BASIC's Project on
Getting to Zero
Working Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
Chronology and Links
The threat presented by nuclear weapons has never been
greater. It is this growing threat that has revived the idea
of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Below
is a chronology of key documents and statements related to
Getting to Zero as well as a list of links to publications
and videos which provide background and history relevant to
this effort.
Chronology: Key Documents and Statements
28 May 2010: Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) Review Conference 2010 adopts consensus Final
Document
- Final
Document (PDF) - adopted as the Final Document -
available online via Reaching Critical Will.
26 May 2010: Britain
reveals nuclear warhead levels, AFP via Yahoo! News.
13 May 2010: New
START treaty headed to Senate Thursday: White House,
AFP via Yahoo! News.
13 April 2010: Forty
European statesmen and women release statement on nuclear
disarmament to coincide with the Washington Summit,
Letter posted on website of the Royal United Services Institute
(RUSI), London.
13 April 2010: Press
Conference by the President at the Nuclear Security Summit,
Washington, DC, White House transcript.
8 April 2010: Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev and US President Barack Obama sign
the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in
Prague. (For main text
of the Treaty, associated Protocol,
and Annexes and Unilateral Statements, visit this
page on the website of the US Department of State.)
6 April 2010: Obama Administration
Releases the US
Nuclear Posture Review Report (PDF), US Department
of Defense.
24 March 2010: Anne Penketh, BASIC
Program Director, quoted in: Russia
claims breakthrough in historic nuclear reduction agreement
with US; Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev poised to
sign new Start treaty 'next month', Luke Harding, Julian Borger,
and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian.
16 March 2010: Paul
Ingram, BASIC's Executive Director, spoke on a panel entitled
"Stop the Spread," with the UK Minister
of State, Ivan Lewis, and Lord Hannay.
16 March 2010: Speech
by David Lidington MP, Shadow Minister for foreign affairs,
at the Nuclear Policy Lab at the Royal Society, "Conservative
policy on nuclear proliferation and deterrence."
3 March 2010: NATO Secretary General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen announces that nuclear arms control
is firmly on the Alliance's agenda: "Again, without anticipating
the outcome of our discussions I've already today indicated
what I would call a pragmatic and realistic approach while
keeping the vision clear, the vision of nuclear zero which
I think all people could and should embrace." See text
of full press conference, Brussels.
26 February 2010: Foreign Ministers
from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Norway
send letter
to NATO Secretary General, calling for alliance to seize non-proliferation
and disarmament opportunity.
23 February 2010: U.S.
to retire nuclear Tomahawk missiles
Kyodo News, via The Japan Times.
22 February 2010: Five
Nato states to urge removal of US nuclear arms in Europe
Julian Borger, The Guardian.
19 February 2010: Belgian statesmen
call for removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe,
in support of broader agenda for nuclear weapons-free world,
in Vers
un monde sans armes nucleaires (De Standaard).
- Authors of the op-ed include: Willy Claes, former
minister of Foreign Affairs, former NATO secretary general;
Jean-Luc Dehaene, former prime minister of Belgium,
member of the European Parliament; Louis Michel,
former minister of Foreign Affairs, former member of EU
Commission, member of the European Parliament; and, Guy
Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, chairman
liberal fraction European Parliament.
The Belgian Prime Minister, Yves Leterme,
followed the op-ed with a press release on the same day, affirming
that his government supports the overall nuclear weapons-free
vision. He also noted that Belgium will work with a number
of other NATO countries to take the nuclear disarmament and
nonproliferation agenda forward during the review of the Alliance's
Strategic Concept.
2 February 2010: Presidents Medvedev
and Obama offer support at beginning of Global Zero
summit in Paris.
- See statements
by US President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev,
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon on the opening day of the Global
Zero Summit, Paris, 2 February 2010.
1 February 2010: Carl Bildt,
Foreign Minister of Sweden, and Radek Sikorski, Foreign
Minister of Poland, write an op-ed in The New York Times,
calling for the United States and Russia to remove tactical
nuclear weapons from Europe, in Next,
the Tactical Nukes.
