May 22nd, 2007
A recent survey, conducted in countries that together represent just over half the world’s population, found strong public support for a strengthened United Nations, including strong majority support for a standing UN peacekeeping force, UN regulation of the international arms trade, and UN authority to investigate human rights violations. The survey was conducted by the […]
Read MoreMay 9th, 2007
A BBC Television report on Northern Ireland ‘s transition into a new era of self-rule under a government of unity felt obliged to warn viewers that the old hatreds have not vanished.[i] Or, as the BBC’s website puts it, “Old enmities have been foregone, rather than forgiven or forgotten. It is just that [the old […]
Read MoreApril 27th, 2007
No statement or commentary about this NPT PrepCom, which runs through to May 11, begins without a reminder that the NPT is in serious trouble. And so it is. And therein lies a disturbing irony. While the reasons behind the trouble are well-known – indeed, they can be summed up in a series of place […]
Read MoreApril 16th, 2007
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor explained the decision to extend Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan to 2009, the tone they set was one of hard-nosed defence of the Canadian interest.”Our rationale for being in Afghanistan is clear,” Mr. Harper told the House of Commons in the May 17/06 that preceded […]
Read MoreApril 10th, 2007
Canada has figured prominently, if unwillingly, in five decades of Indian nuclear weapons development. Now that Washington has proposed changing the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) – rules that currently preclude nuclear cooperation with India – Canada has an opportunity to channel its historical involvement to support for multilateral rules that constrain India […]
Read MoreMarch 30th, 2007
What’s new after more than a decade of stalemate in the Geneva-based disarmament negotiating forum is that nothing has actually changed – except that now diplomats are tantalizingly close to a breakthrough regarding the CD’s program of work. In fact, they might just manage to get it approved before the end of April. While they […]
Read MoreMarch 26th, 2007
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, has written compellingly in the WashingtonPost[i]that the damage done by the phrase, War on Terror, “is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.” The persistent […]
Read MoreMarch 18th, 2007
The NWS have themselves defined what is required of them to advance the internationally agreed objectives of global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. That is not to say that they have unfailingly complied with their own requirements, but they have in fact left little doubt about their obligations. Three essential agreements that set out NWS commitments […]
Read MoreMarch 4th, 2007
UN Security Council consensus on Iran is a major achievement, except that it may turn out to be the wrong consensus at the wrong time. Iran’s failure to comply with the Council’s unanimous demand that it suspend all uranium enrichment, again confirmed in the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has become […]
Read MoreMarch 3rd, 2007
In the run up to the current NPT PrepCom, 1 the United States issued a number of background policy documents, 2 at the core of which is a narrow, literal reading of the Treaty’s disarmament agreement (Article VI – see the text). 3 It is a reading sharply and obviously out of sync with the […]
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