Nuclear Disarmament

Canada and the Audacity of a Ban on Nuclear Weapons

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) arrived in 2017 as a new and audacious addition to the nuclear arms control and disarmament landscape. It has not been an altogether comfortable fit – generating both ardent support and fierce opposition, with NATO notably aligned with the latter. The most recent iteration of Canada’s opposition to the TPNW offers but two basic criticisms: 1) “the Treaty does not contain credible provisions for monitoring and verification” of disarmament; 2) “the Treaty’s provisions are inconsistent with Canada’s collective defense obligations” as a member of NATO. ED- Increasing MalaiseSexual problems in men can seem taboo, but they are very common specially ED viagra cipla india (Erectile Dysfunction) or impotence. discount cialis pill Do you have any idea why India is preferred as a medical tourist destination by foreign patients? Well the most obvious answer is best health care facilities at low cost. For example, some people prefer Creams/Oils/Lotions so that they can take joy in letting their partner apply these products which results in sexual bonding and frolicsome fun. 3) Ejaculation Enhancers to Increase Semen: Volume of Semen is the symptom secretworldchronicle.com generic cialis 100mg of abnormal flow of the blood. The heart and diabetic patients should take generic cialis price extra care of a woman while making love to her.  To bridge these divides, both sides would benefit from a clearer appreciation for what the new treaty does not and does bring to the central commitment that supporters and critics alike continue to profess – namely, the pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Towards Canadian Nuclear Disarmament Action

The following letter from Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention welcomes the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, noting that inasmuch as the Biden Administration will help to create a more favourable climate for arms control and disarmament, Canada must take advantage of this opportune moment to support and publicly call for action on key measures (briefly described) to promote real reductions in stockpiles and to reduce the risks of nuclear use.

January 25, 2021

The Honourable Marc Garneau, PC, CC, CD, MP
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Global Affairs Canada
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0G2

Dear Mr. Garneau,

On behalf of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC), we congratulate you on your
appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In this moment of multiple global crises – the pandemic, the
climate crisis, and the heightened threat of a nuclear weapons catastrophe – the responsibilities of the
Foreign Minister and of Global Affairs Canada are extraordinarily important, and we write to welcome you into this key role and to wish for you strength and wisdom as you carry out your work.

As you know, CNWC is a project of the Canadian Pugwash Group and is endorsed by more than 1,000
influential Canadians, all of whom have been honoured by the Order of Canada. Our basic call, which you have supported, is for the international community to begin formulating the terms of a global nuclear weapons convention, the kind of instrument needed to codify all the agreements, regulations,
institutional arrangements, and verification measures essential for accomplishing the prohibition and
irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons. We understand such a convention to be a long-term undertaking in support of the universally affirmed goal of a world without nuclear weapons and that, in the meantime, there are urgent initiatives and measures to be taken to reduce the risks of nuclear use and to reduce nuclear arsenals on the path to zero.

CNWC has regularly written to the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to make the case that the old ways of trying to build security — through escalating military threats and counter-threats — rob us of the focus,  human ingenuity, and resources needed to advance the security of the most vulnerable. The perversion of global priorities in the prevailing militarized understanding of security is best illustrated by the ongoing failure to properly fund the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the failure to mount a globally coordinated response to the present pandemic. It becomes clearer with each day that only an over-riding commitment to human security – building sustainable health systems, ensuring access to clean water and affordable housing, pursuing environmentally responsible food production and credible responses to climate change, and disarmament – will forge a path to durable peace and security.

The nuclear crisis is dangerously escalating. Nuclear weapons states are rushing to modernize their still
bulging arsenals, and the disarmament/arms control architecture is in a state of collapse following the
abandonment of a succession of key treaties: including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in 2001), the
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (in 2007), the Iran nuclear deal (abandoned by the US in 2018), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement (in 2019), and the Treaty on Open Skies (2020). The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty still lacks key ratifications needed for it to enter into force. For more than two decades the UN’s designated forum for negotiating treaties, the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, has been deadlocked and has made no progress on a promised treaty, actively championed by Canada, to block further production of fissile materials for weapons purposes.

One notable bright spot in this grim picture has been the successful negotiation, adoption, and entry-into-force on January 22 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The TPNW is a breakthrough achievement. Supported by a majority of United Nations members, it bans nuclear weapons possession by States Parties to the Treaty, paralleling the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it an “historic” development that will “form an important component of the nuclear disarmament and non- proliferation regime,” and that will reinforce the global norm against nuclear weapons.

