Stop Muddying The Waters On The Appointment Of The CTBTO Executive Secretary

Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf*

“And so … ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”, President John Kennedy, 20 January 1961.

VIENNA (IDN) — For the better part of a year, diplomats from more than 180 countries have been feuding over the appointment of the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) located in Vienna, alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). [2021-05-16]

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The Nuclear Threat in the New Information Age

Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball

The writer is the executive director of Arms Control Association and publisher of Arms Control Today since 2001. The following is the text of Mr Kimball’s Foreword to 2021 Joint Media Project Report of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with IDN as flagship agency in partnership with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) — An informed and mobilized public is essential to human survival in the nuclear age—and effective and independent journalism is essential to revealing the hard truths, the consequences, and the choices that nuclear weapons pose for all of us. [2021-05-12]  JAPANESE 

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NATO Plans to Focus on Russia and China

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (IDN) — “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared in a blunt interview with The Economist in November 2019. Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice”, he said, and needs to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power; otherwise, we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” [2021-05-12 | 03] CHINESE | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF |  RUSSIAN

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Biden Should Return Quickly to the Obama-led Iran Nuclear Deal

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — It was the Americans who helped the long-ago-deposed Shah of Iran start Iran’s nuclear power research. He wanted a bomb. The Americans seemed insouciant about where this might lead.

After the revolution, the research was bequeathed from the wrong pair of hands to another wrong pair of hands—the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in 1979. [2021-05-11]

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Time to Think Beyond Current NWFZs

Viewpoint by Dr Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan

The writer is Chairman of Blue Banner NGO, Former Mongolian Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

ULAANBAATAR (IDN) — Post-cold war peace dividend has not realized. Though the number of nuclear weapons of the two largest nuclear weapon holders—Russia and the United States—was reduced but then the reduction process came to a complete halt. The number of states possessing nuclear weapons has almost doubled against the background of further modernization of such weapons, lowering the threshold of their possible use and the increase in nuclear weapon spending. The non-proliferation regime is gradually weakening. [2021-04-30 | 02] JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | RUSSIAN | SPANISH 

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Sleepwalking into Nuclear War?

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Last week on Tuesday (April 20), US Strategic Command, the part of the military responsible for nuclear weaponry and its use, posted an official Tweet that read, “We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option”. [2021-04-27]

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Optimism Over Progress in Vienna Talks on Iran Nuclear Deal

By Kelsey Davenport, Julia Masterson and Sang-Min Kim

While Kelsey Davenport is Director for Nonproliferation Policy and Julia Masterson, Research Associate at the Arms Control Association, Sang-Min Kim is Scoville Fellow.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) — The United States, Iran, and the other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal expressed varying degrees of optimism over the progress made during recent talks in Vienna on the necessary steps to restore full implementation of the accord. [2021-04-22]

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Modernization, New Weapons and The Risks to International Security

Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte

The writer is Ambassador, former High Representative of the United Nations for Disarmament Affairs and current President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

NEW YORK (IDN) — “Reliance on nuclear weapons for [deterrence] is becoming
increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”
    George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn
Wall Street Journal op-ed, January 4, 2007

“It is becoming clearer that nuclear weapons are no longer
a means of achieving security; in fact, with every passing
year they make our security more precarious.”
    Gorbachev, Mikhail, The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2007. [2021-04-16]

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Plea for Diverting Funds from Nuclear Weapons to Combating COVID-19

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) — The Nobel laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a coalition of non-governmental organizations promoting adherence to and implementation of the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty, has been pleading for divestment in nuclear weapons. “The imminent entry-into-force of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) allows for a unique opportunity to hit the nuclear weapons producers where it hurts—their wallets,” an ICAN campaign says. [2021-04-14|01] GERMAN | HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF |

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Nuclear Disarmament: Thinking Outside the Silo

Viewpoint by Patricia Lewis

This article outlines Chatham House’s new approach to mapping the complexity of nuclear arms control. It was originally published on Chatham House’s ‘THE WORLD TODAY’ on April 2, 2021, and is being reproduced for the information of our readers.

LONDON (THE WORLD TODAY) — Every five years since 1970 diplomats and arms control experts have gathered to review progress – or lack of it – in the disarmament process enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The latest review conference, which was scheduled for May 2020, was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. [2021-04-03]

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More Articles...

• 1. The Challenge of Nuclear Submarine Proliferation
• 2. Mayors for Peace Say the Danger of Nuclear War Is Real and Growing
• 3. Middle East Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone, Long Elusive, is Making Progress, say Experts
• 4. Die Eliminierung von Interkontinentalraketen würde die Chancen eines globalen nuklearen Holocaust erheblich verringern
• 5. Elimination of ICBMs Would Greatly Reduce the Chances of a Global Nuclear Holocaust