| UN Chief Issues ‘Red Alert,’ Calls for Defending Shared Values By J Nastranis  UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has issued “a red alert for our world” in his message on the occasion of 2018 New Year. It’s probably the first time ever a UN Chief has done so. He does not explicitly refer to the nuclear muscle-flexing between the United States and North Korea, but warns: “Global anxieties about nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War.” Read More Israeli Disarmament Movement Steers Through Nuclear Ambiguity By Bernhard Schell  AMMAN (IDN) – The Israeli media ignored the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in honour of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on December 10, 2017 in Oslo. The Israeli Ambassador to Norway however attended the event. The silence of the Israeli media, according to observers, was not surprising though ICAN’s eminent partner in the Middle East, the Israeli Disarmament Movement (IDM), founded and chaired by Sharon Dolev, has influenced the Israeli public discourse for the past six years. [P 29] Read More UN Chief Expects New Sanctions To Help Make 2018 ‘A Pivotal Year’ for the Korean Peninsula By J Nastranis  UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres desires to make 2018 “a pivotal year” for the achievement of sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula. In a statement attributable to his spokesperson, following the adoption of a new Security Council resolution (UNSCR 2397), he said: “The only way forward for a comprehensive peaceful and political solution requires de-escalation and open communication channels, now.” The resolution was approved on December 22 in response to the latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), widely known as North Korea, on November 28. [P 28] Read More In Just Ten Years ICAN Makes It To Nobel Peace Prize By Alice Slater*  NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – In Oslo on December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and was accepted on behalf of the Campaign by its executive director, Beatrice Fihn, and by Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner and survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. Both spoke for the thousands of campaigners in over 400 organizations and more than 100 countries around the world who succeeded this fall in working with friendly governments to move a majority of states at the United Nations to adopt a treaty to prohibit to ban nuclear weapons, making their possession, use, or threat of use unlawful. Read More The Doomsday Machine by a Damascene Convert Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*  LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust. A new book, “The Doomsday Machine” by Daniel Ellsberg tells the whole nuclear bomb story in detail. No one has done it better. The only rival is the movie, “Dr Strangelove”, that got the essentials right without being privy to much of the Ellsberg’s knowledge. Read More ‘Listen To Our Testimony. Heed Our Warning’ By Setsuko Thurlow  Setsuko Thurlow is a Japanese-Canadian nuclear disarmament campaigner who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. She is a leading figure in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Thurlow accepted the prize on behalf of the campaign at a ceremony in Oslo on 10 December 2017, together with Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN. Following are extensive excerpts from her Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. – The Editor JAPANESE Read More Monitoring Dismantlement Key to Eliminating Nuclear Weapons By Jamshed Baruah  NEW YORK (IDN) – Since the United Nations General Assembly adopted on July 7, 2017 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, urging the prohibition and complete elimination of the atomic arsenal, the question of verification and the dismantlement of nuclear weapons has acquired particular importance. Because there are several areas where adequate technologies either need to be developed or re-engineered. Over the past four decades, the United States and the Soviet Union as well as its successor the Russian Federation have used a series of bilateral agreements and other measures to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear warhead and strategic missile and bomber arsenals. [P 27] JAPANESE TEXT VERSON PDF Read More Nobel Peace Prize for ICAN Puts Pressure on Norway to Sign the UN Treaty By Nina Berglund  The writer is editor and publisher of Norway’s news site, newsinenglish.no. This report, which originally appeared with the headline Peace Prize puts squeeze on Norway, is being reproduced courtesy of the news site. – The Editor OSLO (IDN-INPS) – Nobel Peace Prize Day in Oslo dawned with clear and sunny skies on Sunday, but not everyone was celebrating. The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) challenges Norwegian leaders to finally support a ban themselves, and now pressure is building on them to do so. Read More No More Bluster, A Way Out of North Korean Nuclear Crisis Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*  LUND, Sweden (IDN) – When, soon after the election, President Barack Obama invited Donald Trump to the White House we didn’t learn much about their conversation. But we were briefed on one thing: Obama had told Trump that North Korea would be the most pressing and difficult issue on his agenda. How right that was. But the Americans have missed the boat. It’s as simple as that. What’s done is done. While Washington has dithered and dithered through three successive presidencies, missing opportunity after opportunity, North Korea has gone from zero nuclear weapons to an arsenal of at least 20. Its test of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, in the early hours of November 29, is said to be capable of striking the U.S. It doesn’t have a nuclear tip yet but that will come sometime in the next two or three years. [P 26] | JAPANESE TEXT VERSON PDF Read More Youth Pleads with World Leaders to Reduce Risk of Nuclear War By Jamshed Baruah  BERLIN (IDN | UNFOLD ZERO) – Amid menacing tensions between the United States and North Korea in the aftermath of Pyongyang testing a long-range missile that is potentially capable of hitting the entire mainland U.S., young academics and activists from around the world are asking world leaders to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons being deployed and to support United Nations initiatives for nuclear disarmament, including the High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament to take place in 2018. The appeal – Reach High for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World – was issued at the conclusion of a three-day conference (November 27-29) in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic. It was organised by the Youth Network of Abolition 2000, a global civil society network to eliminate nuclear weapons. Read More Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Miscalculation By Daryl G. Kimball  Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. This article first appeared with the caption ‘Step Back From the Nuclear Brink’. WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – Over the past year, cavalier and reckless statements