Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 21, 2008; 

Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Ploughshares-funded Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, was honored today with the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Excellence in Public Advocacy by the Tides Foundation.  This year's prizes went to three individuals who have advocated and organized against the reemergence of nuclear power as a "solution" to climate change.  Makhijani is the author of Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: a Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, the first study to show that it is technically and economically feasible to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power.  In 2006, Ploughshares Fund recognized him as one of the "heroes" of Ploughshares' first twenty-five years, for his outstanding research and advocacy on nuclear production and proliferation issues, and his ongoing work to educate activists around the country about the science of nuclear weapons, and thereby enhance their effectiveness.  Congratulations, Arjun!     

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 18, 2008; From Washington Times

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) writes in today's Washington Times that the Russian parliament voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to extend the historic Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction agreement with the U.S. and "continue their 16-year cooperation to safeguard and destroy the vast Soviet nuclear, chemical and biological weapons arsenal, which to this day remains a danger to both countries."  In light of the progress Nunn-Lugar has made possible, Senator Lugar says that it's time for the U.S. to extend and strengthen the START Treaty.  Noting signs that the Bush Administration may be intending to let START expire, he calls on the President to an extend what he calls "the foundation of the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship...the key basis for trust between the two sides." 

These issues are central to the work of many Ploughshares Fund grantees. Last year, for example, Ploughshares' lobbying coalition worked to lift all congressional conditions to spending funds in support of Nunn Lugar activities. 

(photo: Senator Lugar meeting with Ploughshares Fund board members Michael Douglas and Joe Cirincione.)

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 18, 2008; From Haaretz

Despite the shift in the U.S. position toward Iran that was announced last week, the fear of war between Israel and Iran over the latter's nuclear program persists.  Trita Parsi, president of the Ploughshares-funded National Iranian American Council, writing today in Israel's Haaretz, says that "listening to the politicians, one gets a sense that powers beyond our control are pulling us toward a 21st-century disaster."  Parsi and co-author Roi Ben-Yahuda, an Israeli-American journalist, write that "a great deal of the force propelling us into confrontation is fueled by ignorance and dehumanization... Indeed, mutual ignorance of our respective societies plays into the hands of the hard-line leaders who are calling for blood and destruction."  They offer a list of things Israelis and Iranians should understand about each other, from the fact that both countries are culturally and linguistically isolated from their neighbors in the Middle East, to the observation that in both countries, streets are named for poets.  (photo: Rahul d'Lucca)

Posted by Joseph Cirincione
Jul 16, 2008; From Huffington Post

One week after military maneuvers raised fears of war and the price of oil, a senior US official will meet with the Iranian nuclear negotiator. A deal may be in the works.

Twenty-two years ago, former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane carried a cake, a bible and pistols to Tehran in a failed Reagan administration effort to trade weapons for Iranian aide to the Nicaraguan contras. Now, another senior official in a Republican administration is hoping for better luck. In a stunning announcement July 16, the White House disclosed that Undersecretary of State William J. Burns will travel to Geneva this weekend to sit face-to-face with Iranian nuclear negotiator Said Jalili.

Tests of missiles have yielded to tests of diplomacy. Burns will meet Jalili with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana serving as interlocutor. The subject will be a proposed "freeze-freeze" deal: Iran would halt further expansion of its uranium enrichment program; in turn, the US and Europe will halt further sanctions on Iran.

This is a dramatic reversal of Bush policy. Just two months ago, President Bush warned that negotiations with Iran would be "appeasement." Bush officials had said they would meet with Iranian representatives only after Iran fully suspended its enrichment program. Iran had said that suspension would be the subject of the negotiations, not a precondition.

Bush blinked. He has dropped the precondition. Suspension might still be possible, but the "freeze-freeze" could be the half-way point that allows serious negotiations to resolve this now five-year stand off.

It mirrors the shift the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice engineered in 2006 that reversed a similar policy towards North Korea. Then China served as mediator, orchestrating a meeting in Beijing between Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and the North Korean negotiator. This was exactly the face-to-face talks Korea had been asking for and the U.S. had denied. It worked. Twenty months later, North Korea is blowing up its nuclear reactor, not nuclear bombs.

The announcement also comes at the heels of major foreign policy addresses by both Presidential candidates. Sen. Obama laid out his plan for "aggressive, principled and direct diplomacy" with Tehran; Senator John McCain rejected the idea. Both the U.S. and Iran seem to be taking a page out of the Obama play book: Bush by sending Burns and Tehran by heeding Obama's warning to "negotiate now -- by waiting, they will only face mounting pressure."

