Early October 2018 President Trump announced his intention to terminate the INF agreement on banning land-based nuclear medium-range missiles which Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 had agreed upon. Trump's announcement has led to a quick reaction in Germany: On 26 October 2018 nine former SPD leaders and four former ministers issued a call to stop a new nuclear arms race in Europe. "New intermediate range missiles will have even less warning time than the systems of the 1980s, the very weapons against which millions of people took to the streets in peaceful manifestations. This increases the risk of an unintended nuclear confrontation due to errors and miscalculations." Within a week more than 5,000 German citizens had declared their support via the Internet: No nuclear arms race in Europe!
Archives for 2018
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Withdrawal from the INF – Trump is pushing the world closer to nuclear peril
My daughter Nika was born just a few years after Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan signed the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, one of the world’s most important nuclear arms accords. With the stroke of two pens, the agreement banned an entire class of nuclear weapons, led to the destruction of nearly 2,700 warheads and diminished the threat of nuclear war in Europe. At the time, Gorbachev said, “We can be proud to plant this sapling, which someday may grow to be a full tree of peace.” Thirty-one years later, President Trump is taking an ax to that tree. This month, he announced that the United States will withdraw from the INF, all but inviting a new arms race: “We have more money than anybody else by far,” Trump said. “We’ll build it up until [China and Russia] come to their senses.”
A reckoning with America’s failed national-security policy is long overdue. Donald Trump’s reckless machinations are destructive, but so too is the bipartisan establishment consensus that has defined our role in the world for decades and remains remarkably unshaken... while citizen movements have begun to transform domestic politics, they have been virtually invisible when it comes to foreign policy. This special issue of The Nation challenges what has been a remarkably narrow debate in this area...We seek to instigate not only a more open debate, but a new call to action.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Progressives must seize their momentum to articulate a saner foreign policy
The following article by Katrina vanden Heuvel , chief editor of The Nation magazine, was originally published 25 September 2018 by the Washington Post. We are grateful to the author’s permission to reprint. Her article begins with an appeal in particular to the the Progressives among the U.S. Democrats: “A clear message is needed: Enough with endless wars and the global oligarchy.” ... Now, we need a forceful articulation of a progressive foreign policy.
To date, the progressive left’s national security policy has been mostly missing in action. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign did much to frame the domestic agenda, but paid less attention to foreign policy. Democrats in Congress have too often criticized President Trump from the right — for not being tough enough on Russia, for questioning the United States’ allies, for preemptive diplomacy with North Korea. There are a few exceptions — such as Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.)’s emphasis on diplomacy as well as challenges to U.S. misadventures in Afghanistan from Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.). And the Congressional Progressive Caucus has called for a more sensible military budget. Yet none have gained much traction.
Kazakhstan signed Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at UN Headquarters
The strength is not in nuclear bombs and missiles. The trust of the world community is a real defence,” said the Kazakh President at the Security Council stressing that only nuclear disarmament and confidence-building measures through the complete elimination of nuclear arsenals constitute the only and absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. “It is the largest nuclear powers that should be in the lead of the struggle for a nuclear weapons-free world and set an example by reducing WMD. This does not mean that the rest of the countries should stand by and that their actions are irrelevant”, said Nazarbayev.
