Nuclear energy has two facets. When it is used for peaceful purposes such as power generation, medical services, agriculture and industry, it can make a contribution to the betterment of the quality of life. However, it also could be used for military or criminal purposes. Thus, there are both great opportunities and great risks.
Topic:
International Relations, Energy Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Irresponsible arms transfers are undermining many developing countries' chances of achieving their Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. This paper shows new evidence of how this is happening in parts of Asia, Latin America, and Africa - either by draining governments' resources or by fuelling armed violence or conflict.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Treaties and Agreements, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Interest in more comprehensive institutional arrangements for Northeast Asia have been given a fillip by the suggestions emerging from the Six Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program. The following paper looks at regional interactions on energy and related policies. It asks whether the regional actors see conflicts emerging within the region in their individual attempts to solve their energy security concerns, or whether they envisage cooperative ways for resolving such problems. In the light of this, it asks whether there could be a functionalist basis arising from energy cooperation for a wider process of community-building in Northeast Asia.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
The dispute over Iran's nuclear programme is deadlocked. Five years of negotiations, proposals, UN resolutions and sanctions have failed to achieve a breakthrough. As diplomacy struggles and Iran continues to advance its nuclear capabilities, the issue becomes ever more grave and pressing.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Oil, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and International Security
The United States and Russia are still the giants of nuclear power, accounting for more than half the world's enriched uranium production. Twenty-five percent of the world's nuclear power plants are found in the United States and half of those power plants use Russian uranium. Russian nuclear fuel now constitutes 10 percent of the U.S. power generation mix. The interdependence arising from existing trade in nuclear fuel points toward a natural partnership.
Topic:
International Cooperation, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and International Security
The Cold War ended but it seems to be here again. The title for this paper is '2009 - time for détente and disarmament'. It really should have read 'high time for détente and disarmament' because the Cold War ended about twenty years ago and yet today it seems as if it were still here. We hear of plans for new nuclear weapons, the development and testing of missiles and antimissiles, plans for a further expansion of NATO and a chill in the cooperation between EU and Russia as a consequence of the war in Georgia.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
The new 2009 defense budget has just been released. The more you look into the numbers, the more things become unclear, very unclear. Most of the numbers that have been released are inaccurate or incomplete, or both. Other numbers will change as the year progresses, but we do not know if they will go up or down.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Debt, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Bacillus anthracis, the etiological agent of anthrax, has been the main biological warfare agent studied and produced by countries that have historically retained biological weapons programmes. However, it has also been of interest to terrorist groups like al-Qaida and was the agent responsible for the Amerithrax crisis after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. This paper aims at analysing all these facts with emphasis on the Amerithrax crisis, and the possibility that jihadist terrorism could use this biological agent in terrorist attacks. Bacillus anthracis, el agente etiológico del carbunco, ha sido el principal agente biológico estudiado y producido por los países que han contado con un programa de armas biológicas a lo largo de la historia. Sin embargo, también ha sido objeto de interés por parte de grupos terroristas como al-Qaida, y dio lugar a la denominada crisis del Amerithrax, también conocida como la «crisis del ántrax», tras los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001. Este trabajo analiza todos estos hechos haciendo especial hincapié en la crisis del Amerithrax y en la posibilidad de que el terrorismo yihadista pueda utilizar este agente biológico en atentados terroristas.
States seeking to produce chemical weapons (CW) typically rely on the importation of intermediate chemicals called “precursors,” which have legitimate industrial applications but can also be converted into military-grade CW agents, such as mustard gas or sarin. The dual-use nature of precursor chemicals poses challenges for policy makers seeking to prevent CW proliferation. Under U.S. Department of Commerce regulations, manufacturers planning to export CW precursors to certain countries must obtain prior government authorization in the form of an export license. Yet despite significant improvements over the past decade in the export-control systems of the United States and other industrialized countries, trafficking in precursors and other dual-use items relevant to CW production has continued.
Topic:
Crime, International Law, International Trade and Finance, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki force the Japanese to surrender in 1945? Did nuclear weapons, in effect, win the war in the Pacific? These questions matter because almost all thinking about nuclear war and nuclear weapons depends, in one way or another, on judgments about the effect of these attacks.
Topic:
Development, Nuclear Weapons, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction