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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.

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“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.

Pan-Arctic Military Cooperation: still the most reliable (and likely?) option

It is now seemingly routine for pundits and security professionals to warn of an impending militarized scramble for dominance over the lands, seas, and resources of the Arctic, with Russia enjoying a formidable advantage – all evidenced by the undeniable expansion of military facilities throughout the It conjointly has functions within the skin, skeleton, muscles, liver, kidney levitra samples Dosage and Prices and bone marrow. Contraindications of anti-impotence pill Kamagra jelly may get contradict female viagra sildenafil with the person who is taking nitrate contained stuff. It has been termed safe generic viagra rx by the wellbeing criteria. Natural ED Treatments: Ginseng – Red ginseng or panax ginseng has been tadalafil without prescriptions reviewed by several researchers and has concrete finding to supports it effective against male impotence. region. But it’s not clear that the official West is buying it. The Americans have ratcheted up the rhetoric, but little else has changed. The 2019 NATO summit ignored the Arctic, and individual states like Canada and Norway are sticking with a more nuanced and restrained posture on Arctic security. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

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.

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“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.”

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

Face to Face: Should space be weaponized?

July 2, 2019 by Legion Magazine

David J. Bercuson says “yes” and Ernie Regehr says “no.”

Read the debate at Legion Magazine.

Regehr side of the debate follows:

The secure and uninterrupted operation of satellites has become an essential requirement for contemporary civil-ian life and military operations. Communications, earth observation, navigation, positioning and scientific/technological advancement are all heavily dependent on satellites that are increasingly vulnerable to space debris and deliberate attack.

In the past two years, new satellites were launched at the rate of more than one per day, joining some 2,000-plus currently operational satellites, 3,000-plus defunct satellites, and hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris that circle the planet. Some 30,000 pieces of that celestial garbage measure more than 10 centimetres across and, travelling at 8 kilometres per second, a collision means total destruction and still more debris.

Weaponization of space consists of weapons aimed at space and weapons based in space. The former is being actively pursued and the latter more tentatively, owing primarily to complexity and cost. The United States, Russia, China and India have demonstrated anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon capacity, while the two Koreas, Japan, Iran and Israel are among states that could pursue ASAT capabilities.

A weapon deployed in space (for example, a weaponized laser beam) would immediately become a very expensive sitting duck, for the same reasons that any satellite is vulnerable to ASAT attack: they follow predictable pfizer viagra 50mg No woman should ever make a choice to determine whether would like to fly long-haul under her or his body healthy condition”, said SAS. These cialis in the uk technicians will always ensure that a person will be happy. A vacuum pressure is applied to the penile, which draws blood sildenafil generic india into the penile for creating an erection. The cialis generic pharmacy same can be said for ANY worker. orbital paths and lack evasive manoeuvrability.

The main result would be heightened insecurity throughout space due to an accelerating rash of ASAT testing and deployment that would surely follow.

The security of assets in space ultimately depends on norms and political/legal instruments to constrain both forms of weaponization, which is why non-weaponization of space has been a widely supported international objective ever since Sputnik.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. That treaty and the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space both set out principles meant to preserve space for exclusively peaceful purposes and to maintain it as an operationally stable and safe environment.

Given the currently low appetite for arms control, to put it kindly, those admirable sentiments aren’t about to be converted into binding treaties. But there is still room to build norms and encourage safer practices. For example, states that remain intent on ASAT testing should at least be challenged to avoid direct hits on hard targets in space, generating more dangerous space debris.

However, preventing space weaponization requires more. It means putting the brakes on the current active development of weapons aimed at space and shelving aspirations to bring weapons based in space out of science fiction and into real military arsenals. Even in the current political climate, arms control does become more compelling when the weapon in question is extremely costly, untested and highly vulnerable to military counterattack. And that pretty much describes weapons based in space.

Another condition conducive to successful arms control also applies. Neither form of space weaponization—aimed at or based in space—is yet widely deployed, so it’s still a matter of deciding not to go down that perilous road, rather than having to shift into reverse on a road already taken.

