Nuclear Weapons

Image: President of the 10th RevCon Gustavo Zlauvinen opening the Conference in the UN General Assembly Hall on August 1, 2022. Credit: UN

The NPT Review Cycle in Wartime

Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte

The writer is Ambassador and former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

“Recalling that States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State and that the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security are to be promoted with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources..” (From the Preamble of the NPT)

Image: US Air Force Staff performing a simulated missile reduction in accordance with the New START on Minot Air Force Base, N.D., 2011. Credit: Flickr/US Air

New START Noncompliance Highlights Need for Nuclear Abolition

By Ariana Smith

The writer is the Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

NEW YORK (IDN) — The recent US allegation of Russian noncompliance with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) cannot be adequately understood outside of the context of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.

The Russian invasion, initiated nearly one year ago, was marked early on by insistent and illegal threats of nuclear use, intended to dissuade Western nuclear and nuclear-allied states from "interference" in Ukraine.

Image: US President Barrack Obama (left) and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) signing the New START Treaty on 8 April 2020 in Prague. Source: White House

US-Russia Nuclear Treaty in Danger of Breaking Down

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — The growing nuclear threats from Russia—the last one from President Vladimir Putin himself—have resulted in a negative fallout for a landmark treaty between two of the world’s major nuclear powers.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1) between the US and the then Soviet Union—on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive weapons—was signed on 31 July 1991, entered into force on 5 December 1994 and later extended through 4 February 2026 heralding a New START Treaty.

Image: Russian Ballistic Missile. Credit: © Ladislav Karpov/TASS

Russia Urged to Comply with New START Inspections

By Arms Control Association (ACA)

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) — Experts from the Arms Control Association called upon Russia to comply with its obligations to allow for on-site inspections to verify compliance with the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and to engage in further nuclear disarmament diplomacy with the United States.

Image: Vasili Arkhipov and Soviet submarine B-59, forced to the surface by U.S. Naval forces in the Caribbean near Cuba, with a U.S. helicopter overhead. Source: U.S. National Archives.

The Man Who Saved the World from a Nuclear War

By Glen Milner and Leonard Eiger

The man who saved the world from thermonuclear annihilation in 1962 was born on January 30, 1926. Ground Zero Center published this article.

POULSBO | WASHINGTON, USA (IDN) — At a time when the probability of nuclear war is as nearly as high as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is crucial that we recall the story of Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer who prevented a Soviet nuclear strike against U.S. surface warships during that very crisis in 1962.

Photo: Members of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists in Princeton, New Jersey, on November 18, 1946, which included Albert Einstein and several of the physicists who had participated in developing the atomic bomb. Copyright 2014, Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University Libraries and Press.

Nuclear Weapons and Nationalism: An Incendiary Mix

By Andrew Lichterman*

OAKLAND, California (IDN) — Seventy-seven years ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed its first resolution. The subject the governments represented there thought important enough to be first on their agenda was the establishment of a commission to develop proposals for the control of atomic energy and “for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

Image: South Korean and U.S. missiles are displayed at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea on 31 Aug. 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

South Korea Vows to Go Nuclear Amid Growing Threats from North

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — As nuclear tensions continue to spread across the Korean Peninsula, South Korea has for the first time declared “nuclear weapons as a policy option”,—triggering the threat of a potentially new nuclear power looming in the horizon.

South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol is quoted as saying that if North Korea's nuclear threat grows, South Korea would consider building its own nuclear weapons or request the US to redeploy them in the Korean Peninsula.

Is this for real?

Image: Nuclear Armageddon. Source: The National Interest

Neutral Countries Should Mediate Between Russia and Ukraine

Viewpoint by Jeffrey D. Sachs

This article was published in The Economist and is being republished with the author's permission.

NEW YORK (IDN) — Neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to achieve a decisive military victory in their ongoing war: both sides have considerable room for deadly escalation. Ukraine and its Western allies have little chance of ousting Russia from Crimea and the Donbas region, while Russia has little chance of forcing Ukraine to surrender. As Joe Biden noted in October 2022, the spiral of escalation marks the first direct threat of “nuclear Armageddon” since the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago.

Photo: The "Good Defeats Evil" sculpture, located at UN Headquarters in New York, depicts an allegorical St. George slaying a double-headed dragon—symbolic of a nuclear war vanquished by historic treaties between the Soviet Union and the United States. UN/Ingrid Kasper

The Ukraine War Should Alert Us to The Need to Ban Nuclear Weapons

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — In the year 2000, President Vladimir Putin, having just won his first election, made his own contribution to solving the nuclear weapons imbroglio. He said in a speech that Moscow was prepared to drastically reduce its stockpile of nuclear missiles. Putin's call was not just for further cuts than the US suggested ceiling of 2,500 for each side but for reductions far below Moscow's previous target of 1,500. (At present, Russia has around 6,000 warheads and the US 5,400.)

Photo: The foreign affairs ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, France, China, the European Union and Iran (Lausanne, March 30, 2015). Wikimedia Commons.

US Must Offer a Nuclear Deal That Iran Cannot Afford to Decline

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — The policies of Iran’s government are not set in stone, as critics interminably suggest. Early December Iran’s prosecutor-general was reported as saying that the morality police were being disbanded. Clearly two months of demonstrations, led mainly by women, and now with open support by Iran’s football World Cup team while competing in Qatar, have made some in the government have a big think about its long-term policies.