We reiterate our call for Canada to join the TPNW while continuing its support of the foundational Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We, of course, anticipate that the incoming Biden Administration in the United States will help to create a more favourable climate for arms control and disarmament, and we urge Canada to take advantage of this opportune moment to support and publicly call for action on key measures to promote real reductions in stockpiles and to reduce the risks of nuclear use. We thus again urge Canada to:

• Encourage the United States to extend the New START Treaty with Russia and commence
  negotiations towards a follow-on Treaty of deeper cuts;
• Work with like-minded partners to call on NATO to revise its Strategic Concept to radically reduce
  and ultimately eliminate its reliance on nuclear weapons, and to remove all US tactical nuclear
  weapons from the territories of NATO partner states in Europe;
• Call on the United States and Russia to declare they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons;
• Encourage all nuclear weapon states to remove all their nuclear weapons from high alert status;
  and
• Encourage the US, NATO, Russia, and China to commence ongoing talks on the conditions and
  requirements for strategic stability and disarmament.

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We urge you and the Government to make nuclear arms control and disarmament a national priority. We are confident that Canadian political leaders who publicly and regularly acknowledge the nuclear crisis, and who advance constructive responses, will have the enduring support of Canadians. We are also well aware of, and deeply appreciate, the work of the skilled officials and diplomats in Global Affairs Canada on this file. They need to be publicly supported and encouraged at the highest political levels.

Please be assured of our continued support for constructive disarmament initiatives. We look forward to
hearing your responses to the above recommendations, and to learning the details of your planned
attention the existential nuclear weapons threat more broadly.

Sincerely,
Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (CNWC):
Ernie Regehr, O.C. (Chair)
Adele Buckley
Bev Delong
Cesar Jaramillo
Douglas Roche, O.C.
Jennifer Simons, C.M.

cc: The Hon. Harjit S. Sajjan, PC, OMM, MSM, CD, MP, Minister of National Defence
The Hon. Michael Chong, PC, MP
Stéphane Bergeron, MP
Jack Harris, MP
Elizabeth May, OC, MP

Russia’s Arctic Defense Posture 

The Arctic and World Order is a Johns Hopkins University project which editors Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton describe as an exploration of the “…political, legal, social, economic, geostrategic and environmental challenges confronting the Arctic in the face of global warming and a shifting world order….”

Here is the link for my contribution:

Chapter 8 – “Military Infrastructure and Strategic Capabilities: Russia’s Arctic Defense Posture” by Ernie Regehr

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The links for free download of the complete book or purchase of hard copy below. 

The Arctic and World Order

Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton, Editors
Jason C. Moyer, Associate Editor

List of Chapters:

Foreword

Introduction – From Last Frontier to First Frontier: The Arctic and World Order by Kristina Spohr and Daniel S. Hamilton

Chapter 1 – Shifting Ground: Competing Policy Narratives and the Future of the Arctic by Oran R. Young

Chapter 2 – Conservation in the Arctic by Henry P. Huntington

Chapter 3 – Greenland, the Arctic, and the Issue of Representation: What is the Arctic? Who Has a Say? by Inuuteq Holm Olsen

Chapter 4 – A Tipping Point for Arctic Regimes: Climate Change, Paradiplomacy, and a New World Order by Victoria Herrmann

Chapter 5 – Russia and the Development of Arctic Energy Resources in the Context of Domestic Policy and International Markets by Arild Moe

Chapter 6 – Governance and Economic Challenges for the Global Shipping Enterprise in a Seasonally Ice-Covered Arctic Ocean by Lawson Brigham

Chapter 7 – Climate Change and the Opening of the Transpolar Sea Route: Logistics, Governance, and Wider Geo-economic, Societal and Environmental Impacts by Mia M. Bennett, Scott R. Stephenson, Kang Yang, Michael T. Bravo, and Bert De Jonghe

Chapter 8 – Military Infrastructure and Strategic Capabilities: Russia’s Arctic Defense Posture by Ernie Regehr

Chapter 9 – Freedom of the Seas in the Arctic Region by J. Ashley Roach

Chapter 10 – Constant and Changing Components of the Arctic Regime by Alexander N. Vylegzhanin

Chapter 11 – The U.S.-Canada Northwest Passage Disagreement: Why Agreeing to Disagree Is More Important Than Ever by Suzanne Lalonde

Chapter 12 – Power, Order, International Law, and the Future of the Arctic by Nengye Liu

Chapter 13 – The ‘Regime’ Nature of the Arctic: Implications for World Order by Lassi Heininen

Chapter 14 – Arctic Exceptionalisms by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Dean

Chapter 15 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Three Levels of Arctic Geopolitics by Andreas Østhagen

Chapter 16 – Inside, Outside, Upside Down? Non-Arctic States in Emerging Arctic Security Discourses by Marc Lanteigne

About the Authors

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Time to mobilize the briefcases against Arctic ASW ops

One of the more troubling manifestations of re-emerging big power competition in the Arctic is the apparent determination of both the US and Russia to demonstrate their willingness to mount destabilizing anti-submarine warfare operations in the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic.

Continue reading at The Simons Foundation Canada.