Conservative hardliners are sure to scream betrayal, as they did on North Korea. But the seeming ascendance of the pragmatist approach within the administration may save President Bush from adding to an already dismal record of foreign policy failure.

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 14, 2008; From TPM Cafe

Ploughshares Fund grantee William Hartung writes in TPM Cafe about revelations that photographs of Iran's missile tests last week were doctored, comparing them to the fake "Potemkin villages" in that were built to show conditions in Russia in a better light than they actually were. "More to the point," writes Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, "the whole missile episode is reminiscent of the old Soviet tactic of marching the same missiles in the annual May Day parade more than once to give a sense of a mighty military arsenal that wasn't matched in reality." The stakes are similar with Iran. "Before the United States goes forward with an enormously expensive plan to site a missile defense system in Poland (political conditions permitting) and the Czech Republic, it would make sense to do a sober analysis of what Iran's capabilities (and intentions) really are."  Just such an analysis was compiled and presented to Congress last spring by Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione, and later summarized in the Foreign Policy magazine article, The Incredible Shrinking Missile Threat.  Writing in Huffington Post last week just after Iran's missile tests, he noted that "[Iran's] pyrotechnic display was a political statement, not a demonstration of any new military capability."   

Posted by Terri Lodge
Jul 11, 2008; 

On June 10, the Ploughshares lobbying coalition won a critical victory. The Senate Appropriations Committee, without debate or amendment and on a bipartisan basis, cut all funding for the administration's new nuclear weapons program--the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). Last month, the House Appropriations Committee also refused to fund the RRW. 
 

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 11, 2008; From Associated Press

So says Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione in an article about the debate over missile defense, a debate that has changed little since "the height of the Cold War when Ronald Reagan outlined his vision for a network of missiles that could shoot enemy weapons out of the sky or space."  Since that time, when Reagan's idea was roundly dismissed as a "Star Wars" fantasy, the technology has advanced to a point where earlier this year, the Pentagon used a sea-based missile defense system to shoot down a dying spy satellite loaded with a tank of toxic fuel, which was "an impressive technical feat," according to Ploughshares Fund grantee David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But it's not enough for a workable missile defense system."  Grantee Ted Postol from MIT warned that an actual enemy missile strike would likely include countermeasures intended to trick the system.

Posted by Joseph Cirincione
Jul 09, 2008; From Huffington Post

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 09, 2008; 

"One of the most notable events of the G-8 meeting in Tokyo this week," writes Henry Sokolsky of the Ploughshares-funded Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in today's Wall Street Journal, "had little to do with economic growth. In a conversation yesterday, U.S. President George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh discussed a civilian nuclear deal that has been in the works for nearly three years."  Somewhat surprising, since that deal was considered by many analysts to be as good as dead just a month ago. The controversial agreement would provide India with American nuclear fuel and technology for civilian power while allowing it to retain its nuclear weapons arsenal.  A "nonproliferation disaster" says Ploughshares Fund grantee Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, in a Carnegie analysis published today, co-authored with Ploughshares Fund advisor Jayantha Dhanapala.  It is the Bush Administration's last hope for a foreign policy "victory" before leaving office. 

Buffeted by strong political opposition in both countries, the agreement got a new lease on life last week with a shift in the ruling coaltion in the Indian Parliament that produced a slim majority in favor of the deal.  In the U.S., the deal has been forcefully opposed by nonproliferation advocates since the day it was announced, with Ploughshares Fund grantees in the lead.  Kimball has spent the past week responding to questions from the Associated Press, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and others, explaining the latest nuances of the deal and speculating on the agreement's chances for survival in light of the hurdles that remain during the Bush Administration's remaining tenure.  

Posted by Joseph Cirincione
Jul 08, 2008; From Huffington Post

Bush's agreement with the Czech government is too little, too late to save his plan for anti-missile bases in Europe. The Czech people and the American Congress have already blocked his rush to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist. 

Posted by Samara Dun
Jul 02, 2008; From Financial Times

Sean Stannard-Stockton writes in the Financial Times:  "As we face the myriad challenges of the 21st century, we must focus our examination of the social sector on identifying the very best people and organisations. We must champion these leaders and invest heavily in their ability to achieve an impact. Just as businesses turn investment dollars into profit, non-profits turn philanthropic dollars into social impact. It is not enough to simply do good, it is time to start funding the best."  (Emphasis ours; read the complete article here.) 

