Category: GLOBAL ISSUES

Analysis by Bennett Ramberg*

LOS ANGELES (INPS-IDN | Yale Global) – Seventy years ago in June the United States placed on the global agenda a proposal that would have eliminated nuclear weapons for all time. Drawing on the US State Department’s Acheson-Lilienthal scientific advisory study, the Truman administration turned to the long-time confidant of presidents, Bernard Baruch, to craft a proposal for global action.

In June 1946, Baruch appeared before the newly constituted UN Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) to present the nuclear abolition plan that would come to bear his name. He called for establishment of an International Atomic Development Authority that would retain “managerial control or ownership of all atomic energy potentially dangerous to world security,” eliminate weapons manufacturing and dispose of all existing bombs while asserting “power to control, inspect, license all other atomic activities” coupled with assured enforcement.

Viewpoint by David Krieger *

SANTA BARBARA | USA (IDN) – The ten worst acts of the Nuclear Age described below have set the tone for our time. They have caused immense death and suffering; been tremendously expensive; have encouraged nuclear proliferation; have opened the door to nuclear terrorism, nuclear accidents and nuclear war; and are leading the world back into a second Cold War.

These “ten worst acts” are important information for anyone attempting to understand the time in which we live, and how the nuclear dangers that confront us have been intensified by the leadership and policy choices made by the United States and the other eight nuclear-armed countries.

Analysis by Jamshed Baruah

BERLIN | VIENNA (IDN) – When will the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) enter into force and become international law? This was the question on the minds of senior officials from around the world who had gathered in Vienna on June 13 to mark the 20th anniversary of the treaty, which is crucial to ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons.

The answer to the question is simple. CTBT has so far been signed by 183 States and ratified by 164. Its demanding entry-into-force provision requires 44 particular “nuclear technology holder” States to ratify the Treaty for it to enter into force.

Eight of them have yet to ratify: China, DPRK (North Korea), Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States (China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have already signed the Treaty).

Analysis by Rodney Reynolds

NEW YORK (IDN) – When President Barack Obama made a historic visit on May 27 to Hiroshima – where a U.S. nuclear attack on Japan in 1945 resulted in over 200,000 casualties – he offered no apologies for the human devastation nor provided any justification for the first and only use of nuclear weapons ever.

But he reiterated his call for a world without nuclear weapons – even as the U.S. continues to modernize its nuclear programme at a cost of over $1 trillion dollars proving there is still a widening gap between pledges and deliveries.

Despite all the good intentions, are we any closer, are we far removed, from a future nuclear war that could annihilate millions?

In a projection into the future, the Wall Street Journal on May 19 posed a more relevant question: “Would we drop the bomb again?”