Chuyên mục: Banned weapons

Who gets to have nuclear weapons and why?

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Jul 30, 2025 #AJStartHere #CubanMissileCrisis #IsraelIranTensions
Israel and the US – both nuclear-armed states – recently attacked Iran. They said it was to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon, something Iran denies it’s trying to do.
What determines which countries can, and can’t, have nuclear weapons? And are we seeing a new nuclear race?

Chapters:
01:09 – How the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a new nuclear order.
01:58 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the nine nuclear-armed states.
04:49 – The key factors that affect a country’s calculation on nukes.
05:47 – Security: do nuclear weapons make a country more, or less, safe?
07:22 – The US nuclear umbrella – can it still be trusted?
08:10 – Do nuclear weapons enhance a country’s status?
09:40 – What’s going on with Iran?
14:32 – Who gets to police the global nuclear order?
14:52 – How the nine nuclear-armed states are increasing their spending on nukes.

Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century

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chatthamhouse.org Research paper Published 20 April 2020 ISBN: 978 1 78413 391 7

Royal Navy Vanguard Class submarine HMS Vigilant returning to HMNB Clyde after extended deployment. The four Vanguard-class submarines form the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent force. Photo: Ministry of Defence.

Royal Navy Vanguard Class submarine HMS Vigilant returning to HMNB Clyde after extended deployment. The four Vanguard-class submarines form the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent force. Photo: Ministry of Defence.21st century. Researchers at Chatham House have worked with eight experts to produce this collection of essays examining four contested themes in contemporary policymaking on deterrence.

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Nuclear deterrence is dying. And hardly anyone notices

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Thebulletin.org By Alex Kolbin | January 30, 2026

A man in a dark coat stands outdoors holding a black umbrella, illuminated by a red light in the background at night.President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on January 9, 2026. The day before, the President told New York Times reporters, “If it expires, it expires,” referring to New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5. (Photo: White House/Molly Riley)

For decades, nuclear weapons have been treated as the ultimate arbiter of international politics. They were supposed to deter great-power war, impose caution on leaders, and anchor what strategists liked to call strategic stability. Today, that framework is eroding in plain sight. Yet the reaction from policymakers and much of the expert community remains oddly muted.

Put simply, nuclear weapons are no longer functioning as a decisive factor in global security.

For almost four years, Russia—the world’s largest nuclear power—has been subjected to missile strikes carried out with systems supplied by several other nuclear-armed states. The United Kingdom now openly speaks of developing new tactical ballistic missiles for Kyiv and of placing “leading-edge weapons” directly into the hands of Ukrainians. Russia itself employs nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic Oreshnik missiles as if they were any other conventional weapon system for punishing Ukrainian infrastructure. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump casually commented on New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5—“If it expires, it expires.” And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, currently serving as a Deputy Chief of the Russian Security Council, stated, “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries,” referring to what may come next after New START expires.

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The first photos of Hiroshima’s nuclear bomb toll

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thebulletin.org By David A. Wargowski | August 6, 2025 

Photojournalist Yoshito Matsushige, in front of the first image he took at Miyuki-bashi Bridge, a little over two hours after the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. He took a total of 5 images, the only recorded evidence of that day that changed history. (Photo by John van Hasselt/Corbis via Getty Images)Share

In the late morning hours of August 6, 1945, a single shutter clicked in Hiroshima and recorded what no camera had ever captured before, and none has again: the immediate, lived aftermath of a city annihilated by nuclear weapons.

Equipped with one camera and two rolls of film, totaling just 24 possible exposures, Yoshito Matsushige, then a 32-year-old photojournalist, ventured toward the city that morning to report for duty. Fires blocked access to his office, so he turned back and reached Miyuki Bridge (about 2,300 meters from ground zero) where he encountered the unfathomable: charred schoolgirls, civilians with melted skin, and a landscape of human agony.

He could barely bring himself to document it. But his five surviving images—the only known photographs of Hiroshima’s destruction on the day of the bombing itself—are among the most harrowing visual records of the nuclear age.

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Who decides who can have nuclear arms?

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Al Jazeera English
The US and Israel attacked Iran – saying it cannot have nuclear weapons – while the Islamic Republic denies trying to build one. The two are among nine countries armed with such weapons. So who decides who can have nuclear arms? And have the Israeli and US attacks increased the risks that more countries will want them?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests: Tariq Rauf, former head of verification and security policy coordination at International Atomic Energy Agency. Laicie Heeley, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation specialist, editor-in-chief of Inkstick Media in Washington DC. Tariq Ali, historian, editor at New Left Review journal in London.

Atomic Bomb Survivors Win Nobel Peace Prize, Say Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Years Ago

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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Toshiyuki Mimaki: “I thought the prize would go to those working hard in Gaza. In Gaza, bleeding children are being held by their parents. It’s like Japan 80 years ago.” 36,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Hiroshima/Nagasaki 82,000 tons have been dropped on Gaza

A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.S. nuclear disarmament activist who has spent decades working closely with the group.

Cluster Munition Monitor 2023

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the-monitor.org

Antipersonnel landmines are explosive devices designed to injure or kill people. They can lie dormant for years and even decades under, on, or near the ground until a person or animal triggers their detonating mechanism.

They can be activated by direct pressure from above, by pressure put on a wire or filament attached to a pull switch, by a radio signal or other remote firing method, or even simply by the proximity of a person within a predetermined distance. Because no one controls the detonation of landmines, they can be referred to as victim-activated weapons. Since mines are not aimed at a specific target they can indiscriminately kill or injure civilians, including children, soldiers, peacekeepers, and aid workers.

Status of 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions

Cluster Munition Casualties in 2022 and in Historical Record

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Russians confirm they are hitting Ukrainian targets with banned cluster and phosphorus weapons 

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news.yahoo.com

VALENTYNA ROMANENKO — SUNDAY, 15 MAY 2022, 14: 22

The Russian invaders confirm that they are using phosphorus and cluster weapons in Ukraine, which are prohibited by international conventions.

Source: another intercept of the invaders’ conversation by the Security Service of Ukraine

Details: These are particularly dangerous and inhumane types of weapons.

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Five deadly weapons Russia is accused of using in Ukraine

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thehill.com

Five deadly weapons Russia is accused of using in Ukraine

BY JORDAN WILLIAMS AND LAURA KELLY – 04/18/22 6:20 PM ET
Russia has been accused of using everything from so-called vacuum bombs to chemical weapons as it fights to overtake Ukraine.

Some of the worst weapons that Moscow has allegedly used are indiscriminate in their nature, prompting concerns about their impact on civilian populations from Ukrainian officials, the West, and human rights groups monitoring the war.

“There is deliberate targeting of civilian populations and noncombatants, which is against international law,” said John Erath, senior policy adviser for the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. “And it really does not matter what type of weapon is being used. That is really bad.”

Here are five of the worst weapons Russia has been accused of using in its invasion. Tiếp tục đọc “Five deadly weapons Russia is accused of using in Ukraine” →

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned

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spectrum.ieee.org

It may not be too late to put the evil “Slaughterbots” genie back in the bottle, if the world acts now

By Stuart Russell, Anthony Aguirre, Emilia Javorsky and Max Tegmark

Officials of Turkish defense industry company "STM", work at Autonomous Rotary Wing Attack Drone UAV Kargu production to meet the needs of the security forces at the campus of OSTIM Technopark in Ankara, Turkey on June 11, 2020.
MEHMET KAMAN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

A chilling future that some had said might not arrive for many years to come is, in fact, already here. According to a recent UN report, a drone airstrike in Libya from the spring of 2020—made against Libyan National Army forces by Turkish-made STM Kargu-2 drones on behalf of Libya’s Government of National Accord—was conducted by weapons systems with no known humans “in the loop.” 