We couldn't agree more! Ploughshares Fund has been investing in the smartest people with the best ideas to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, and build a safer, more peaceful world for over 25 years.  As we accelerate our efforts to put the U.S. on a path to a nuclear weapon-free world in the months ahead, nothing will be more important than identifying and investing in leadership, creativity and impact.

Check out Sean's blog, Tactical Philanthropy, for some of the latest thinking on the "new wave" of philanthropy. He writes, "Rather than supporting status quo projects, the donors of the Second Great Wave will primarily be concerned with funding entities that promise to bring new approaches to solving social problems," which is what Ploughshares Fund is all about.

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jul 02, 2008; From USA Today

"Shocking and irresponsible" is how Craig Williams describes a plan being considered by the Army to ship deadly chemical weapons to military sites in four states as a way to accelerate the destruction of the munitions.  Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG) says that not only is such transport illegal, but it could expose the public to lethal nerve agents and mustard gas, and pose a risk of WMD terrorism.  Last April marked ten years since the landmark Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force and embarked on a plan to destroy all of the worlds chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007.  While solid progress has been made, that deadline was missed and the Pentagon has repeatedly extended the deadline, as Congress reduced funding for the task.  But thanks to relentless and targeted lobbying by CWWG and other groups, Congress has begun to add to the chemical weapons demilitarization budget and committed to completing destruction by 2017.  Two weeks ago, Ploughshares Fund renewed its support for the organization and its advocacy efforts to ensure that chemical weapons are eliminated quickly, safely and definitiively.

Posted by Paul Carroll
Jul 01, 2008; From Times of London

Another notable call to disarm came yesterday when four prominent British statesmen co-authored an op-ed in the Times of London that mirrored the seminal piece by U.S. counterparts in the Wall Street Journal more than a year ago.  In the article, called “Start Worrying and Learn to Ditch the Bomb”, three former Foreign Secretaries and one former NATO Secretary General laid out their reasons why nuclear disarmament is both possible and desirable.  Their case includes many of the same arguments articulated by Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn -- the spread of nuclear know-how, nuclear terrorism that is not deterrable, and the need to conclude a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), among other things.  The article follows earlier statements from high-level UK officials, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself, endorsing the goal of eventual nuclear abolition.  Ploughshares Fund has supported efforts in Europe and the UK for years, recognizing the “special relationship” between the U.S. and UK and, in particular, their unique nuclear weapons ties.  Among the organizations we support, the British-American Security Information Council works with government officials in both countries to advocate for safer nuclear policies and plans.  In addition, the Acronym Institute works in international forums to build coalitions of like-minded governments to push for meaningful nuclear reductions on the path toward a nuclear weapon-free world.

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 26, 2008; From The Guardian

Ploughshares Fund grantee Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is in the news with a big story for the second time this week.  As reported in the Guardian (and other major news outlets) "the U.S. has removed its nuclear weapons from Britain, ending a contentious presence spanning more than half a century...on the orders of President George Bush.  The report's author, Hans Kristensen, one of the leading experts on Washington's nuclear arsenal, said the move had happened in the past few years, but had only come to light yesterday."  Kristensen noted that the move follows similar removals from bases in Germany and Greece, and leaves the U.S. with about 250 nuclear warheads in Europe.   On FAS' Strategic Security blog, he adds, "Why NATO and the U.S. have decided to keep these major withdrawals secret is a big puzzle. The explanation might simply be that 'nuclear' always means secret, that it was done to prevent a public debate about the future of the rest of the weapons, or that the Bush administration just doesn’t like arms control. Whatever the reason, it is troubling because the reductions have occurred around the same time that Russian officials repeatedly have pointed to the U.S. weapons in Europe as a justification to reject limitations on Russia’s own tactical nuclear weapons."

Posted by Paul Carroll
Jun 26, 2008; 

Today another positive step was taken in the years-long quest to roll back North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.  Since a Fall 2005 agreement, and later a February 2007 proclamation, negotiations and diplomatic give and take among the players in the Six Party talks (the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia), negotiations and the diplomatic give-and-take have been extremely delicate and tenuous.  Nonetheless, in what can fairly be called a dramatic change of approach, President Bush has supported diplomatic engagement with the North in a multi-lateral setting that has yielded positive results.  Today the North delivered to China a declaration of its nuclear program’s history, including the amount of plutonium it has separated that could be used for weapons.  In exchange, the U.S. announced that it is lifting sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act and has started a clock under which North Korea will be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, also allowing for sanctions to be lifted. 

