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 »

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 »

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 »

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 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 »

President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, H.R. 1105, which continues the policy shift away from the build up of nuclear weapons and toward efforts to stabilize U.S. relations throughout the world. Read more »