03 Apr The Forgotten World of Nuclear Arms Control
Way back during the Cold War, an international or foreign policy blog like this one would be obsessed with arms control, especially nuclear arms control. Today, the major nuclear powers continue to reduce or even eliminate their strategic nuclear arsenals (see this press release and report) and, pursuant to international treaties, they disclose exact numbers of strategic nuclear assets. You’ll be happy to know, I’m sure, that “Throw-weight of Deployed ICBMs and Deployed SLBMs (MT)” has been eliminated in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakstan while Russia maintains a throw-weight of 2547 and the U.S. has a throw weight of 1794.90. That this slow-motion pullback from nuclear Armageddon barely rates a blog post, which is a sign, I’m sure, of how far we’ve come.
1) I, for one, sure would like more information about Israel’s nuclear weapons. It strikes me as odd that there is so much speculative and hypothetical hoopla over Iran’s potential capacity here when recent history and current events suggest we be concerned with the conduct of Israel’s military…all the more so when we add its possession of nuclear weaponry as one more volatile variable to consider. 2) For many NGOs, the subject of nuclear arms control is hardly a ‘forgotten world.’ See, for instance the massive list of relevant NGOs at the website of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Reaching Critical Will). Their website contains important information helpful to academic and non-academic alike, with a global NGO contact data base and links to the larger relevant NGOs (e.g.: Abolition 2000 Network; American Nuclear Society; Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers; Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy; Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis; Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; Union of Concerned Scientists; and so forth and so on. 3) The fact that Israel, India and Pakistan have not signed the signed the… Read more »
Whoops: ‘have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty….'[I was a bit unsettled after UCLA lost to Florida…I think Wooden being hospitalized was a sign that something was amiss…and the Dodgers losing earlier in the day set the whole inauspicious thing in motion.]