27 January 2010: In his State
of the Union Address, US President Barack Obama
reaffirmed his agenda on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
Key excerpts:
"Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting
perhaps the greatest danger to the American people -- the
threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of
John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that
reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world
without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while
ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are
completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control
treaty in nearly two decades. And at April's Nuclear Security
Summit, we will bring 44 nations together behind a clear
goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the
world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands
of terrorists."
"These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our
hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating
international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That
is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger
sanctions -- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced.
That is why the international community is more united,
and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as
Iran's leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there
should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences.
That is a promise."
December 2009: International Commission
on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) publishes
final report:
Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: A Practical Agenda for Global
Policymakers
Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Co-Chairs,
International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and
Disarmament.
23 November 2009: Op
naar een kernwapenvrije wereld ("Toward a nuclear
weapon free world," English translation
available via Pax Christi.)
Ruud Lubbers, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands;
Max van der Stoel, former Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Hans van Mierlo, former Minister of Defense and of
Foreign Affairs; and Frits Korthals Altes, former Minister
of Justice, opinion in NRC Handelsblad.
25 October 2009: New
German government to seek removal of US nuclear weapons
Deutsche Welle.
14 October 2009: Pour
un désarmement nucléaire mondial, seule réponse
à la prolifération anarchique
Alain Juppé, former Prime Minister of France;
Bernard Norlain, retired Air Force General; Alain
Richard, former Minister of Defense; Michel Rocard,
former Prime Minister, opinion in Le Monde.
24 September 2009: Historic
Summit of Security Council Pledges Support for Progress on
Stalled Efforts to End Nuclear Weapons Proliferation;
Resolution 1887 (2009) Adopted with 14 Heads of State,
Government Present
UN Department of Public Information.
24 September 2009: Final
Declaration and Measures to Promote the Entry into Force of
the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, New York, 24-25 September 2009.
23 September 2009: Remarks
by the President to the United Nations General Assembly
(US President Barack Obama's "Four Pillars"
speech), UN Headquarters, New York, NY.
9 September 2009: Nuclear-free
world ultimate aim of new cross-party pressure group
Julian Borger, The Guardian.
17 July 2009: Trident
submarine deal delayed
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian.
16 July 2009: Road
to 2010: Addressing the nuclear question in the 21st century,
(UK) Cabinet Office, Presented by the Prime Minister to Parliament.
13 July 2009: Voters
want Britain to scrap all nuclear weapons, ICM poll shows
Julian Glover, The Guardian.
8 July 2009: L'Aquila
Statement on Non-Proliferation
Official website of the G8 Summit.
- "We are all committed to seeking a safer world for
all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear
weapons, in accordance with the goals of the NPT."
(paragraph 6)
6 July 2009: The
Joint Understanding for the START Follow-on Treaty
Office of the Press Secretary, White House Fact Sheet.
11 June 2009: Putin
Talks of Giving Up Nukes
The Associated Press via The Moscow Times.
4 June 2009: US
President Barack Obama calls for world free of nuclear
weapons during tour of the Middle East
Text
of full speech delivered at Cairo University, The New York
Times.
3 June 2009: Obama
praises McCain's commitment to abolishing nukes
Eric Zimmerman, The Hill's Blog Briefing Room.
1 May 2009: Tories
cast doubt on £21 billion Trident nuclear missile upgrade
Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt, The Guardian.
17 April 2009: Ex-US
Sec State urges Republicans to back test ban
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press via the Washington
Post.
10 April 2009: Foreign
Minister Wants US Nukes out of Germany, Der Spiegel.
5 April 2009: President Barack Obama delivers
landmark speech in Prague: US
President calls for a world free of nuclear weapons. Also
available on C-SPAN video.
17 March 2009: Brown
pushes for world reduction in nuclear weapons as he makes
Iran offer, Allegra Stratton and agencies, Guardian.co.uk.
(Read the Prime Minister's speech.)
3 March 2009: Nuclear
Disarmament on Italian G8 Presidency's List of Priorities
G8 Summit 2009 Official Website.
4 February 2009: David
Miliband sets out six-point plan to rid world of nuclear
weapons, (The Guardian. (Text
of plan.)
