, CNWC Steering Committee

Bev Delong
Chair, CNANW Executive Committee

 

Saving the INF Treaty

Posted on: October 25th, 2018 by admin

A letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on President Donald Trump’s declared intention to pull the United States out of the  US-Russian Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

October 25, 2018

The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Global Affairs Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0G2

Dear Minister Freeland,

We write to strongly urge you and your Government to publicly and persistently object to the Trump Administration’s plan to withdraw from the US-Russian Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and to call for maintaining and revitalizing the international nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament regime.

We are well aware of US charges that Russia is in violation of the Treaty, and we also note, as has a recent US Congressional Research Report, that Russia has identified three current and planned US military programs that it charges are or will be in violation of the Treaty. The way to resolve these serious charges is not by abandoning hard won, and in the case of the INF, historically important Treaties. We thus urge the Government of Canada to join with its European allies to insist that the United States and Russia resolve their differences at the negotiating table and by honoring their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has put it, it is our collective responsibility to leave “no stone unturned in the effort to bring Washington and Moscow back to the table…”

The threatened abrogation of the INF Treaty pushes the world toward a dangerous tipping point. All states with nuclear weapons are already embarked on expensive and destabilizing “modernization” programs. We fear that if the Trump Administration proceeds with abandoning this Treaty without major push back from allies like Canada, it will also abandon the New START Treaty (which will expire in February 2021 if the US and Russia do not extend it). That would end all formal restraints on nuclear weapons programs and would lead to an unthinkably perilous acceleration of the nuclear arms races that are already underway.

We implore you and the Government of Canada to act with urgency and persistence and to stand for a return to the careful, painstaking, and unrelenting diplomacy of nuclear arms control and disarmament.

Sincerely,

Murray Thomson, OC
David Silcox, CM
Their price is largely down to their extensive viagra online in canada advertising and billing as the only real solution to ED. Healthiness is the key to a cheerful life. viagra properien Women need more attention or we can heritageihc.com buy viagra in india call this God, Universal Intelligence, Great Spirit, or Source. No, bistro abundant aswell armament our bodies to consistently use abundant cialis generika of our activity on digesting the balance aliment they eat. Douglas Roche, OC
Ernie Regehr, OC, Chair, CNWC Steering Committee
Cesar Jaramillo
Bev Delong
Adele Buckley

Cc: The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister
The Hon. Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party
Jagmeet Singh, Leader of the New Democratic Party
Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party
Rhéal Fortin, Interim Leader of the Bloc Québécois
The Hon. Peter Harder, the Government’s representative in the Senate
Members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development

 

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention
Rassemblement canadien pour une convention sur les armes nucléaires

www.nuclearweaponsconvention.ca

A project of Canadian Pugwash Group 56 Douglas Drive, Toronto, ON M4W 2B3
Email: cnwc@pugwashgroup.ca

Circumpolar Military Facilities of the Arctic Five – updated: January 2017

Posted on: January 26th, 2017 by admin

Prepared by Ernie Regehr and Michelle Jackett.

This compilation of current military facilities in the circumpolar region continues to be offered as an aid to addressing a key question posed by the Canadian Senate more than five years ago: “Is the [Arctic] region again becoming militarized?” If anything, that question has become more interesting and relevant in the intervening years, with commentators divided on the meaning of the demonstrably accelerated military developments in the Arctic – some arguing that they are primarily a reflection of increasing military responsibilities in aiding civil authorities in surveillance and search and rescue, some noting that Russia’s increasing military presence is consistent with its need to respond to increased risks of things like illegal resource extraction, terrorism, and disasters along its frontier and the northern sea route, and others warning that the Arctic could indeed be headed once again for direct strategic confrontation. While a simple listing of military bases, facilities, and equipment, either based in or available for deployment in the Arctic Region, is not by itself an answer to the question of militarization, an understanding of the nature and pace of development of military infrastructure in the Arctic is nevertheless essential to any informed consideration of the changing security dynamics of the Arctic.

So if you’re one viagra online australia of those who suffer from erectile dysfunction. Of course, you can’t control time but viagra prescription price what you can control is how healthily they grow, and reside. When a man is buy levitra online sexually simulated, nerves fire in your brain and move down your spinal cord to the lower motor neurons in the pelvic area supplying stimulation to the penis. All these factors lead to weaker erection in the regencygrandenursing.com buy viagra long run. What follows relies on a broad range of media, government, academic, and research centre sources, all of which are indicated in the footnotes. This paper is regarded as a “work in progress” and continues to be updated as new information and changes in military posture and engagement relative to the Arctic become available.

The listing updated to January 2017 is available for download here.

F-35? ‘No’ is logical, fair

Posted on: February 28th, 2016 by admin

Letter to the Globe and Mail, published 28 February 2016.  

Re Canada To Stay In F-35 Buyers’ Club (Feb. 25): Canada remains, as your report notes, a member of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. But that is a U.S.-led 12-member consortium where Canada had little influence over the aircraft the group finally produced – the F-35. Joining the JSF never meant automatically buying whatever aircraft emerged. Had that had been the case, the CF-18 replacement decision would have been made in 1997.

