Given political will, what could nuclear weapon states, individually and as a group, realistically do to positively affect change and inject hope into the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
The removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil may be a “red-line” issue for the SNP today, but as the complexity of other defining issues - currency, European Union membership, national debt - begins to surface, this “red-line” may well evolve into a bargaining chip.
Forecasts past the withdrawal of US and British forces in Afghanistan tend to prize fears of violence and instability spilling over into Pakistan, obscuring the country's vital importance to both India and China.
Unlike the US, Canada has always had a positive reputation in the strife-tone Middle East as an impartial broker and peacemaker. Until now.
While understanding the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons are key to acheiving disarmament, efforts for a new convention outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will only fragment the nuclear debate further.
India and Pakistan’s zero-sum game is hindering development and the proxy wars in which the two states have indulged need to come to an end. If they do, big dividends would follow.
Periodically wracked by famine and lambasted in a UN human-rights inquiry, North Korea remains a state without parallel. What lies behind the regime’s latest purge?
With the larger substantive issues of ceasefires and political transition at an impasse, the ground broken over humanitarian access has suddenly become a metric for whether the first phase of Geneva II will be considered a success.
The increasing discussion of the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons may be able to move disarmament talks beyond the political disparities between the weapons haves and have-nots – and shift our understanding of the consequences beyond simply national interest.
Only strengthened diplomatic efforts, treating all partners as equal, can defuse the deep mistrust threatening the interim nuclear deal and enable a long-term agreement.
Almost all discussion of Afghanistan after 2014 hinges on the withdrawal of western forces. Yet into that gap a major power is stepping—China. China’s involvement in turn poses major questions, vis-à-vis Pakistan, India and their own point of friction—Kashmir.