9 January 2009: Four German statesmen declare their
support for the vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
Toward
a nuclear-free world: a German view in the International
Herald Tribune.
Authors: Helmut Schmidt (Social Democrat), Chancellor
1974-1982; Richard von Weizsdcker (Christian Democrat),
President 1984-1994; Egon Bahr, Minister in Social
Democratic governments and an architect of "ostpolitik;"
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (Free Democrats), Foreign
Minister 1974-1992.
23 November 2008: UN Secretary General recommends
Five
steps to a nuclear-free world, Ban Ki-moon,
Guardian.co.uk. Also see the text
of the UN Secretary General's statement from 24 October 2008,
in which he proposes his five-point agenda for disarmament.
The speech was made during Seizing the Moment: Breakthrough
Measures to Build a New East West Consensus on Weapons of
Mass Destruction and Disarmament, an EastWest Institute event
co-sponsored with BASIC and other NGOs.
24 July 2008: Four prominent Italian political figures
and one well-respected physicist have come together to write
an op-ed that endorses the vision of a world without nuclear
weapons. The article, "For A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,"
was published in Italy's leading newspaper, Il Corriere
della Sera. The authors include: Massimo D'Alema,
former Prime Minister and recent Minister of Foreign Affairs;
Gianfranco Fini, former Minister of Foreign Affairs
and current Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies; Giorgio
La Malfa, former Minister of European Affairs; Arturo
Parisi, former Minister of Defense and Francesco Calogero,
Professor of Physics, University of Rome and former Secretary
General of the Pugwash Conference. For more information, see
Laura Spagnuolo's GTZ
blogpost.
16 July 2008:Addressing an audience at Purdue University
in Indiana, US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama
declared, "It's time to send a clear message to the world:
America
seeks a world with no nuclear weapons."
15 July 2008: US presidential candidate Senator Barack
Obama highlighted the dangers of nuclear weapons in a
major
foreign policy speech in Washington, DC, stating:
"We need to work with Russia to take US and Russian ballistic
missiles off hair-trigger alert; to dramatically reduce
the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material; to seek
a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons;
and to expand the US-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles
so that the agreement is global. By keeping our commitment
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we'll be in
a better position to press nations like North Korea and
Iran to keep theirs. In particular, it will give us more
credibility and leverage in dealing with Iran."
30 June 2008: In a ground-breaking op-ed in the Times
(London), former UK Foreign and Defence Secretaries endorsed
the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Sir Malcolm
Rifkind (Conservative), Lord David Owen (Crossbencher),
Lord Douglas Hurd (Conservative), and Lord George
Robertson (Labour), in an article titled 'Start
worrying and learn to ditch the bomb', warned that the
world is entering a dangerous new phase "that combines widespread
proliferation with extremism and geopolitical tension". They
argued that the only way to deal with this danger is to work
multilaterally towards complete nuclear disarmament. See the
related Times article, Former
rivals join forces in nuclear plea: Weapon stocks must be
cut, say ex-Cabinet ministers and BASIC's Media Advisory:
Another milestone to Zero:
UK Statesmen Call for a World without Nuclear Weapons.
- The Times (London) op-ed is partly the inspiration
behind an Early
Day Motion (Parliamentary petition) opened for signature.
The Motion is sponsored by recent Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett, recent Conservative Party Leader Michael
Howard, recent Defence Secretary John Reid, serving
and former Chairs of the Commons Defence Committee James
Arbuthnot and Michael Ancram and recent Liberal
Democrat Leader and foreign affairs luminary Menzies
Campbell. The Motion welcomes the previous calls by
Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn
for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation measures and
the subsequent endorsement by the four UK Statesmen in the
Times.
30 June 2008: Disarming
Ideas: It is time to start negotiating reductions in nuclear
stockpiles, Times (London).
24 June 2008: America
looks to a world free of nuclear weapons, John Kerry
(US Senator), Financial Times.
6 April 2008: US President George Bush and
Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Sochi in south-western
Russia. The meeting resulted in a Strategic
Framework Declaration. The Declaration included references
to nuclear and conventional arms control, most notably stating
that the two countries would "continue development of a legally
binding post-START arrangement". Previous indications from
the Bush Administration had placed in doubt whether US officials
would pursue such a binding agreement.