A more dramatic event will take place soon when North Korea destroys – in front of western media – the cooling tower from its plutonium production reactor, symbolizing the extent to which it has disabled its nuclear facilities.  It is notable that President Bush said in his speech outlining the developments that “multilateral diplomacy is the best way to peacefully solve the nuclear issue with North Korea. Today's developments show that tough multilateral diplomacy can yield promising results.”

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 25, 2008; From Politico.com

"As Congress prepares to consider the annual Department of Defense authorization bill and other military spending legislation totaling more than $700 billion, the need for more aggressive scrutiny is abundantly clear," write Ploughshares Fund grantee William Hartung of the New America Foundation, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).  Pointing to a $9.3 trillion national debt and large unmet social needs, Hartung and Sanders call for new measures to stop the "revolving door" that allows Pentagon employees to leave government service and go to work in the lucrative defense industry.  The Government Accountability Office reported that as of 2006, some 2,435 former generals, admirals, procurement officials and senior civilian leaders in the Pentagon were working in the defense industry, many working on defense contracts related to their former agencies. "These abuses of the public trust — and the public purse — are simply unacceptable."  Hartung and Sanders call for new requirements to close loopholes in revolving door laws. Otherwise, they write, "the Pentagon will continue to misspend untold billions of dollars that could have been applied to urgent national priorities."

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 24, 2008; 

 "On June 22, international opposition to a U.S.-proposed missile defense system based in the Czech Republic and Poland ratcheted up as thousands of people around the world participated in a 24-hour hunger strike," writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation.  Despite the number of participants "this tremendous grassroots opposition has received zero coverage from the U.S. mainstream media."  She quotes Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione, who says that the U.S. is "rushing to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist."  vanden Heuvel concludes, "given the exorbitant costs of missile defense, its destabilizing impact, and the popular opposition in the host countries, greater attention needs to be paid to this issue during this presidential campaign."

Posted by Alexandra Toma
Jun 23, 2008; 

Last year as part of the defense budget process, Congress mandated the Departments of Defense and Energy to submit a comprehensive review of the nation's nuclear posture "to address the role and value of nuclear weapons in the current global security environment" by the end of 2009.  Such an assessment has not been conducted since the last Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in 2001.  A key challenge for peace and security organizations is to figure out how best to influence the review.
In the fourth meeting of its kind, the Peace and Security Initiative - partnering with Jon Wolfsthal at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - recently brought together a group of think tank and advocacy leaders to discuss ways that the peace and security community can do just that. It is especially worthwhile to share these few tidbits from this meeting:
 

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 20, 2008; From World:Bridge

The plight of the five million people displaced from their homes by the war in Iraq is first and foremost a humanitarian crisis. But as Ken Bacon, president of the Ploughshares-funded Refugees International (RI) notes, it has become a major security problem, as well.  RI recently issued a report that found that internally displaced Iraqis are turning increasingly to militia groups, not the government, for support. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis. Militias, not the government, are winning the loyalty of aid recipients. This poses an obvious threat to what the U.S. most wants in Iraq--a stable, peaceful country run by a publicly supported government under the rule of law.” On World Refugee Day, recognition by the Bush Administration of the gravity of the crisis seems largely absent.  (photo: Refugees International)

Posted by Daryl Kimball
Jun 19, 2008; 

(by guest contributor Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Ploughshares-funded Arms Control Association.)

In the first (and so far only) event of its kind this election season, the Arms Control Association's (ACA) June 16 Annual Meeting featured a session with representatives of the campaigns of Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama on "what their respective candidates would do to advance U.S. and international nonproliferation and disarmament efforts."

While there are differences between the candidates' positions on some important policy details and implementation steps, the discussion provides further evidence of the emerging bipartisan consensus in favor of renewed U.S. leadership on nuclear disarmament that is needed to win support for steps needed to shore up the beleaguered global nonproliferation system.

Before a packed crowd of more than 150 with C-SPAN on hand for live coverage, John Holum spoke for the Obama campaign, while Stephen Biegun spoke for the McCain campaign. Holum was Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control and the the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Bill Clinton Administration. Biegun was the national security advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and was the executive secretary of the National Security Council from 2001 to 2003.

(See the full transcript of the session and C-SPAN video of their remarks.) 

After their opening remarks, Holum and Biegun responded to a series of questions on how their candidate would handle issues, including North Korean denuclearization, Iran's uranium enrichment program, nuclear terrorism, nuclear testing and the CTBT, new nuclear weapons, the future of nuclear arms control with Russia and organizing the government to more effectively deal with nonproliferation issues.

In his opening, Holum emphasized Senator Obama's commitment to "a world in which there are no nuclear weapons, period," noting that "Senator Obama has recognized that crossing the nuclear threshold is not simply passing a gradient, but plunging into a different realm."

