Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Nuclear Weapons”
Negotiations begin Monday at the United Nations in New York on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading toward their total elimination.” These talks flow from resolutions adopted late last year by the General Assembly in landslide votes. These negotiations could be the most significant multilateral development on nuclear-arms control since the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty …
Tick, tock: the Doomsday clock measured by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved 30 seconds closer to midnight (meaning: global catastrophe) — from three minutes to two minutes, 30 seconds. Not since the 1950s has midnight been so close. Why the move? Scientists point to the growing threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, including a potentially lethal Trump-nukes-Twitter …
Letter from members of the Steering Committee of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau October 4, 2016 Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau Prime Minister of Canada Ottawa, ON Dear Prime Minister, The undersigned, members of the Steering Committee of Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, supported by 916 members of the Order of Canada, respectfully write …
Make no mistake: neither North Korea’s latest nuclear weapons test nor the recent high-stakes stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program are the root of nuclear insecurity. They are but symptoms of a nuclear disarmament regime in a severe state of disrepair. While every other category of weapons of mass destruction has been specifically prohibited under international law, nuclear weapons — by …
Don’t look now, but a major power struggle is taking shape at the highest levels of multilateral diplomacy. At issue: the blatant disregard of nuclear-weapons states of their obligation to disarm under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Published in The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 37 Issue 2 Summer 2016 by Cesar Jaramillo The latest showdown was at the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) to Take …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published in The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 37 Issue 1 Spring 2016 I recently conducted a (blatantly unscientific) poll among a dozen or so colleagues. All were attending an experts’ seminar on nuclear disarmament in Ottawa—and all were at least somewhat familiar with the state of affairs of the global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime. “Impromptu. Show of hands. Two questions. …
Briefing 16-2 Published January 20, 2016 Author Philip MacFie “Failure to launch” is perhaps the best way to describe the state of the proposed fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT). Such a treaty would ban “the [further] production of fissile material for nuclear weapons” (p. ix), effectively freezing a state’s stockpile of weapons-grade nuclear material. In 1994, the Conference on Disarmament …
Author Cesar Jaramillo Published in The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 36 Issue 3 Autumn 2015 On the morning of Thursday, August 6, I was among tens of thousands of people gathered at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Setting the stage Despite the multitude, which included officials from more than 100 countries, there …
Author Michel Duguay Published in The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 36 Issue 3 Autumn 2015 Lessons from the past can help change the mindset of the planet on nuclear disarmament World War II ended formally on September 2, 1945, when General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Pacific armed forces, led a ceremony onboard warship USS Missouri, during which Japanese representatives signed the surrender …
For many, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is no longer a credible path to nuclear abolition Author Cesar Jaramillo Published in The Ploughshares Monitor Volume 36 Issue 2 Summer 2015 Perhaps Bob Marley said it best: “you can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” And so, in the eyes of a growing number of nations and …
