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This article discusses the book "Fear, Power, and Hubris: Why the United States Invaded Iraq" by historian Melvyn Leffler. The book offers a revisionist analysis of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, presenting a sympathetic view of the Bush administration's motivations. Leffler argues that fear, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11, played a significant role in shaping the administration's actions. While acknowledging the poor planning and execution of the war, Leffler emphasizes the officials' earnest intentions to protect the nation from further attacks. The article also highlights some criticisms of the book, including its sympathetic tone and use of politicized terminology. Overall, the book provides important insights into the decision-making process behind the Iraq War and its long-term consequences. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the end of the Cold War in Southern Africa and its impact on the Apartheid Government's nuclear weapons program. The program was developed as a strategic deterrent against perceived communist threats in the region. However, with the changing political landscape, including the end of hostilities in Angola and the rise of progressive leaders like FW de Klerk, the program was deemed unnecessary and a burden. In 1989, de Klerk ordered the termination of the program and the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal. This decision, along with South Africa's subsequent commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, played a significant role in the country's transition to democracy and its emergence as a leader in promoting disarmament. [Extracted from the article]

This article compares and contrasts the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons programs of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State through the framework of organizational structure, typology, ideology and CBRN incidents (selected case studies). A three-step CBRN model explaining the use of CBRN weapons by both groups is proposed. This model suggests that the use of CBRN weapons is predicated on three factors: leadership at the strategic level; acquisition of material at the operational level and technical capabilities at the tactical level. It is found that the failure of both groups in developing and carrying out large-scale CBRN attacks boils down primarily to the lack of technical capabilities and the difficulties associated with acquisition of materials. It is argued that the future CBRN threat landscape will likely be dominated by the threat of small-scale, localized attacks using crude chemical or biological agents by lone actors or autonomous cells as opposed to larger-scale centrally directed attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with Sharon Dolev and Emad Kiyaei, directors of the Middle East Treaty Organization, discussing their careers in nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament activism, their proud moments, and their optimism about achieving a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. Topics include their personal journeys into the field, significant milestones in their careers, and the importance of transnational activism in promoting effective nonproliferation efforts.

The Review Conference of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has been one of the primary international arenas for discussing pathways to establishing a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone (ME WMDFZ). This contentious issue was considered the make-or-break factor that determined whether some past Review Conferences could adopt a final document. With the commencement of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2019, mandated by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), questions have been raised about whether this new track replaces the NPT in addressing the Zone issue and, if not, in what format both tracks should interact. This essay sets the context for these questions by discussing evolving nuclear risks in the Middle East, the linkages between the NPT and the Zone, and the potential risks of decoupling the Zone issue from the NPT review process. The essay then argues for a balanced approach in which the NPT and the UNGA-mandated tracks function in conjunction with, and complement, each other. This approach would preserve the integrity and efficacy of each process and maintain the region's commitments to the Zone, to abolishing nuclear weapons and to preventing further proliferation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about military attitudes toward weapons taboos or the durability of nonuse norms in wartime. Chemical weapons are a key case given public revulsion and clear international prohibitions. We explore soldiers' attitudes in a salient setting: the Pacific theater of World War II. We draw on a declassified survey covering a representative sample of enlisted US soldiers in Hawaii in 1944. This unique context, during a total war against an adversary that had employed chemical weapons, represents a hard test for the chemical weapons taboo. Up to 91% of soldiers supported using chemical weapons against Japan, including 24% who favored initiation and 67% who favored retaliatory use. To understand the influence of military instruction, we exploit a novel regimen still used in basic training, which saw some troops exposed to lachrymatory gas. We find exposure to chemical