Referring to the Bush administration's now dead proposal for a new robust nuclear earth penetrator, Holum said "rather than finding new ways to use nuclear weapons, we need to confirm that in today's world, their only utility is to deter an attack on us. And in the world [Senator Obama] seeks, they'll have no utility at all."

Holum said that Senator Obama "sees these issues as profoundly important" and noted that he has made nonproliferation a priority of his during his time in the Senate, as evidenced by his work with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) on the Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act, which was introduced along with Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in 2007.

Holum said, "Senator Obama understands that if we don't take seriously our own commitments under the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] to pursue nuclear disarmament, we'll have an uphill battle to lead a global response when Iran and North Korea blow off their obligations or an even bigger task in seeking to strengthen enforcement."

Biegun noted that in John McCain's May 27, 2008 speech on nuclear security in Denver, he quoted President Reagan who said 25 years ago that "our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth."

"This is very much Senator McCain's hope as well," Biegun said.

Biegun noted that McCain is not George W. Bush and that "Senator McCain openly embraces the role of allies ... and the role of multilateral organizations in this process of addressing nuclear proliferation and improving nuclear security." He noted that McCain "will continue the process of studied, but forward progress on reducing the size of the nuclear arsenal of the United States of America," and "will be looking to engage Russia in the reduction of its nuclear forces." Biegun also said that McCain in his speech "also sought to restore some of the anathema around nuclear weapons."

"I agree completely with John that it's diplomatic and strategic folly for us to erase the divide between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons. There is an anathema around nuclear weapons that properly must be restored," Biegun added.

Both Holum and Biegun said their candidates would place a high priority on taking steps to prevent the threat of catastrophic nuclear terrorism. Holum said "the first priority that Senator Obama has laid out and that he's pursued since he has been in the Senate is prevention, securing all the nuclear materials and nuclear weapons that are now in vulnerable sites in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Everything else pales behind that responsibility."

"It's shocking to me that we're still 12 years away from having those materials secured based on the current pace. What [Obama] has pledged to do is pursue that within four years," Holum said.

Biegun noted that Senator McCain has long-supported the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program and said he's "confident" regardless of who's in the White House, that they will put this issue "at the top of their agenda."

Although Holum and Biegun struck similar themes, a few important differences on key issues emerged during the discussion. On nuclear reductions with Russia, Holum said that Senator Obama "supports reductions in nuclear weapons, and that means going significantly below the levels in the current [Strategic Offensive Reductions Agreement of 2002] of 1,700-2,200 deployed warheads [on each side]."

"He also wants those agreements to be verifiable, either through the extension of START verification provisions or some other arrangement worked out in discussions with Russia," and "he would work with Russia to take our arsenals off hair-trigger alert," Holum said. The 1991 START agreement is due to expire in December 2009 unless extended.
Biegun didn't explain how low Senator McCain might go or commit to reducing increasing nuclear warning times, but said that "in terms of the overall direction" there is no difference of opinion from the Senator McCain campaign. He noted that McCain would begin this process with a Nuclear Posture Review, with a "strong advisory role for our military and our civilians in the Pentagon" and "close consultation with our allies." Such a review has already been mandated by the Congress.

On the issue of the long-sought and long-delayed negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty, Holum noted that in contrast to the current Bush policy, Senator Obama would seek negotiation of a fissile material cut-off "with strong verification" provisions.
Senator McCain, on May 27, expressed support for the initiative but did not indicate whether he believes it can or should be verified. Biegun elaborated by saying that there is a U.S. proposal currently on the table at the Conference on Disarmament that does not make a judgment on verifiability that "could very easily be taken up"  and that "McCain would be very eager to move forward."

On nuclear testing and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Holum said Obama will "press for the earliest possible ratification of the CTBT -- not just take a look, but take the lead in getting it approved -- and not just limit testing, but to end it for all time." He noted that there have been improvements in the verifiability of the zero-yield CTBT since 1999 and greater confidence in the United States ability to maintain its existing stockpile in the absence of nuclear test explosions.

Biegun was far more equivocal about the advisability of the CTBT in its current form. In response to one of the questions, he noted that McCain said on May 27 that "he's committed to continuing the U.S. moratorium on testing" and did commit "to take a look" at the CTBT "and any other serious initiative" to further limit testing. Referring to the Senate debate and rejection of the CTBT in 1999, Biegun said, "I don't accept as confidently as John that all of those problems are resolved."

