Nuclear Weapons

Photo: Heiko Mass, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany, addressing the Security Council meeting on collective action to improve United Nations Peacekeeping Operations on 28 March 2018. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe.

Germany Backs UN Chief in Countering Autonomous Weapons

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN (IDN) – Keeping humans in control of autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence is an important element of UN Secretary-General António Guterres' action plan to implement the Agenda for Disarmament, Securing Our Common Future, presented in May 2018.

"Essentially, the question is whether we are in control of technology or whether, ultimately, it controls us," said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in his remarks on March 15 at the conference '2019 Capturing Technology. Rethinking Arms Control' at the German Foreign Office in Berlin. The development of fully autonomous killer robots, cyber weapons and new biological agents has created scenarios for which there are to date almost no internationally recognised rules, he added.

Photo: Izumi Nakamitsu, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. Credit: UN

Countering Challenges Affecting Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Viewpoint by Izumi Nakamitsu

The following are extensive excerpts from remarks by Izumi Nakamitsu, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), at the International Conference on 'Capturing Technology. Rethinking Arms Control' in Berlin on 15 March 2019.

BERLIN (IDN-INPS) – Many of us feel a growing sense of unease about the challenges rapid technological developments pose to disarmament, arms control and international peace and security. The international community urgently needs to explore, articulate and confront these issues at the highest level. Because one thing is clear: the march of technology waits for no one.

Photo: On 10 August 2009 Sergio Duarte, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, speaks at the opening of the exhibition "Against Nuclear Arms" at the UN Headquarters in New York. The exhibition portrayed the destruction caused by the A-bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, as well as decades of nuclear arms testing in Kazakhstan. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Strategic Realities Impeding Nuclear Disarmament

Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte

The writer is President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and a former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. He was president of the 2005 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The advent of weapons of mass destruction, in particular the nuclear weapon, was the most dramatic factor of change in the strategic panorama since the Treaty of Westphalia established the basis of the current international order in 1648. During the following centuries, International Law was formulated and adapted continuously in an effort to accommodate changes in strategic realities and shifting security perceptions.

Photo: Trump and his team have clearly squandered the seven months since the Singapore summit on June 12, 2018 to make progress on even modest steps toward that meeting's lofty goals. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit Disappointing But Not Devastating

Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball

This article by the Executive Director of Arms Control Association appeared on February 28.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – Not only did the summit in Hanoi between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fail to produce meaningful results, but Trump and his team have clearly squandered the seven months since the Singapore summit to make progress on even modest steps toward that meeting's lofty goals.

Photo: Dr. Daisaku Ikeda. Credit: Seikyo Shimbun.

Ushering in an Era of Peace and Disarmament

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | TOKYO (IDN) – "Amid the continued escalation of global challenges, crises that were previously unthinkable are now becoming reality throughout the world." This is the backdrop to a wide-ranging proposal eminent Buddhist philosopher, educator, author, and nuclear disarmament advocate Dr. Daisaku Ikeda has put forward.

'Toward a New Era of Peace and Disarmament: A People-Centered Approach' by Dr. Ikeda, President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), is a treasure of wisdom and knowledge approaching issues through an interdisciplinary lens, taking into consideration the interconnected nature of themes.

Photo: Kim and Trump shaking hands at the red carpet during the DPRK-USA Singapore Summit on June 12, 2018. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Beyond the Second Trump-Kim Nuclear Weapons Summit

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Kim Jong-un, paramount leader of the North Korean dictatorship, arrived in Vietnam by train and limousine ready to meet President Donald Trump. The two leaders met in June 2018 in Singapore, applauded themselves and each other and made some sort of a deal even if it wasn’t the one Trump boasted about – the total elimination of the North’s nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, the North has stopped nuclear testing. The U.S. only stopped in 1992 and France in 1996, so this is a very important step forward. It should not be minimized as the American “Blob” is doing. (The “Blob”, a creation of the White House of President Barack Obama, is the highly influential industrial/military/legislative/media complex, a majority of whom are hard line on foreign affairs.)

Photo: A U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center B-52 Stratofortress from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., carries an X-51A Waverider prior to the scramjet’s first hypersonic flight test on March 26, 2010. (U.S. Air Force)

UN Warns Against Emerging Hypersonic Weapon Technologies

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Emerging hypersonic weapon technologies present a challenge for the existing arms control and disarmament architecture at a time when it is already under strain. Because hypersonic weapons do not count towards the limits of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which is the key arms control agreement limiting the strategic delivery systems of the two major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, warns a new study. Nevertheless, several States are actively pursuing novel long-range manoeuvrable weapons, most significantly hypersonic boost-glide systems comprising ballistic missiles equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs).

Photo: UNODA Chief Izumi Nakamitsu. Credit: UN Audiovisual Library

On the Precipice of a Multipolar Qualitative Nuclear Arms Race

Viewpoint by Izumi Nakamitsu

Following are extensive excerpts from a video briefing by Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), to the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on 7 February 2019.

NEW YORK | GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – 2019 will be a weighty year for the Conference on Disarmament. As a global community we are beset by challenges. In the field of disarmament our progress has slowed to a crawl and is in imminent danger of suffering reversals. Instead of seeking to enhance what binds us, we tend to focus on what divides us.

Photo credit: Munich Security Conference.

Europe Ventures to Speak Up Against USA

By Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK | MUNICH (IDN) – "The whole liberal world order appears to be falling apart – nothing is as it once was," said Wolfgang Ischinger, a senior German diplomat in an opinion article in the run-up to the 2019 Munich Security Conference (MSC) that he chairs.

He added: "When Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and started the bloody conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, many considered him to be the major cause of global destabilization."

"Nobody could have known," Ischinger went on to say, "that just a few years later the U.S. President, of all people, would seriously challenge the current international order. Donald Trump questions free trade just like he questions the Western set of values or NATO. This has massive consequences – not just for us Europeans."

Photo: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at the first Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 1985.

A Nuclear Arms Race Will Produce No Winners

Despite everything, it is still in our power to avoid nuclear confrontation.

Viewpoint by Mikhail Gorbachev*

MOSCOW (IDN-INPS) – The fate of the INF treaty has politicians and ordinary people worried on every continent. I am also concerned, and not only because I signed that treaty with former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Dec. 1987. These events are yet another manifestation of the dangerous and destructive trends in world politics facing us today.

The main idea guiding us on the path to signing the original treaty was expressed in a joint statement with the United States, adopted at our first meeting in Geneva: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”