On March 15, 2006, American troops approached a house around 2:30 AM in Ishaqi to apprehend a potential Al Qaida in Iraq suspect. Read more »

Nuclear disarmament is a challenge that requires ongoing education around the risks tied to the very existence of the weapons themselves. PSR and our international affiliate International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), have been working on this issue for decades. While we’ve made some progress, the threat of nuclear war continues to loom over the world. With just a few missiles, the whole world could be annihilated. Prominent officials including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and President Obama are now attempting to heed Kennedy’s wise words before these weapons “abolish us.” As the title of this blog post prompts, we need to destroy these weapons... or they will destroy us. Read more »
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Despite much criticism, the new START treaty represents an important achievement in arms control, because it restores verifiable and enforced nuclear arms reductions between the United States and Russia. It replaces the meaningless Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) negotiated by the Bush administration, which was jokingly described as "SORT of a nuclear arms control treaty", because it contained no verification measures and only came into force the day it expired. Read more »
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The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Clock back 1 minute signaling an increased environment of international cooperation on nuclear disarmament but with considerable hurdles left before real action is taken. Read more »

CNN has published a piece I wrote urging President Obama to use the Nobel Address to reaffirm his commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spell out why it is in America's national security interest to secure a nuclear weapons convention. Read more »

The Nobel Committee has invited me to attend the award ceremony and dinner in Oslo this week to represent the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and our US affiliate Physicians for Social Responsibility. This year marks the 24th anniversary of our receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for the work we did alerting the world to the medical consequences of nuclear war. Read more »

Back in June, PSR joined an appeal from a broad and unprecedented coalition of nuclear medical and nonproliferation groups urging Congress to fund domestic production of medical isotopes without bomb-grade uranium, to ensure supply of the isotopes while reducing risks of nuclear terrorism. Read more »

As the nuclear issue heats up in Iran, one other nuclear issue has been pushed to the backburner by the Obama administration. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits underground nuclear testing, faced Senate ratification once in 1999 and failed. In his April speech in Prague, however, President Obama stated that, "To achieve a global ban on nuclear testing, my administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty." Unfortunately, the administration has recently stated that it does not plan to take on the fight for the CTBT until a win is virtually assured. Read more »

A leading chemical weapon nonproliferation expert told a Washington crowd how lessons learned on the road to zero by the Chemical Weapon Convention regime could be applied to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The Washington based Wilson Center hosted Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter June 16, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Read more »

Indonesian Foreign Minister Wirajuda said June 8 in Washington at the Carnegie Endowment that Indonesia supported the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995, but “naturally we were dismayed” when nuclear weapon states did not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Read more »

Jonathan Medalia at the Congressional Research Service just put out a report on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Here is one key point he makes about Congress’ upcoming floor debate/bargain: Read more »

In a former post I mentioned that France at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) meeting in NYC this past May was “an interesting player” and had not supported the final document of the meeting. I was not implying that France is pushing back a nuclear weapon free world movement. Read more »

Oliver Meier, the Arms Control Associations International Representative based in Germany, reflected on the German debate and the argument to keep U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe at the conference today. “All German political parties, except the conservative party, are in favor of withdrawing U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe now,” said Meier. Adding that, “the outcome of Germany’s elections will not fundamentally affect the Foreign Ministry’s position on this.” Read more »

Senate Republican, John McCain, embraces Obama’s vision, which he claims was actually Reagan’s vision, of a world free of nuclear weapons in a Senate floor speech June 3. He quoted President Ronald Reagan saying, “The only value in possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they can't be used ever. I know I speak for people everywhere when I say our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.” Senator McCain said “that is my dream too.” Read more »

Dr. Rebecca Johnson, Director of the Acronym Institute, made an appearance today at the conference and commented on recent Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) action. With over 20 years of experience in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and international diplomacy, it is not surprising that she said a few very important things to say on the topic. Rebecca reflected on the NPT Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting in New York May 4-15. It was the last meeting of state parties before the NPT 2010 review conference. Read more »

Today at the conference, we had an intervention by Camille Grand, Director of the Foundation pour la Recherche Strategic (a leading French Security thinktank). Camille Grand said that nations in the past accepted deep cuts and drastic down-sizing of their nuclear arsenals, because they believed their security situation was improving. In Asia, a region where the security situation is worsening, Grand pointed out that nuclear weapon arsenals are growing. This is one of the greatest challenges to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime at the moment. Read more »

We had an intervention today at the conference in Paris by Roger Roffey from Swedish Defense Research Agency FOI. Roffey has 30 years of experience in the field of nonproliferation and disarmament. He said that it is hard to distinguish between offensive and defensive activities in the field of biological weapon (BW) production and use. A nation could legally be researching a defensive BW program by developing agents that terrorist could use in order to prepare a response. Yet, this same research is dual-use, and could be used to build an offensive biological weapons program. Read more »

I will be leaving for Paris this weekend for a conference entitled “A New Farewell to Arms.” The European Union Institute for Security Studies (a thinktank for the European Union) is holding the event, which is meant to be a forum for discussion. Read more »

I just went to a fantastic talk with former US Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry and Former U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft at the Council on Foreign Relations. You have to give Charles Ferguson (at Council on Foreign Relations) credit for getting these two national treasures together to write a report on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy. Read more »

North Korea stunned the international community with a second nuclear test Monday, but thanks to test ban treaty technology, thorough analyses were provided to our national leaders. Read more »