Biegun added, "the question was, can this treaty, as it is currently written, be brought into force. I think that is a stretch ...."

To date, 178 countries including the United States have signed. Nine more states including the U.S. and China must ratify to achieve its entry into force.

On the controversial proposal for a new, so-called "reliable replacement warhead," each speaker reiterated his candidate's previous positions. Biegun noted that Senator McCain has not addressed it specifically but noted that in his May 27 speech McCain laid out an "all-encompassing vision that he expects to apply to any new developments in this strategic area."

Holum noted that Senator Obama has said that "we shouldn't be rushing to deploy a new nuclear warhead at a time when we are leading to convince the rest of the world that nuclear weapons have a diminished and an ultimately disappearing role in our security strategy and in the security strategy of other countries." Holum said Obama "hasn't ruled out for all-time that concept; but he has said it's very important not to pursue anything like this way before it's necessary to consider it."

As I noted in my opening remarks for the session, Senator McCain's and Senator Obama's focus on this underreported issue in the campaign is a welcome start. Yet, every presidential candidate pays homage -- at some point -- to the importance of reducing and eventually eliminating the nuclear threat. The real test is whether they will exert the time, the diplomatic energy, and the good judgment necessary to meet the challenge once they are elected -- and whether the public is sufficiently informed and engaged to hold them to their commitments.

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 19, 2008; 

Based on a report by Ploughshares Fund grantee Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Time magazine is warning that European Air Force bases that store U.S. nuclear weapons are below par in with respect to security for those weapons. "According to an internal U.S. Air Force report," the magazine notes, "the sites are falling short of Department of Defense requirements, with fencing and security systems in need of repair, thin rotations that often lead to staffing shortages, and responsibilities falling to inadequately trained foreign security personnel."  Kristensen, who obtained the Air Force report through the Freedom of Information Act, concludes in FAS' Strategic Security Blog that "the nuclear weapons deployment in Europe is, and has been for the past decade, a security risk....Since the terrorist attacks in September 2001, billions of dollars have been poured into the Homeland Security chest to increase security at U.S. nuclear weapons sites, and a sudden urge to improve safety and use control of nuclear weapons has become a principal justification in the administration’s proposal to build a whole new generation of Reliable Replacement Warheads. But, apparently, the nuclear deployment in Europe has been allowed to follow a less stringent requirement."   Kristensen writes that perhaps the new information will empower governments and individuals who have long argued for an end to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

The news comes just as the Financial Times reports that hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components cannot be accounted for in the U.S. military's inventory.  Ploughshares Fund grantee Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, is quoted in the Financial Times article calling the revelation was “very significant and extremely troubling.”

Posted by Terri Lodge
Jun 18, 2008; 

Hard work on Capitol Hill by Ploughshares Fund's Arms Control Advocacy Collaborative is paying off again.  On June 17, 2008 the House Energy and Water Subcommittee on a bipartisan basis voted to delete all funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). The Administration had requested $40 million dollars for the RRW this year even though the Congress decided to end the program last year.  Noting that "the President's request is long on weapons and short on nonproliferation," Subcommittee Chairman Pete Visclosky (D-IN) deleted funding for the RRW while increasing funding for nonproliferation programs.  He said, "there is no sense in expending the taxpayer's hard earned dollars absent clear plans" for the future. Read Congressman Visclosky's statement here.

Much more work is ahead.  The Senate will be acting on this issue later in the summer.   

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 18, 2008; From Slate

While A.Q. Khan, the disgraced former head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, characterized as "lies" the new allegations revealed by Ploughshares Fund grantee David Albright that he provided a Swiss nuclear smuggling ring with blueprints for an advanced nuclear warhead, readers of the online magazine Slate had other questions on their minds.  What does such a blueprint actually look like, they asked Slate's "explainer," Chris Wilson.  Is it even blue? He, in turn, asked Albright and nuclear weapons experts at three other Ploughshares-funded organizations to clarify.  With information from Matt Bunn, Phil Coyle and Jon Wolfsthal, the Explainer explained that "while the word blueprint may conjure images of white schematics on blue paper, the designs found on the computers of two Swiss businessmen associated with Khan contain gigabytes of digital information.... Assuming the electronic blueprints described this week are fairly complete and authentic, they contain far more than just a set of pictures."  Would the information by itself enable a country to develop a nuclear weapon? "Most experts say it is more important to stop the proliferation of the nuclear material needed to create an atomic weapon than the designs for the bombs themselves. But many fear that the blueprints could contain sensitive nuclear secrets that are classified in the United States. Even if a nation or terrorist group with nuclear ambitions lacked the knowledge or materials to construct the precise weapon from the blueprints, the instructions may offer some pointers for the development of a more general program."      

