Ramesh Thakur

The DPRK is developing a nuclearised ICBM capability as fast as it possibly can because it fears a US attack and forcible regime change. And the dear leader fears the same fate as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.  So the US threatens him even more as the answer to make Kim Jong Un desist from his chosen nuclear path. Go figure.  (more…)

More the half the word’s countries are parties to nuclear weapon-free zone treaties.  A regional Northeast Asian nuclear weapon-free zone would quarantine the region from the real risks of nuclear war. It would delink regional tensions, disputes and conflicts from the geopolitical equations between the nuclear powers, and would aim to prevent any cross-contamination of regional and global quarrels. (more…)

The 1987 nuclear-free act was a milestone in New Zealand’s development as a nation.   (more…)

Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity and indeed to all forms of life on planet Earth. Serious threats persist from the use or misuse of weapons – whether by design, accident or system malfunction – by nuclear-armed states and terrorist actors, and from the misuse of the civil fuel cycle.  (more…)

The recently published draft text of a convention to ban the bomb provides a good basis to complete negotiations of a treaty to prohibit the acquisition, development, production, manufacture, possession, transfer, testing, extra-territorial stationing and use of nuclear weapons as major steps on the road to abolition.   (more…)

China is on the march to a dominant military footprint while American policy lacks strategic intent. (more…)

The lesson of Munich for major powers Britain and France was that you do not buy peace with fellow major powers tomorrow by giving in to their demands today. But for smaller powers, the lesson was that faced with the prospect of war with a major power, your allies and guarantors will rather sell you out than risk a war.   (more…)

The world’s options on North Korea can be summarised as bad (strategic patience), worse (growing strategic impatience), and worst (military strikes).   (more…)

Instead of cheering US resort to increasingly robust use of military firepower as the first response to international crises, Western leaders should be ring-fencing Trump’s instinct to reckless behaviour in order to avoid a catastrophe.   (more…)

The use of chemical weapons in Syria and the US air strikes in punishment are part of the continuing descent into lawlessness by various actors with unforeseeable consequences in an already inflamed region.  (more…)

It is time for the so-called realists to get real about the existential dangers of a world brimming with nuclear weapons.  (more…)

Japan has an exceptional opportunity, while maneuvering to remain close to Washington, to reduce its unhealthy security and economic dependency on the United States, and to educate the U.S. administration on the merits and benefits of the key planks of a rules-based global order and international cooperation.   (more…)

There is considerable skepticism about U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to uphold the post-1945 liberal international order crafted under American leadership and underwritten by U.S. military power, economic heft and geopolitical clout. Trump’s pre-election statements on trade, immigration, alliances and nuclear policy in particular seemed to question these four critical pillars of established U.S. policy.   (more…)

The deal (with Iran) is worth defending for three reasons: it is a good accommodation of each side’s bottom lines; sanctions may not have been as decisive as the hawks seem to believe in explaining Iran’s signature; and unilateral US sanctions will prove even less effectual.  (more…)

Without abandoning ANZUS but downsizing it considerably, Australia must chart an independent foreign policy according to a Canberra-based calculation of national values and interests. Or does Australia really want to make the transition to aligning with Trump’s view that if only the West had confiscated Iraq’s oil and wealth after the 2003 invasion, there would have been no Islamic State militant group and all would have been honky dory?   (more…)

Western interference has worsened the pathology of broken, corrupt and dysfunctional politics across the region from Afghanistan to North Africa.  
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