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

Conjuring Chinese Nuclear Weapons Submarines in the Arctic

A single provocative sentence about China deploying nuclear-armed submarines in the Arctic led much of the commentary on the Pentagon’s May 2019 report on developments in the Chinese military. The reference was obviously meant to stoke alarm, and as long as competitive nuclear weapons “modernization” proceeds apace – especially As a order cheap cialis http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/puppy-and-leopard-cub-pals/ it is committed to provide secure and certain care to those who are experiencing disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, the infantile cerebral palsy, the different types of brain injury, spinal cord injuries and accidents. About 20% of all men that are suffering from Erectile Dysfunction do so as the smooth muscle in their penile arteries might be my link viagra ordination damaged by inhibiting the functioning of the veno-occlusive mechanism. Most couples commence with a obvious vision levitra uk along with a natural aphrodisiac. The first one comprises of conditions which result when one of the glands of the body produces excess or deficient endocrine online cialis hormones. in the United States, Russia, and China – there is little doubt that China could one day be capable of conducting submarine patrols in the Arctic, but that doesn’t answer the question of why they would want to. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

Review: “A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers?”

Canadian military export policies came to unusual public attention following Canada’s 2014 agreement to sell $15 billion worth of armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The deal was negotiated under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and was subsequently given official approval, through the granting of export permits, by the Liberal Government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was elected in 2015. In the debate that ensued, the greater indignation was reserved for the Liberals, who had come to power on the promise of a return to multilateralism and re-engagement with the United Nations—a posture that raised expectations of a renewed exercise of Pearsonian internationalism ^[rather than of record-breaking arms sales to one of the world’s most egregious violators of global human rights standards.

See Ernie Regehr’s H-Diplo review of: Srdjan Vucetic.  “A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers?  Canada and Military Exports.”  International Journal 72:4 (2017):  503-519.  

Manufacturing the Fighter Gap

Deliveries of the used F-18 fighter aircraft that Canada is acquiring from Australia have begun. The point of the new purchase of old F-18s is to provide a temporary fix for the ostensible capability gap that was created by a redefinition of Canadian requirements. It was broadly understood as an unusually sudden You will get the same ingredient of viagra online ordering in those brands but the cost of the product is best for all those men who hate to chew pills. You can use the generic viagra price and get huge discounts on bulk orders. A research and test was conducted by The University of Pennsylvania found that opioid dependence changes the way blood flows to the penis which in turn may damage blood vessels of the penis. * Low or lack of testosterone in testes, which occurs rarely, results in a loss of libido (sexual canadian sildenafil desire) and loss of erection. * Abuse of substances like excessive alcohol intake, smoking cigarettes, use. There is no risk of developing a physical http://melissaspetsit.com/2015/01/sierra-jack-pet-foods/ cialis overnight no prescription addiction to this product. insistence on an immediate need for up to 25 more fighter aircraft (18 for operational roles, possibly seven more for testing and spare parts), but it was also part of a pattern of arbitrarily changing requirements for air defence missions that remain essentially unchanged. Continue reading at The Simons Foundation.

NATO and Nuclear Disarmament III – Understanding the Other, when the other is Russia

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NATO and Nuclear Disarmament III – Understanding the Other, when the other is Russia

It’s clear from Cold War arms control agreements that political harmony and broad strategic cooperation are not prerequisites for progress on nuclear disarmament. It is nevertheless hard to see the US and Russia launching new rounds of nuclear arms control talks without some serious efforts at building mutual trust and understanding within the Euro/Atlantic  political/security arena, even if that cannot be guaranteed to yield broad areas of agreement. Ultimately, better understanding and the rational management of conflicting interests will have to be underwritten by restrained political-military practices that seek to build confidence and, notably, point towards a renewed arms control agenda – in other words, the kinds of mutual security arrangements envisioned through the OSCE. Mechanism of ED medicines: Prescription ED medicines such as kamagra, tadalafil online no prescription daveywavey.tv, caverta etc. are prescribed to the ED sufferers in the UK. Finally, generic drugs are held to the same stern registration requirements as brand name drugs. cialis tablets online cialis prices Usually they take oral antibiotics immediately once feel uncomfortable urination, even large-dose, long-duration antibiotics therapy in spite of symptom-free. Impotence condition can be caused by both physical and psychological issues of person. order generic levitra The prospects for that level of political maturity taking firm hold in the current circumstances are not particularly bright – but that doesn’t mean they are any less necessary. Read further at The Simons Foundation.