Posted by Paul Carroll
Jun 16, 2008; From Washington Post

Over the weekend, the Washington Post, New York Times and virtually every major news organization reported on new information developed by Ploughshares Fund grantee David Albright indicating that detailed, digital blueprints for a sophisticated nuclear warhead design were contained in computer files seized from a family of Swiss businessmen. The three men – a father and two sons – were part of the infamous A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network and had been arrested and jailed several years ago.  In 2006 it was discovered that their computers contained, among other things, design specifications for a warhead that could be small enough to be delivered by a missile – such as those possessed by Iran and North Korea.  In Sunday’s Washington Post, Joby Warrick writes about discovery of the files and raises serious questions about their implications.  Albright's Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) is a leader in providing independent technical oversight and analysis of governmental and media claims.  ISIS’ new report alerted the world to the existence of the blueprints, and to the fact that the extent of their dissemination and whether other copies exist elsewhere are unknown.  The report quotes a senior IAEA official who says it is a "very scary possibility" that others may have obtained them.  
Some four years after the U.S. government declared the Khan episode “wrapped up,” the network continues to pose dire risks.  With the help of people like Albright, Ploughshares Fund will work to keep these serious issues in the media and to demand accountability from governments.  Interviewed by Reuters, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Ploughshares-funded Arms Control Association, said that the U.S. needs to pressure Pakistan's new government to let the IAEA interview Khan.  

Posted by Samara Dun
Jun 13, 2008; 

Ploughshares Fund's longtime contributor and friend, Suzanne Seton, wrote to us recently: "I had just finished reading Joe Cirincione's recent letter of May 16th to Ploughshares Fund's supporters when Charlie Rose's program came on the air...his guest was Sandy Weill, former chairman and CEO of Citigroup.  He spoke of his passion for philanthropic work...and that he was now in search of some project that would spark his interest.  What - thought I - would be more appropriate than the work of Ploughshares!  After all, unless we get rid of all nuclear weapons that could destroy mankind and make uninhabitable the world as we know it...all the philanthropic projects Sandy Weill has made possible could be wiped out."  Mr. Weill, are you listening?

Jun 11, 2008; 

On Tuesday, June 10th, citizens got on the phone to stop a future war. Organizers of "Time to Talk with Iran"set up hotlines on the West Side Terrace of the Cannon House Office Building allowing people to talk directly to Iranian citizens. Those outside the area were encouraged to contact their congressional representatives to urge them to support a U.S. policy of direct, bilateral and comprehensive talks without preconditions between the governments of the U.S. and Iran. Representatives Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Ron Paul, Marcy Kaptur and Sheila Jackson-Lee joined the campaign in a press conference and spoke in support of talking with Iran without preconditions. Click here to watch a video summary of the event by The Real News Network.

More than 50 conversations between Americans and Iranians took place during the event, which was sponsored by the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI). Members of CNAPI include Ploughshares Fund grantees Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Friends Committee on National Legislation.

On the same day, an editorial in the New York Times warned the U.S. and Israel to refrain from saber rattling, but included “greater financial pressures” as a valid diplomatic tool, a position some have disagreed with. A Government Office of Accountability (GAO) report issued in January showed limited or no effects from the current economic sanctions.
 
Tomorrow, Ploughshares Fund grantees Robert Einhorn of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) testify before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on “Russia, Iran, and Nuclear Weapons: Implications of the Proposed U.S.-Russia Agreement”. Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA) will also testify at the hearing. Yesterday in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?” he posed the following riddle: "What country is three times the size of Texas and has more than 300 days of blazing sun a year? What country has the world's largest oil reserves resting below miles upon miles of sand? And what country is being given nuclear power, not solar, by President George W. Bush, even when the mere assumption of nuclear possession in its region has been known to provoke pre-emptive air strikes, even wars."

Through a combination of expert testimony and public education, arms control advocates are promoting informed policymaking on proliferation risks, the risks of war, and the role of diplomacy.

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 11, 2008; From ABC News Australia

Australia can play a leading role in the international push to eliminate nuclear weapons, former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said as he accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to head a new International Commission on Nonproliferation and Disarmament, which will be chaired jointly by Australia and Japan.  The commission's goal is to jump-start efforts to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in advance of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. 