from President Donald Trump about nuclear weapons and his threat to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea have heightened fears about Cold War-era policies and procedures that put the authority to launch nuclear weapons in his hands alone. Read More Decode Trump To Halt His Access To U.S. Nuclear Codes Viewpoint by David Krieger*  SANTA BARBARA | USA (IDN-INPS) – The future of the world and of humanity is at the mercy of a lunatic. His name is Donald Trump, and he alone has access to the U.S. nuclear codes. Before he does something rash and irreversible with those codes, it is imperative to decode Donald, taking the necessary steps to remove this power from him. Trump tweeted on December 16, 2016: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Read More Progress Toward Nuclear Weapons Abolition Viewpoint by David Krieger*  SANTA BARBARA | USA (IDN-INPS) – The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been working to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life for 35 years. We were one of many nuclear disarmament organizations created in the early 1980s, in our case in 1982. Some of these organizations have endured; some have not. We were founded on the belief that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age, that nuclear weapons must be abolished, and that the people of the world must lead their leaders to achieve these goals. As a founder of the organization, and as its president since its founding, it now seems an appropriate time to look back and reflect on the changes that have occurred over the past 35 years. Read More The Threat of a Nuclear War is Very High Today Viewpoint by John Scales Avery  John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. Presently an Associate Professor in quantum chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, since the early 1990s, he has been an active World peace activist. During these years, he was part of a group associated with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which in 1995 received the Nobel Peace Prize. The following are excerpts from introduction to the book NUCLEAR WEAPONS: AN ABSOLUTE EVIL that can be downloaded from http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/nuclear.pdf – The Editor COPENHAGEN (IDN) – Today, because of the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump might initiate a nuclear war against Iran or North Korea, or even Russia, the issue of nuclear weapons is at the center of the global stage. Read More Vatican Conference Underlines Nexus Between Sustainable Development and Nuclear Weapons Ban By Ramesh Jaura  VATICAN CITY (IDN) – When world leaders approved ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, as an outcome document of the United Nations summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development two years ago, they designated it as “a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” that “also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom”. The document, which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, is based on a consensus emerging from protracted discussions within the Open Working Group. It meticulously avoids words such as “a world free of nuclear weapons”. JAPANESE Read More Look Beyond Nuclear Deterrence to Deserve the Title of ‘Civilization’ By Alexey Arbatov  Dr. Alexei Arbatov is the head of the Center for International Security at the Institute of Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is a former scholar in residence with the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. Formerly, he was a member of the State Duma, vice chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party (Yabloko), and deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and is the head of the academy’s Center for International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Following is the complete text of his paper presented to the conference on ‘Perspectives for a world free from nuclear weapons and for integral disarmament’ at Vatican City on 11 November 2017 – The Editor Read More The Vatican Galvanizes Support For A Nuke-Free World By Ramesh Jaura  VATICAN CITY (IDN) – The Vatican’s first international conference on the prospects for “a world free from nuclear weapons and for integral disarmament” on November 10-11 was not intentionally planned to overlap with U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Asia as the U.S. faces heightened tensions with North Korea. It has been in the works for several years, and the timing, as Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana quipped, is a coincidence that could be seen as an act of “divine providence”. [P 25] CHINESE TEXT VERSON PDF | GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSON PDF Read More UN Treaty Offers a Way Out of the Nuclear Crisis By Paolo Cotta-Ramusino  The author is Secretary General of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Professor of Physics at the University of Milan, Italy. Pugwash was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. Following are extensive excerpts from a paper Professor Cotta-Ramusino presented to the conference on ‘Perspectives for a world free from nuclear weapons and for integral disarmament’ at Vatican City on 10 November 2017. – The Editor VATICAN CITY (IDN-INPS) – Nuclear weapons have been used only twice in war, but nevertheless, the build-up of nuclear arsenals has progressed relentlessly up until the 1980s. The number of US nuclear weapons reached a maximum of 32,000 in 1967 while Soviet nuclear weapons reached a maximum of 45,000 in 1986. Read More No Sign Yet of a Sustained Direct U.S.-North Korean Dialogue By Daryl G. Kimball  Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. This article first appeared with the caption ‘Trump Repeats Failing Formula on North Korean Threat’. WASHINGTON, D:C: (IDN-INPS) – In his high profile address to the South Korean National Assembly November 8, President Donald Trump missed a crucial opportunity to clarify and adjust his administration’s disjointed and, at times, reckless policy toward North Korea. Although Trump indicated earlier […] in a press conference in Seoul that he is “open” to talks with North Korea, he has also said in recent days that now is not the time for such talks but instead it is time to apply “more pressure” on North Korea to bring North Korea to bargaining table and to agree to eliminate its nuclear program. While in Asia, Trump has also repeated, albeit in less bombastic terms than before, that he will resort to the use of military force if North Korea does not back down. Read More UN Takes Yet Another Step Towards a Nuke-Free World By J Nastranis  Note: This report draws heavily on information and analysis provided by the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) and UNFOLD ZERO, a platform for UN focused initiatives and actions for the achievement of a nuclear weapons free world. – The Editor. NEW YORK (IDN) – As surging tensions between North Korea and the U.S. raise again the spectre of a nuclear war, the United Nations has called on leaders around the world to come together in a High-Level Conference to reduce nuclear dangers and pave the way for nuclear disarmament. Read More |
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