Category: Nuclear Weapons

By Jamshed Baruah

NEW YORK | ULAANBAATAR (IDN) – While unanimously agreeing on tougher sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in response to the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test early September, the UN Security Council called for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks.

By pleading for the multilateral negotiations involving China, DPRK, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation and the United States, the 15-member Council expressed its “commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation on the Korean Peninsula”.

The issue also drew the focus of the ‘International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament Issues: Global and Regional Aspects’ on August 31-September 1 some 10,150 kilometres away in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, bordered by China to its south and the Russian Federation to it north.

By J C Suresh

TORONTO | WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) – As the U.S. Congress prepares to enact legislation “that could further imperil the global nuclear order,” a disarmament expert has urged the lawmakers “to seek to preserve and strengthen the existing architecture of arms control and non-proliferation agreements” – instead of rushing to hasten their demise.

The “key pillars” of the agreements “have their origin in the vision of President Ronald Reagan,” says Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association (ACA).

By J C Suresh

TORONTO | WASHINGTON, DC (IDN) – U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have failed to competently execute their own stated policy of “maximum pressure and engagement” with North Korea, says the Arms Control Association (ACA), which is dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies.

In a statement on North Korea’s 5.9 to 6.3 magnitude nuclear test explosion on September 3, ACA’s Executive Director Daryl G. Kimball says: “Trump has greatly exacerbated the risks through irresponsible taunts and threats of U.S. military force that only give credibility to the North Korean propaganda line that nuclear weapons are necessary to deter U.S. aggression, and have spurred Kim Jong-un to accelerate his nuclear program.”

By Daryl G. Kimball*

The author is the Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. This article first appeared on August 29, 2017 in the Arms Control Today as a Focus Editorial with the caption Don’t Abandon the Iran Nuclear Deal, and is being republished by arrangement with that monthly journal on nonproliferation and global security. – The Editor

WASHINGTON (IDN-INPS) – Although his administration is already struggling with one major nonproliferation challenge – North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities – President Donald Trump soon may initiate steps that could unravel the highly successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, thereby creating a second major nonproliferation crisis.

By Ramesh Jaura

ASTANA (IDN) – While a moment of silence was observed on August 29 at 11:05 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan’s capital city Astana to honour the memory of the victims of all nuclear weapons tests, some 2713 miles (4365 kilometres) away, North Korea fired an intermediate range ballistic missile that flew over Japan: The same day a new facility was inaugurated in Kazakhstan under the auspices of the UN’s nuclear watchdog that could open a fresh chapter in non-proliferation.

In the five decades between July 1945, when the United States exploded its first atomic bomb, and the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world. After the CTBT was opened for signature in September 1996, nine nuclear tests had been conducted until 2016. Since then, only North Korea is known to have been conducting nuclear tests.

Courtesy Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF)

SANTA BARBARA (IDN-INPS) – Tony de Brum, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), passed away on August 22, 2017. He was a powerful and inspiring voice for the abolition of nuclear weapons as well as climate sanity. He was a visionary leader, respected and admired throughout the world for his strength, wisdom, warmth and unceasing optimism.

Born in 1945, de Brum was one of the first Marshall Islanders to graduate from college. He played a key role in the negotiations that led to the first compact of free association between the U.S. and the RMI, and participated in the development of the Constitution of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – With a population of 344,000, Iceland does not have a military of its own. Nevertheless, it is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and as such was one of the countries that boycotted the discussions leading up to the potentially groundbreaking UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted on July 7.

Prior to the start of the conference leading up to the Treaty, Foreign Affairs Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson replied to a parliamentary question by Left-Green MP Steinunn Thora Árnadóttir on whether Iceland would take part in the UN discussions about banning nuclear weapons, as she felt that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had not been very successful.

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) maintains a tight spider network around the world that enables it “to employ great ingenuity in using formal banking channels and bulk cash transfers to facilitate illicit endeavours,” a close look at the Report of the UN Panel of Experts monitoring the implementation of Security Council sanctions against North Korea reveals.

An analysis of the Report covering the period from February 6, 2016 to February 5, 2017 does not give cause for hope that the expanded sanctions imposed unanimously by 15 members of the Security Council on August 5 would achieve the declared objective, which the Resolution 2371 (2017) defined as follows:

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Does President Donald Trump (‘also known as’ Fire and Fury) have an idea what a nuclear war would be like? I ask the question because President Roland Reagan confessed he did not until he decided to look at some movies (once an actor, he was a cinema man), like “On the Beach” that depicted a nuclear war. The exercise changed his thinking and he became an anti-nuclear-weapons militant. Together with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev they cut their nuclear stockpiles sharply. They also came near an agreement to destroy all their nuclear weapons.

The blasts at the end of the Second World War in Hiroshima and Nagasaki can now be repeated hundreds of thousand times. The remains would not just be the broken arches of the Caesars, the abandoned viaducts and moss-covered temples of the Incas, the desolation of one of the pulsating hearts of Europe, Dresden, but millions of square miles of uninhabitable desolation and a suffering which would incorporate more agony than the sum of past history.

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Considering the “fire and fury” characterizing the heated exchanges between the U.S. and North Korea, July 7 appears to be light years ago. That was the day when 122 member states of the United Nations voted to adopt a legally binding global Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that may eventually lead towards their total elimination.

The Treaty that opens for signature on September 20, was adopted four weeks ahead of the 72nd anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945 – giving cause for hope, as Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said in the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, that “all the efforts of the hibakusha over the years” would finally take shape.