weapons in training reduced support for use. Visceral experiences can mobilize support for weapons taboos in otherwise permissive environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author – who served as special adviser to UNSCOM's executive chair and spokesperson for UNSCOM for nearly four years – focuses on the way in which UNSCOM's organization and culture evolved to adapt to its mission to destroy, remove, and render harmless Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its long-range missiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors offer a short primer that outlines UNSCOM's historical context and the logistics of its work – central aspects contributing to the Special Commission's successes in searching for Iraq's hidden biological weapons program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Charles A. Duelfer, Deputy Executive Chair of UNSCOM, 1993–1998, and Head of the Iraq Survey Group, 2004–2005, finds that UNSCOM demonstrated the value of access to individuals in achieving monitoring goals. A vital aspect of UNSCOM's inspection authorities (arguably the most important) was the access to interview identified individuals. "Experts talking to experts" produced data and intangible, but critical, confidence in the weapons of mass destruction declarations of Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terence Taylor served on the UN Special Commission investigating weapons of mass destruction programs in the country. Technical expertise in weapons inspections, an understanding of global trade, and a knack for the element of surprise helped Taylor and other weapons inspectors discover, among other things, the existence of Iraq's biological weapons program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Henrietta Wilson, a freelance researcher, Nikita Smidovich details the lessons that the UNSCOM experience can teach those who undertake weapons of mass destruction verification efforts today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 2003 Iraq War, the Iraq Survey Group confirmed that Iraq had no remaining weapons of mass destruction and validated UNSCOM's findings, but as Duelfer puts it, at the time, "UNSCOM did not know how good it was." The weapons that were in existence were to be destroyed, either under UNSCOM supervision or by UNSCOM itself, and then UNSCOM would undertake on-site inspections to verify the declarations and destruction activities. There are also suggestions, by Stephen Black ([1]), for instance, that UNSCOM triggered renewed global efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, as it demonstrated that even in the most antagonistic circumstances, international inspections can reveal an illicit biological weapons program. Many people will remember Colin Powell's historic speech to the UN Security Council describing Iraq's mobile production facilities for making biological weapons. [Extracted from the article]

This is a study of a legal treatise by ʿĀdil ʿAwaḍ, published by Umm al-Qurā University in Mecca, a scholarly attempt to deal with the legality and ethics of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) from the perspective of the šarīʿa. Saudi Arabia offers a relevant real-world case study, given the continuing importance of Islam in its socio-political system and the indications that Riyadh is considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons. ʿAwaḍ addresses the moral and legal – and essentially religiously-based, although mingled with Realpolitik – considerations pertinent to acquiring and potentially using WMD, especially nuclear weapons, and he addresses issues such as deterrence, first-strike capability, the parameters of targeting, and proportionality. This study engages an actual player, rather than limiting the approach to a theoretical perspective and to positing how Muslims could or should think, and concludes that the findings in ʿAwaḍ's treatise legitimize and contribute to the proliferation and use of WMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, the notion of global security, and presumed threats to it, has undergone considerable expansion and diversification. This process has been led by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), where active deliberations concerning "threat(s) to the peace" have taken place among major international actors. Despite a sizable accumulation of scholarly arguments, however, the defining features of the structure and dynamics of the post-Cold War security discourse remain ambiguous. To address these ambiguities, this study investigates the entire body of Council deliberations over the past three decades. Based on an original dataset consisting of policy statements delivered at the UNSC, the study employs quantitative text analysis tools, including word embedding, to examine how council members have conceived the notion of security threat in terms of the various issues and entities discussed. It shows the security discourse at the UNSC to be highly stratified and reveals the persistent and pervasive influence of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which constitute the limited common grounds shared by the Council's permanent members. These findings caution against the unconstrained use of certain theoretical constructs widely employed in other works, most notably, "securitization" and "interpretative community." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chemical warfare agents (CWAs) have been classified as fatal weapons of mass destruction because of their toxicity and deadly consequences. Among other CWAs, sulfur mustards (HDs) were employed during the Iraq–Iran war (1984–1988), causing significant fatal effects for 100 000 military and civilian Iranians, and around 45000 people are still suffering from long-term health repercussions. Hence, the detection and detoxification of these acutely dangerous chemicals are critical for protecting ourselves and have thus sparked much scientific interest around the globe. In this regard, studies show that various photoresponsive porous organic materials like activated metal–organic-frameworks (MOFs), porous organic polymers (POPs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and TiO2-derived materials are highly effective for the photochemical detoxification of HDs. Given this context, we have traversed through the history of developing various photoresponsive porous materials and their efficacy in detoxifying CWAs, notably HDs. Moreover, we highlighted the numerous research methodologies reported to detect and modulate the excitonic effects in photoporous materials, which can tune the in situ-generated reactive oxygen species (ROS) responsible for HD detoxification. Lastly, we have listed the hurdles in creating photoactive porous materials and functionalizing them for large-scale HD detoxification. Although most of the described porous photocatalysts demonstrated good lab-scale performance, relatively few are accessible for large-scale industrial use. We have also addressed the future needs and potential for employing photoporous materials for efficient detoxification of HDs on an industrial scale to alleviate the issue of CWA/HD stockpiling and their potential use as a weapon of mass destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the early stage of humankind's Space Age, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America showed an inclination to non-militarize outer space, but distrust also prompted them to carry out a series of high-altitude nuclear tests. In the end, while the non-militarization aspiration materialized on celestial bodies, in the outer void space between them only Weapons of Mass Destruction were prohibited. The last few decades have witnessed the incremental militarization of the Earth orbits. The initial phase of militarization, primarily for surveillance and early warning, was conducive to international peace and security. It is in the next phase, when space systems were integrated into warfighting capabilities and Ballistic Missile Defense systems, that outer space embarked on its reduction into a domain of conflicts. This trend was subtle in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, and didn't become clear until the new millennium when new space powers emerged. Today, space-based weapons and terrestrial Anti-Satellite Weapons (ASATs) form the primary security concerns for space powers, depending on their relative space capability. The disparity is difficult to reconcile, putting space arms control literally on a halt. As States with counter-space capability are also highly reliant on space, there is a growing voluntary moratorium against the test and use of debris-generating ASATs and conflicts in space are likely to take an electronic and/or cyber form. The recent rise of the strategy of "deterrence and superiority" in space, however, may distract from the formation of this voluntary moratorium, aggravate an arms race in outer space, and even increase the risk of a full-scale conflict in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although war is the arena of killing, fighting, and striving to weaken the enemy side, it is not a place and a space for the permissibility of any action. Rather, there are some actions that are criminalized and punishable even if they occur in wartime. These actions are termed in this era as "war crimes". Islamic jurisprudence did not know this terminology with this name, except that the content of its idea is spread in books of jurisprudence in the chapters of jihad and walking, so the Islamic law restricted many actions during the war, and it did not allow killing and fighting except in a narrow space in a way that achieves the interest for which the war was established, which is the subjugation of The enemy and its victory, so it made rules and controls within its perpetuation of the morals of war, those ethical rules that the Islamic Sharia dyed with the dye of obligation, so they became legal rules that must be disciplined, and arranged a punishment for their violators, so the Sharia prohibited the use of many combat means such as treachery, displacement, and the use of civilians as human shields, and it also criminalized The use of some weapons of mass destruction or those whose harm exceeds non-combatants. In return, we find that the international community did not begin to issue legal instruments that regulate war and hostilities until centuries ago. Late, to complete the legal system of international humanitarian law with the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 AD and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States is conducting experiments at its Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility to simulate the implosion of nuclear bombs and capture x-ray images of the process. Topics include examines these experiments are crucial because the United States ceased full-scale nuclear weapon tests in 1992 and signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996.