The North Warning System (NWS) and “what we cannot defeat”

When a Canadian Armed Forces official recently told an Ottawa security conference that “we cannot deter what we cannot defeat, and we cannot defeat what we cannot detect,” his audience may well have heard it as the credible proclamation of a prudent and resolute defence posture. In truth, the statement seems to run If you are not getting perfect blood flow in the penile region to cause harder and longer lasting erection viagra from canada pharmacy for men during intercourse. At the same time, the workers need regular physical examination.Source: Paul Pasko is a training professional with interest in eLearning, technology, and performance support. cheap cialis 5mg http://foea.org/?product=6602 It has created viagra canada no prescription a negative impact on many people. Men want to get buy viagra buy and maintain a hard erection when they are stimulated with sexual intimacy. counter to decades of defence policy and practice. It ignores the inconvenient reality that there is no defence against a nuclear attack, even though current and planned early warning systems ensure that such an attack would be reliably detected. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Disarmament Diplomacy in the Age of Putin and Trump

UN officials are not usually given to overstatement, which makes the recent assessment by the UN’s top disarmament diplomat that “the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons are lower than they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War,” all the more arresting.

The Secretary-General’s High Representative for Disarmament, Izume Nakamitsu offers a blunt assessment. Not only are arms control and disarmament “going backwards,” but that leaders of the major nuclear-weapon states are once again indulging in the “alarming” rhetoric of fighting and winning nuclear wars – a notion, she says, that “should have been consigned to history.”

Continue reading to the CIPS Blogs.

CNWC Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention have written a letter, signed by 89 prominent Canadians, to the Prime Minister, urging specific Canadian actions in support of nuclear disarmament broadly and key measures to ensure a positive outcome at the April Review Conference of the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT.

…

“As is the case in its response to the climate crisis, Canada on its own will not make the decisive difference in efforts to overcome the nuclear crisis. But in the past, Canada was helpful in working actively with like-minded states to strengthen the NPT.  Another such moment, crying out for creative diplomacy, has arrived. Canada is challenged to call upon its store of political standing and diplomatic ability to work to save the NPT at its Review Conference April 27-May 22, 2020. A bridge between the nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states can best be built by adopting recommendations put forward last year by the Chairman of the Conference’s preparatory process.

“Canada should thus give leadership to a proposal to lead off the coming NPT Review Conference with a Ministerial-level declaration that would offer broad support to those recommendations by: a) recognizing the existential nuclear threat and reinforcing the urgency of the moment; b) recognizing the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear use by reiterating the Reagan-Gorbachev dictum that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought;” and c) reaffirming the disarmament steps and actions – including the “unequivocal undertaking” by the nuclear powers “to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals” – that were approved by consensus at the 2000 and 2010 Review Conferences.”

Read the full letter, in English and French, here.

Is the North Warning System obsolete?

The American commander of Norad claims that today’s security environment is “more competitive and dangerous” than any in recent generations, and that makes the case for modernizing the North Warning System. But upgrades to this northern transcontinental line of surveillance radars—deployed in support of sovereignty, air defence and frontier controls—are necessary regardless of threat levels.

The NWS joins Pacific and Atlantic coastal radars in monitoring air approaches to Canadian territory. Norad and the Canadian Armed Forces track and identify some 200,000 civilian aircraft that approach or enter Canadian airspace annually. The mission is to sort out which of those represent challenges to Canadian security, law enforcement or public safety.

…

“The point of the NWS, is and will remain, domain awareness—awareness of events within and in the approaches to Canadian territory—and modernization of the system should be driven less by the return of “great power politics” and more by an acknowledgement that domain awareness is as important in peacetime as in crisis.”

…

See the  debate  at “Face to Face” in Legion Magazine…

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

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.

Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic

Geography alone will continue to ensure that, as long as the United States and Russia place nuclear deterrence at the centre of their security strategies, both offensive and defensive systems will be deployed in the Arctic. As changing climate conditions also bring more immediate regional security concerns to the fore, and even as east-west relations deteriorate, the Arctic still continues to develop as an international “security community” in which there are reliable expectations that states will continue to settle disputes by peaceful means and in accordance with international law. In keeping with, and seeking to reinforce, those expectations, the denuclearization of the Arctic has been an enduring aspiration of indigenous communities and of the people of Arctic states more broadly, even though the challenges are daunting, given that two members of that community command well over 90% of global nuclear arsenals. The vision of an Arctic nuclear-weapon-free zone nevertheless persists, and with that vision comes an imperative to promote the progressive denuclearization of the Arctic, even if not initially as a formalized nuclear-weapon-free zone, within the context of a broad security cooperation agenda. Continue reading at…

“Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic”

See: Ernie Regehr (2019) Cooperative Security and Denuclearizing the Arctic, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, DOI: 10.1080/25751654.2019.1631696