March 12th, 2009
The international security community is undergoing a remarkable shift in professional judgment on the merits and possibility of abolishing nuclear weapons. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon took up that theme with a new directness when he told a New York audience of academics and diplomats in October 2008 that “a world free of nuclear weapons […]
Read MoreMarch 12th, 2009
Defining the security assistance force in Afghanistan as a “NATO” mission misrepresents NATO’s role and has unwelcome implications for how security operations are conducted. In an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail, retired General Lewis Mackenzie,[i] among the best known of Canadian Peacekeeping commanders, referred to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan as […]
Read MoreMarch 12th, 2009
Canada’s failure to push for key non-proliferation conditions in its moves toward resuming civilian nuclear cooperation with India aided the undermining of global standards, but it’s not too late for some corrective measures. Bruce Cheadle of the Canadian Press reported over the weekend that International Trade Minister Stockwell Day has just wrapped up his four-day […]
Read MoreMarch 12th, 2009
As work finally gets underway at the UN on a treaty to govern international arms transfers, Amnesty International’s call for an arms embargo on all parties to the Gaza conflict points to principles and processes by which such a treaty will have to be implemented. The pursuit of an effective arms trade treaty deserves to […]
Read MoreMarch 6th, 2009
Whatever the real point of Ottawa’s mini-tiff with Moscow last week, one can’t help but conclude that Ottawa will regularly be turning to the Russian Bear to help get Canadians bullish on a new fleet of fighter aircraft. The last time Canada went shopping for fighter aircraft it settled on the CF-18 from McDonald Douglas […]
Read MoreFebruary 24th, 2009
This being February, Canadians have once again been treated to the annual paean to the Avro Arrow. It is a memorial that leaves a question: Why has the Avro Jetliner never received the same attention? A CBC web report had some Canadians in “mourning” this week over the demise of the Avro Arrow fifty years […]
Read MoreFebruary 18th, 2009
While Afghanistan will certainly dominate the talk at the 60th Anniversary NATO Summit in April, leaders are also scheduled to launch a process to review the Alliance’s Strategic Concept, a key element of which is a controversial and outdated nuclear doctrine.[i] The Strategic Concept – the current version of which was adopted in 1999 – […]
Read MoreFebruary 16th, 2009
By testimony of the Department of National Defence (DND), Canada has taken significant care in the transfer of 2,500 C7 automatic rifles from the Canadian Forces to the Afghan National Army. At the same time, a new US study shows that the security system into which those rifles have now gone is seriously deficient in […]
Read MoreJanuary 12th, 2009
Obama has promised it, his Defense Secretary isn’t convinced, but now you can vote on it. At Change.org you can help construct a list of priorities for the new American Administration that includes US leadership to abolish nuclear weapons in the top 10 (the direct link is below). Last fall President-elect Barack Obama told the […]
Read MoreJanuary 9th, 2009
Some critics of Israel’s military action in Gaza charge that its extensive use of American-origin weapons violates US arms transfer laws. Whatever the merits of that particular charge, it is the type of issue that an arms trade treaty would regularly be called on to settle. The proposed arms trade treaty (ATT), on which negotiations […]
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