There is a significant threat to global health security due to synthetic opioids, illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF), and nefarious uses of pharmaceutical based agents (PBA). Since 2014, increased distribution of synthetic opioids including IMF into the US through China, India, and Mexico has resulted in devastating consequences to the average street drug user. Additionally, clandestine lab operations for pill manufacturing and distribution have increased, along with unintentional drug overdoses due to drugs being laced with fentanyl or some other synthetic opioid derivative. Naloxone has been shown to be an effective and useful tool for reversing signs and symptoms of synthetic opioid overdose, though additional doses may be required depending on the analog. In addition to the risk of overdose in US civilians, other state actors have utilized fentanyl and its analogs as incapacitants resulting in significant numbers of casualties. The National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams (WMD-CST) have been on the front lines supporting federal law enforcement agencies with hazard identification and assessment. Physician Assistants (PA) are assigned to these units and provide the necessary skills and expertise to keep on scene personnel safe. This article aims to dispel some of the rumors and myths surrounding fentanyl in an effort to educate first receivers, first responders, and hospital providers. Lastly, this article provides a review of synthetic opioid production, overdose, hazards, treatment/countermeasures, decontamination for responders, and the potential use of synthetic opioids as WMDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The azide anion (N3-) is highly toxic. It exists most commonly as sodium azide, which is used widely and is readily available, raising the potential for occupational incidents and use as a weapon of mass destruction. Azide-poisoned patients present with vomiting, seizures, hypotension, metabolic acidosis, and coma; death can occur. No specific azide antidote exists, with treatment being solely supportive. Azide inhibits mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase and is likely oxidized to nitric oxide in vivo. Cytochrome c oxidase inhibition depletes intracellular adenosine triphosphate and increases oxidative stress, while increased nitric oxide causes hypotension and exacerbates oxidative damage. Here, we tested whether the cobalamin (vitamin B12) analog cobinamide, a strong and versatile antioxidant that also neutralizes nitric oxide, can reverse azide toxicity in mammalian cells, Drosophila melanogaster, and mice. We found cobinamide bound azide with a moderate affinity (Ka 2.87 × 105 M−1). Yet, cobinamide improved growth, increased intracellular adenosine triphosphate, and reduced apoptosis and malondialdehyde, a marker of oxidative stress, in azide-exposed cells. Cobinamide rescued Drosophila melanogaster and mice from lethal exposure to azide and was more effective than hydroxocobalamin. Azide likely generated nitric oxide in the mice, as evidenced by increased serum nitrite and nitrate, and reduced blood pressure and peripheral body temperature in the animals; the reduced temperature was likely due to reflex vasoconstriction in response to the hypotension. Cobinamide improved recovery of both blood pressure and body temperature. We conclude cobinamide likely acted by neutralizing both oxidative stress and nitric oxide, and that it should be given further consideration as an azide antidote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the categorization of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and argues that the term can be misleading and misdirect resources. It specifically focuses on radiological weapons (RWs) and examines the programs of Egypt, Iraq, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors use a structured and focused comparison method to analyze the reasons for pursuing and ultimately renouncing RWs. They find that bureaucratic in-fighting and organizational politics played a significant role in inhibiting the deployment of RWs, and that the effectiveness and utility of these weapons were called into question. The article also highlights the obstacles to deterrence and emphasizes the importance of not disregarding the threat posed by RWs. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses Bruce E. Bechtol Jr.'s book, "North Korean military proliferation in the Middle East and Africa: Enabling violence and instability." The book explores North Korea's covert military ties with the Middle East and Africa, using a mix of interviews and open-source material. Bechtol argues that North Korea's military proliferation is not just a regional problem, but a threat to the international community. He examines North Korea's involvement in weapon of mass destruction, conventional weapon sales, refurbishment of Soviet-era weapons, and technical and military assistance. The book also focuses on North Korea's military cooperation with Iran, Syria, and countries in Africa. Overall, this book provides valuable insights into North Korea's extensive network of military proliferation in the Middle East and Africa. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, the author, who is chief of the WMD Branch at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, explains how UNSCOM provided a foundational example of multilateral efforts to prevent the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction and why it is incumbent on all countries to work together to follow and build on that example today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the psychological and behavioral impacts of exposure to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) during the war in Ukraine. Topics covered include lessons from historical WMD events in Japan, the importance of communication and collaboration between physical and mental health services, and the challenges faced by healthcare workers during such events.