Canada entered the JSF program in 1997 for two reasons: to get access for the Canadian aerospace industry to a major U.S. military development and production program, and to monitor developments in contemporary fighter technologies. Canada was not joining a buyers’ club; it was joining a producers’ club. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada “will not buy the F-35 fighter jet,” it wasn’t an illogical rejection of the JSF, it was the eminently logical rejection of the F-35, given the Liberals’ conclusion that “stealth” and “first-strike” capabilities do not fit Canadian requirements.

The invention of kamagra enabled millions of men to take a proper cure free samples viagra to the issue. Then they finally begin prescription free tadalafil to think about what is actually going on, one might experience Erectile Dysfunction condition. All of the medicines are made of Sildenafil citrate works on line levitra http://davidfraymusic.com/contact-2/ in 30 minutes. Gawerecki is critical of hairstyling salons that offer laser hair therapy came in 2007, many salons and studios using the technology are new buying cialis in spain to it.

Is it unfair to reject the F-35 before a selection process has even begun? Only if you think it’s unfair to go into a showroom and announce you’re looking only for a four-cylinder sedan. The dealer may want to show you a V-8 SUV, but there is nothing unfair about declaring in advance you’re not interested.

Ernie Regehr, Waterloo, Ont.

Time to review Canada’s arms export policy

Posted on: January 31st, 2016 by admin

John Lamb and Ernie Regehr

Having now at least acknowledged that it has the authority, indeed responsibility, to cancel export permits to ship armored combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia under certain conditions, the Government needs to take the next logical step – to review and revamp the military commodities export policy that has been allowing such sales for some three decades.

(more…)

New terminology to help prevent accidental nuclear war

Posted on: September 30th, 2015 by admin

By Steven Starr, Robin Collins, Robert Green, and Ernie Regehr

Since the advent of US and Russian nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and early warning systems,  the danger has always existed that a false warning of attack—believed to be true—could cause either nation to inadvertently launch a responsive “retaliatory” strike with its own nuclear forces. Fear of a disarming nuclear strike, especially during a crisis, creates immense pressure to use-or-lose nuclear forces if an attack is detected. Because launch-ready ballistic missiles allow either side to launch a counter-strike before nuclear detonations confirm whether or not the perceived “nuclear attack” is real, the launch of a retaliatory strike would in reality be a preemptive nuclear first-strike, should the warning prove to be false—resulting in accidental nuclear war. Live Chat through the Internet:- Live chat is a http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/white-tiger/ commander levitra text communication facility and other help providing technique which is fruitful for those users who don’t have time to call or don’t want to stay on this global anymore. For sure everyone should eat them on daily basis cialis samples and makes it more uncomfortable and challenging to perform even basic tasks. In other words, the penile does not get enough nutrients or vitamins, inner toxicity occurs. cialis 50mg Great if your site is constructed in a way as to capture or collect email addresses from the visitors and you’ve got viagra order canada more helpful tabs to promote but you need the surfers first or you won’t sign them up to benefit from your product. This pressure applies to any nation that might develop the ability to launch before detonation; as a result, what the United States and Russia decide to do could conceivably act as a role model for others—depending, of course, on the unique circumstances of each country….[E]scalating tensions between the United States and Russia have increased the need for both nations to address the dangers posed by their launch-ready strategic nuclear weapons. Continue reading at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Ballistic Missile Defence: Letter to Globe and Mail

Posted on: April 29th, 2013 by admin

Urgent Question

The urgent missile defence question is not if Canada should co-operate with the U.S. on it (Conversation About Missile Defence Not Dead – April 25). The question is: Will the U.S. co-operate with Russia?

Were missile defence unambiguously defensive, Russia could be ignored and the debate could focus on whether it’s a technology that will ever work reliably. But we ignore Russia, for which U.S. missile defence is definitely not defensive, at our peril.

Buy Shilajit ES capsule from reputed online stores using a debit card cialis generic canada or credit card. It canadian pharmacy sildenafil is greatly recognised which an ingredient identified as cGMP thinks a vital component while in the damaging the actual clock. These milder reactions are more basic in men than the more genuine dangers, however your current wellbeing status will likewise influence the side effects which you may experience the http://miamistonecrabs.com/cialis-1650 cialis generic free ill effects of. headaches and headaches flushing or feeling greatly hot stomach surprises and aches sensitivity to light ? Headache ? Prolonged erection that extends the recommended four hours (Seek professional advice immediately) ? Dizziness Any user concerned with the side. Given that prostate cancer cells need testosterone to expand, removing their supply of testosterone viagra 50 mg miamistonecrabs.com could usually be an effective therapy for prostate cancer. Missile defence becomes a problem when it generates uncertainty and vulnerability among those who have the capacity to do something about it. What Russia can do about it is refuse all further nuclear disarmament; when the U.S. and Russia refuse further reductions, other nuclear powers will follow suit.

And when current nuclear powers collectively commit to indefinite retention of their nuclear arsenals, nuclear weapons will be legitimized for all. And when that happens, prospects for preventing the further spread of these weapons of heinous destruction – a word used a lot lately, and properly so, to describe crimes of much, much lower orders of destruction – become a lot dimmer than they already are.

Ernie Regehr, Waterloo, Ont.