arms control

Indicators of our current insecurity

/ Dan Smith / 3 Comments

Global insecurity today is shaped by the combination of an environmental crisis, in which climate change is prominent but by no means the only element, and a darkening security horizon. These twin crises are linked: each worsens the other so steps to address them can and should also be linked.

Nature and peace: damage one, damage the other; protect one, enhance the other.

To identify possible remedies for the global malady, we need to understand the intersection of problems and issues. But it may be useful to begin by looking at the components. After all, insecurity is not just one thing, nor is the environmental crisis. There are diverse indicators of each.

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Extending New START

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So Joe Biden, as anticipated, has moved quickly to arrange with Russia the extension of the New START bilateral nuclear arms control agreement. Signed in 2010, taking effect in 2011, and due to expire on 5 February this year, the treaty permits extension for up to five years by mutual consent.

The good people at Deutsche Welle asked me the two key questions – “Is this good news?” “Why”? And let me answer them on their 8 o’clock bulletin yesterday evening.

For a more extended discussion, Jan Eliasson and I put out our thoughts earlier this week. In brief, as I argued in my previous post, in a tough period with a complex set of issues, the approach on arms control of the new US President is welcome. He faces some demanding tasks. And the first signs are positive.

SIPRI Yearbook 2019: Nuclear weapons and other key trends

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

The SIPRI Yearbook 2019 is now available on line. It registers key data in the world of peace and security in 2018 and establishes some of the basic indicators that let us track and assess the trends. It is not a comfortable picture.

You can get a quick take on it from my shorthand overview below and/or from the latest short film in our Peace Points series.

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2018: what just happened?

/ Dan Smith

There we are, another year, full of puzzlement and uncertainty. Some things moving forward (détente on the Korean peninsula, peace talks at last about Yemen), others regressing (world hunger on the rise, arms control crumbling, impacts of climate change unfolding), and other things hard to interpret. In this short film, the closing one of 2018 in SIPRI’s Peace Points series, I give my view. in the first one of 2019, I will take a look ahead at hopes for the coming year.

For 2018, I don’t really have a total on the bottom line of the balance sheet. The question that gets put at the beginning is, are we moving towards or away from midnight on the Doomsday clock? And my answer is a cross between ‘I don’t know’ and ‘Neither’ (i.e., no movement for either good or bad).

Happy (and PEACEFUL) New Year greetings to everyone!

Arms control: scanning the landscape

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Even before President Trump announced the USA would withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 (see my last blog post on this), the arms control landscape did not present a happy picture. Experts from SIPRI and from the Russian Institute, IMEMO, met in October and discussed the problem. The occasion marked the 25th anniversary of the SIPRI Yearbook being published in Russian, thanks to translation effected through IMEMO, together with a Russian supplement produced by IMEMO. We captured some of the key themes in this short film in SIPRI’s Spotlight series.

Munich insecurities conference 2018

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

The 2018 edition of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), a top level meeting on peace and security issues, was held on 16-18 February. Among the participants were “more than 30 heads of state and government and over 100 cabinet ministers from across the globe”. There was not much sense of actual security to be found. Continue reading →

The nuclear triptych of 2017

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

Nuclear weapons have come into the political limelight in 2017 as they have hardly done since the 1980s. North Korea, the Iran nuclear deal and the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons create a triptych – one panel for arming up and nuclear confrontation, one for arms control, and one for complete nuclear disarmament. Which way is the world headed? Continue reading →