March 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 […]
Read MoreFebruary 27th, 2007
When the six party talks[i] finally produced an agreement to reaffirm the common goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula , along with setting out specific measures to be taken toward that end, there were two primary reactions to the deal. Some welcomed it, saying it was far too long in coming and was […]
Read MoreFebruary 18th, 2007
I began reading Barack Obama’s current best-selling book mainly because of its cover – notably the wonderful phrase of its title: “the audacity of hope.” Obama says he first heard the phrase in a sermon in his home church in Chicago , and now he uses it to advance his own political agenda and ambitions […]
Read MoreFebruary 12th, 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has surprised observers by failing to mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution with a further escalation of nuclear tension. He was widely expected, over the past weekend, to claim breakthroughs in Iran ‘s nuclear, especially uranium enrichment, program. Instead his tone was conciliatory. He promised to remain within the Nuclear […]
Read MoreJanuary 30th, 2007
In Geneva the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD) has begun what some will call yet another year of living pointlessly. For 10 years now, the world’s only multilateral forum dedicated to negotiating disarmament agreements has failed to agree even on what they should talk about, much less actually negotiating. That doesn’t mean there are […]
Read MoreJanuary 28th, 2007
The UN Security Council continues to insist that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activity even though such activity does not violate any provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nor is enrichment in itself contrary to safeguards requirements under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It is not illegal for Iran to enrich uranium for […]
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