26-27 February 2008: official website of the international
conference on nuclear disarmament in Oslo: Achieving
the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.
5 February: Speech
by the UK Secretary of State for Defence, Rt. Hon. Des
Browne, MP, "Laying the Foundations for Multilateral Disarmament."
21 January 2008: Gordon Brown, in a speech
to the Chamber of Commerce in Delhi, India on January
21, renews the UK government's commitment to move toward a
nuclear-weapon free world. He said: "I pledge that in the
run-up to the Non Proliferation Treaty review conference in
2010 we will be at the forefront of the international campaign
to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent
proliferation to new states, and to ultimately achieve a world
that is freer from nuclear weapons."
15 January 2008: The 'Hoover Group' - George Shultz,
Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and William Perry
- publish a renewed call
to action in the Wall Street Journal, sparking
off another flurry of debate. This came a year after their
original letter in the Journal triggered a series of responses
from governments and civil society around the vision of a
nuclear-weapon free world. The growing and impressive list
of elite US supporters include seven secretaries of state,
seven national security advisors and five former secretaries
of defense.
20 December 2007: US Special Representative for Nuclear
Nonproliferation, Christopher Ford, spoke at the UK
Foreign Office Wilton
Park conference about the goal of zero nuclear weapons:
So this is where we are today, with the United States engaged
in broad diplomatic outreach efforts and ongoing dialogue
not just about numbers, doctrine, and treaty interpretation,
but also about our vision for the future - and about
how one might actually hope to achieve nuclear disarmament.
The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to disarmament,
offered a vision of a zero-weapons future, and engaged
in unprecedented discussion of how actually to achieve this.
[emphasis added]
The full text of Ford's
presentation may be found here. He also delivered a presentation
on "Nuclear
Disarmament and the 'Legalization' of Policy Discourse in
the NPT Regime," at an event hosted by The Nonproliferation
Review on November 29 in Washington, DC.
19 December 2007: US President George Bush
announces a reduction by 15
percent in the active US nuclear weapons arsenal, which
is scheduled to be completed by 2012.
5 December 2007: UN General Assembly adopts numerous
resolutions related to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.
One resolution
calls for the Conference on Disarmament to begin negotiations
toward a ban on the production of military fissile materials
and also calls on members to make deep cuts to nuclear weapons
arsenals, with the overall goal of elimination. Another resolution
calls on members to decrease
the operational readiness of their nuclear weapons.
9 November 2007: A new poll,
conducted in the United States and Russia, finds robust support
for a series of cooperative steps to reduce nuclear dangers
and move toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.
1 November 2007: UN General Assembly's disarmament
committee approved
a resolution calling for all nuclear weapons to be taken
off high alert, despite objections from the United States,
Britain and France
28 October 2007: Russia and the United States urge
all countries to destroy medium range nuclear-capable missiles,
in a joint
declaration published by the Russian foreign ministry.
24 October 2007: Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger's Nuclear Disarmament Remarks,
Hoover Institution, California
25 June 2007: Keynote
Address: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?, Remarks by
Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, United Kingdom, Carnegie International
Nonproliferation Conference
31 January 2007: The
Nuclear Threat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wall Street
Journal
4 January 2007: A
World Free of Nuclear Weapons, George P. Shultz,
William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam
Nunn, Wall Street Journal
24 April 2006: We
Should, So We Can: Life Without the Bomb, Max M. Kampelman,
International Herald Tribune
Links for Further Reading, Viewing
Background on Positions of US Presidential
Candidates on Nuclear Weapons, 2008
- Obama
vs. McCain: A Side-by-Side Comparison on Arms Control,
Johns Isaacs and Leonor Tomero, Center for Arms Control
and Non-Proliferation, updated 9 June 2008.
- A
Return to Arms Control, The Washington Post,
2 June 2008.
- An
Early Look Ahead: What to Expect from Clinton, McCain, and
Obama on National Security, John Isaacs, Council for
a Livable World, 28 February 2008.