Evans, who is president of the Ploughshares-funded International Crisis Group, is no novice when it comes to nuclear disarmament.  He headed the landmark Canberra Commission for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which in 1995 laid out a series of "practical steps towards a nuclear weapon free world.   Not surprisingly, those steps are similar to the action plan outlined by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn in their now-famous series of op-eds in the Wall Street Journal calling for a  "world free of nuclear weapons."  The difference now is that the global climate is ripe for nuclear disarmament.  And as one Sydney newspaper noted, Australia wants to be at the forefront of the debate once again.

Evans was also a member of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix.  But his most recent and most enduring work has been to develop and champion the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, R2P for short.  R2P seeks to prevent genocide and mass atrocities by affirming that states bear the primary responsibility for protecting their populations from harm, and if they are unable or unwilling to do so, the international community has an obligation to act. A radical departure from the policies of the past, R2P removes the cloak of state sovereignty that has historically allowed governments to ignore or engage in atrocities with impunity.  The UN General Assembly adopted the principles of R2P in 2005.

Because of his advocacy on behalf of nuclear disarmament and on behalf of the world's most vulnerable people, Ploughshares Fund named Gareth Evans as one of our heroes of the last 25 years.    

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 10, 2008; From Boston Globe

A plan to internationalize Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, once considered unthinkable, is gaining traction among policymakers around the world, reports Farah Stockman in the Boston Globe.  The proposal, first publicized in detail in an article earlier this year in the New York Review of Books, calls for a dramatic shift in U.S. policy. "Rather than trying to halt Iran's efforts to enrich uranium, it says, the United States should help build an internationally run enrichment facility inside Iran to replace its current facilities," writes Stockman. "Supporters argue that such a program would fulfill Iran's insistence on enriching uranium on its own soil, while preventing the dangerous material from being diverted to weapons."  Members of Congress, including Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Hagel, have endorsed exploring the idea.  Iran proposed a similar plan in a letter last month to the UN, and Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, told Stockman that the plan should be negotiated.  Ploughshares Fund has supported a number of programs to engage high-level Iranians in discussions about Tehran's nuclear program, including grants for efforts by William Luers, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and  Dr. Jim Walsh, who detailed the proposal in the New York Review of Books. "This is nobody's first choice, but it may be the compromise we end up with," Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione told the Globe.

Posted by Paul Carroll
Jun 06, 2008; From Moscow Times

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 04, 2008; From Los Angeles Times

(The following op-ed by Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione appeared in today's Los Angeles Times.)

Posted by Alexandra Bell
Jun 03, 2008; 

Posted by Deborah Bain
Jun 02, 2008; From YouTube

"Like war, peace must be waged," says actor George Clooney in a video commemorating 60 years of United Nations peacekeeping. He reminds us that peace is more than a wristband, a slogan on a t-shirt, "and certainly more than a celebrity endorsement." As he salutes the more than 100,000 blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers currently deployed in seventeen missions worldwide, we at Ploughshares Fund recognize the people and initiatives we support to strengthen peacekeeping around the world, including the Future of Peace Operations Project at the Stimson Center, which works with the UN, the African Union and other regional organizations to strengthen the capacity of military to protect civilians from genocide; the Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping (PEP) which promotes better peacekeeping policymaking; the Public Law and Policy Group for its on-the ground legal assistance to governments involved in peace negotiations; and the Post Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for its innovative work in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other conflict-prone regions.  "Peace," says George Clooney, "is a full-time job." (Click to view the video.)

Posted by Paul Carroll
May 30, 2008; From McClatchy Newspapers

There is no love lost between President Bush and North Korea.  In fact, statements made earlier in his administration showed a personal distaste for thinking about, much less dealing with Kim Jong Il, the DPRK’s leader.  Nonetheless, over the past two years, what had arguably been an abject failure of the administration’s approach to North Korea’s nuclear program, underscored most dramatically by its October 2006 nuclear test, has been reversed.  Ambassador Christopher Hill, with clear support from the President and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has been managing an extremely difficult task of dealing with the North Koreans and other nations involved in the Six Party talks.  The result was a February 2007 agreement with specific goals and “deliverables” from the DPRK, the U.S. and its partners. 
No one ever said seeing the agreement through would be easy. 
To wit, this week as U.S. officials pored over some 18,000 pages of the North’s records of operating its Yongbyon reactor, it was learned that prior CIA assertions that the DPRK had reprocessed plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons before 1992 may have been wrong.  In a story today by McClatchy's Warren Strobel, Ploughshares Fund grantee David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, provided his insights about the discovery.  Albright, a former UN nuclear weapons inspector who consults frequently with the U.S. government, said the reactor records turned over by North Korea are "consistent with what they've said."