Digests and Blog

By Tom Z. Collina The following entry was originally posted on The Hill's Congress Blog on August 2, 2011. As the dust settles on the just-passed budget deal, one thing is becoming clear: there is now high-level bipartisan agreement that the U.S. defense budget will be reduced in a major way, anywhere from $350 to $850 billion over the next decade, according to the White House. And despite defense hawk grumblings, reductions of this magnitude can actually make America safer by forcing leaders to cancel low-priority programs and focus on the ones that really matter. It's time to get serious…

By Daryl G. Kimball Over the weekend, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993-97, John M. Shalikashvili passed away. As the obituaries in The Washington Post and The New York Times note, he had an amazing personal story and illustrious career. President Barack Obama said, in part, "... the United States has lost a genuine soldier-statesman whose extraordinary life represented the promise of America and the limitless possibilities that are open to those who choose to serve it. From his arrival in the United States as a 16-year old Polish immigrant after the Second World War, to a…

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. on Capitol Hill Monday, July 18, 2011 (Image Source: Associated Press) By Greg Thielmann Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) proposed a plan this week for reducing the deficit that includes $79 billion in cuts from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next ten years. In specifying the individual components of a reduced strategic force structure, Coburn deserves credit for helping to break the strait jacket of Cold War thinking, which still burdens considerations of 21st century defense needs. As Ben Loehrke of the Ploughshares Fund noted in his July 19 analysis,…

The U.S. Atomic Energy Detection System (USAEDS), a sensor system established in 1947, is capable of detecting “nuclear explosions that occur under land or sea, in the atmosphere or in space,” according to a July 12, 2011 Department of Defense news report. This detection system monitors three important nuclear treaties, the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), the Threshold Ban Treaty (1974), and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (1976), and is based out of the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). The news report states that USAEDS is comprised of sensors aboard over 20…

(Image Source: The United Nations Office at Geneva) By Rob Golan-Vilella Two weeks ago, some eyebrows were raised when North Korea assumed the rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament (CD). Observers mocked the idea that North Korea—an international pariah state that in the past decade has withdrawn from the NPT and conducted two nuclear tests—could become the president of an organization whose mission is to negotiate agreements relating to nuclear disarmament. This week, Canada responded to this news by announcing that it will boycott the current session of the CD until Pyongyang…

by Daryl G. Kimball Is a world free of nuclear weapons possible? Do states that have developed nuclear weapons have the vision and the courage to verifiably eliminate their nuclear arsenals? As South Africa has shown, some do. Others can. The casings made for the atomic bombs and stored at Advena. (Image Source: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/) July 10 marks the 20th anniversary of the Republic of South Africa's signature of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non nuclear-weapon state, making it the first and -- so far -- the only country to build nuclear weapons and then later to…

By Daryl G. Kimball and Peter Crail This week's meeting of senior officials from the five original nuclear weapon states (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China) in Paris for the second meeting on nuclear weapons policy issues is a potentially important step toward multilateralizing the nuclear disarmament enterprise. Their joint press statement (full text below) released today by the so-called "P5,"reaffirms the importance of the 64-point Action Plan approved at the 2010 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference and specifically Action 5, which…

During a June 30th-July 1st NPT Review Conference follow-up meeting, the P5 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) reaffirmed their continued commitment to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The following is an excerpt from the Final Joint Press Statement of the P5: “The P5 States recalled their commitment to promote and ensure the swift entry into force of the CTBT and its universalization. They called upon all States to uphold the moratorium on nuclear weapons-test explosions or any other nuclear explosion, and to refrain from acts that would defeat the object and…

By Daryl G. Kimball Global efforts to prevent the spread of the world's most deadly weapons depend on universal compliance with rules that constrain the sale of nuclear technology. Too often, however, powerful states try to make exceptions from these rules, or simply ignore them, in order to help powerful commercial nuclear interests score profits or to curry favor with key allies, or both. The latest example is the Obama administration's proposal to create a process for India to join the 46-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)–the nuclear technology control organization established in 1975…

By Oliver Meier in Berlin The German government believes that Chinese plans to export two nuclear reactors to Pakistan are covered by the existing policies and understandings of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and that the 46-nation export control organization should not even discuss the deal at its meeting this week in the Netherlands. In response to a set of questions asked by opposition Social Democrat members of the German Bundestag on Germany's nuclear export control policies, the government explained that it views the planned export of the Chashma 3 and 4 nuclear reactors to Pakistan…