- The
Democratic Presidential Candidates on Nuclear Weapons Elimination,
Joseph Cirincione and Alexandra Bell, Center for American
Progress, via the Huffington Post, 17 January 2008. (Includes
a chart that lists the former cabinet members who now support
the elimination of nuclear weapons.)
- Issue
Tracker: The Candidates and Nuclear Nonproliferation,
Council on Foreign Relations, updated 16 January 2008.
- Where the presidential candidates stand on nuclear issues,
Lawrence Krauss, The
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 9 January 2008.
Earlier Detailed Proposals for Nuclear
Disarmament
Report of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Weapons
of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and
Chemical Arms, ("Blix Report"), June 2006
Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Hiroshima Peace
Institute and the Japanese Government, Report of the Tokyo
Forum on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 1999
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National
Academy of Sciences, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy,
1997
The Stimson Center, An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear
Weapon-Free World, 1997
Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of
Nuclear Weapons (Canberra: Australian Department of Foreign
Affairs and Trade), 1996
Further Reading
Nuclear disarmament
Abolishing
Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, George Perkovich and James
M. Acton, editors. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
February 2009.
The
Logic of Zero: Toward a World without Nuclear Weapons,
Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, Foreign Affairs (via the
website of the Brookings Institution), November/December 2008.
The
Future of Nuclear Weapons in an Interdependent World,
Harald Muller, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, No.
2 (Spring 2008), pp. 63-75.
The
new nuclear abolitionists, Hugh Gusterson, Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, 13 May 2008.
Ban
the Bomb. Really. Michael Krepon, Henry L. Stimson Center.
Article appears in The American Interest, Winter (January/February)
2008.
U.S. strategic policy
Toward
True Security: Ten Steps the Next US President should take
to transform US nuclear weapons policy, Federation of
American Scientists, National Resources Defense Council and
Union of Concerned Scientists, February 2008. Reviewed in
BASIC's GTZ
blog.
Nuclear
Weapons in U.S. National Security Policy: Past, Present, and
Prospects, Amy F. Woolf, Congressional Research Service,
29 October 2007 (report via the website of the Federation
of American Scientists).
What
Are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for Restructuring
U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces, Sidney E. Drell and James
E. Goodby, Arms Control Association, October 2007.
Proliferation
Concrete
Steps to Improve the Nonproliferation Regime, Pierre Goldschmidt,
Carnegie Papers, Number 100, April 2009.
New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 3, The
Greatest Threat to Us All, by Joseph
Cirincione, 6
March 2008. Cirincione reviews new books by Richard Rhodes,
Jonathan Schell and others highlighting the risks of nuclear
proliferation especially to unstable countries such as Pakistan.
The
Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, Jonathan
Schell, Henry Holt and Co. Metropolitan Books, November 2007.
Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)
Resurrecting
the Test-Ban Treaty, Michael O'Hanlon, Survival,
Volume 50, Issue 1, February 2008.
Nuclear
Weapons: Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, Jonathan Medalia,
Congressional Research Service Report for US Congress, updated
30 November 2007 (report via the website of the Federation
of American Scientists).
Overcoming
Nuclear Dangers, The Stanley Foundation, Policy Analysis
Brief, November 2007.
Nuclear material
Managing
the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Policy Implications of Expanding Global
Access to Nuclear Power, Congressional Research Service,
1 November 2007.
Global
Fissile Material Report 2007: Second report of the International
Panel on Fissile Materials: Developing the technical basis
for policy initiatives to secure and irreversibly reduce stocks
of nuclear weapons and fissile materials.
Securing
U.S. Nuclear Material: DOE Has Made Little Progress Consolidating
and Disposing of Special Nuclear Material, U.S. Government
Accountability Office, 4 October 2007.
Videos
More on Getting
to Zero
Working Towards a Nuclear Weapon-Free World
BASIC's work is made possible by the generous support
of our donors: the Ploughshares
Fund, the Ford Foundation,
the Joseph Rowntree Charitable
Trust, Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation,
Marmot Trust, Allan and Nesta Ferguson Foundation, Network
for Social Change, the Nuclear
Education Trust, Rockefeller Family & Associates,
and individual contributors to BASIC. We are grateful to all
of them for their support.
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