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How to make biomedical research (and biosafety labs) less dangerous and more ethical, post-COVID-19

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thebulletin.org

By Laura H. Kahn | June 8, 2021

A biosafety level 4 lab. Researchers wearing positive pressure personnel suits at a US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases biosafety level 4 lab. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Our luck has run out. The worst pandemic in a century has killed over 3.7 million people globally. In the United States, almost 600,000 have lost their lives to COVID-19. Societies around the world have been, and many are continuing to be, devastated.

The debate regarding the origins of the virus continues with growing circumstantial evidence that the virus leaked from a laboratory. Knowing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is important if we want to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.

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How atomic bomb survivors have transformed our understanding of radiation’s impacts

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sciencemag.org By Dennis NormileJul. 23, 2020 , 2:00 PM

A mushroom cloud hangs over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. An estimated 90,000 to 120,000 people died that day or soon after; many others developed cancer later.

HIROSHIMA—Kunihiko Iida wants the world to know that the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago next month are still claiming lives and causing suffering.

Iida was 3 years old in August 1945. His father had died in battle; he was living with his mother and her parents in a house 900 meters from Hiroshima’s hypocenter, the spot right beneath the detonation. The blast crumpled the house. The family fled the city, but Iida’s mother and older sister soon died from their injuries, a fact the little boy didn’t grasp. “Until I entered elementary school, I thought they were living and that we would meet someday,” he says.

His injuries left him bedridden for years, and he has suffered debilitating illnesses ever since. Childhood anemia caused him to collapse at school. He’s had ulcers and asthma, underwent two surgeries to remove brain tumors, and now has thyroid growths. “There has never been a break in these illnesses,” he says. Tiếp tục đọc “How atomic bomb survivors have transformed our understanding of radiation’s impacts” →

Western strikes in Syria – five key questions

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IISS
Date: 12 April 2018

Syrian army in Douma April 2018. Credit: STRINGER/AFP/Getty ImagesBy Emile Hokayem, IISS Senior Fellow for Middle East Security.

What are the West’s military options – and what might the targets be?

Western countries have to decide whether military action in Syria is about punishment and deterrence for the use of chemical weapons, or whether they want to be more ambitious and go after the military infrastructure of the Assad regime, which has enabled his war machine to make very significant advances recently.

The likelihood is that President Trump, Prime Minister May and President Macron will opt for a narrow strike aimed at enforcing the international norm against the use of chemical weapons. If so, they face a choice between targeting the infrastructure that creates those weapons and hitting the means of delivery – the helicopters, the air force, the runways. Tiếp tục đọc “Western strikes in Syria – five key questions” →

Global nuclear weapons: downsizing but modernizing

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Pie chart showing gloal share of nuclear weapons in January 2016

SPIRI_(Stockholm, 13 June 2016) The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) today launches its annual nuclear forces data, which highlights the current trends and developments in world nuclear arsenals. The data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, none of the nuclear weapon-possessing states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future.

At the start of 2016 nine states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—possessed approximately 4,120 operationally deployed nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possessed a total of approximately 15,395 nuclear weapons compared with 15,850 in early 2015 (see table 1).

 

Table 1. World nuclear forces, 2016 Tiếp tục đọc “Global nuclear weapons: downsizing but modernizing” →

Report: Cluster Munitions in Syria, Yemen Increase Civilian Casualties

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VOA

August 31, 2017 1:25 PM
  • Lisa Schlein
Civil defense members prepare to safely detonate cluster bombs in the rebel-held area in Deraa, Syria, July 26, 2017.

Civil defense members prepare to safely detonate cluster bombs in the rebel-held area in Deraa, Syria, July 26, 2017.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — A report released ahead of next week’s U.N. conference on the Convention on Cluster Munitions has condemned the continued use of cluster munitions by Syria and Yemen. They are the only two countries that still use the bombs, which are banned under international law. Tiếp tục đọc “Report: Cluster Munitions in Syria, Yemen Increase Civilian Casualties” →