In modern times, the papacy has consistently advocated peace, disarmament, and peaceful resolution of conflicts, limiting the scope of traditional just war theory, particularly in the era of weapons of mass destruction. However, no pope has gone as far as Pope Francis, who has stated that there is no such thing as just war and that "Only Peace is Just." This contribution examines how Francis expressed and developed his thought in the context of his humanitarian diplomacy and theological thinking during the first ten years of his pontificate. In the last part, I argue that the Ukraine war is a test for Pope Francis, who has repeatedly called for peace negotiations and condemned arms supply, while recognizing the moral right for Ukrainian self-defense. While this may seem contradictory, his policy shows Francis's deeper conviction that "war is always a defeat for humanity." More interested in peace-making and assisting victims than in doctrinal issues, Francis has not jettisoned the just war concept in theory, but has done so in his witness and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space warfare is warfare that takes place in outer space. It involves ground-to-space, space-to-ground, and space-to-space violence between nations or peoples. The violence can involve kinetic weapons, directed energy weapons, or electronic destruction. International law, specifically, the Outer Space Treaty and SALT I, currently bans weapons of mass destruction from being put into space, although one wonders if one country were to violate the ban whether others would follow suit. In this paper, I argue that that if there is a non-consequentialist morality of space war, then one country can unjustly attack a second country's space vehicles. This in turn depends on property rights. But there is no adequate theory of property rights with regard to space war. Hence, there is no non-consequentialist morality of a space war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on theory within anthropology and associated fields, I develop feralness as a lens for understanding the complexity of technological afterlives. Conceptual development proceeds through a case study of the relationship between Do-it-Yourself Biology (DIYbio), nonprofessional scientists experimenting with the established technology of recombinant DNA in new contexts such as garages and kitchens, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Absent the institutional controls of academia or industry, DIYbio has been perceived by the FBI as a potential threat to national security and is policed by the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. Though the FBI has tried to contain the spread and reach of DIYbio, it has, ironically, came to be one of the main instruments of DIYbio's global spread. In closing, I argue that feral technologies, those technologies with unexpected and potentially dangerous afterlives, are emblematic of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the public oppose nuclear use? Survey experimental research varying either the advantages or the disadvantages of nuclear use has produced a wide range of results. Yet no study has examined how the military advantages and strategic and moral disadvantages of nuclear weapons interact. We explore this interaction and uncover a pattern that unifies the literature's seemingly disparate results: the persuasive power of nuclear weapons' military advantages is conditional on their disadvantages. We demonstrate this by independently randomizing both the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear use in (1) a 2 × 2 factorial version of an influential design and (2) a novel adaptation of conjoint experiments that focuses on the most plausible comparisons between nuclear and conventional strikes. Our results support a new explanation for why the public can appear rigidly opposed to nuclear strikes in some circumstances and highly permissive in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is virtually no doubt that climate change poses a security risk for many, if not all, regions and peoples of the planet. This scope makes it precisely the type of threat the United Nations Security Council ('UNSC') should be addressing. The pertinent question is, do we want the UNSC as it is currently constituted, to tackle climate change? It is an institution with vestiges of a hegemonic world order that empowers five states above all others. It is also politically fragile, influenced by national policies that can cause it to become gridlocked. Yet, it has some important successes, notably in the areas of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ('WMDs'), both of which were handled as security threats in a pre-emptive manner. Thus, the UNSC has been situated as a potential means in which to galvanise the international climate response -- which is found in the Paris Agreement and should not be afforded much success when measured against the continued increase in global emissions. This paper seeks to evaluate what promise, or peril, the UNSC offers through the securitisation of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To get access to the resources-rich central Asian states and to nip in the bud the state of Afghanistan, that had proclaimed itself under the Taliban regime to be a state run solely under the ideology and system of Islam-the next threat to The US after the socialism-the US, after the 9/11 incident, took resource to using the linguistic weapon of metaphor before and along the surgical strikes and managed to beset the thoughts of every individual on the globe. It was successfully used as a justification to approve finances from the US Parliament for mongering an uncalled for war, to enlist moral support of its citizens by means of instilling fear in them, to elicit active financial and personnel support of its European allies and to silence the international community from raising its voice against the attack. It is the domain of cognitive linguistic where these conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, are used to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. This study focused on identifying the conceptual metaphors used in the War on Terror discourse for influencing opinion against the enemy and dehumanizing it. Metaphors are used in the conceptual domain of covering the false ideas of the US and influencing the world to manipulate and pursue their ulterior motives. There actual motive was to get the justified war on terror as legal and the only source of getting away with it. They influenced the world with their justified war on terror policy and gained their motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I formalize interactions between an endogenously rising challenger and a rival defender who can accept the challenger's rise, go to war before the rise comes to fruition, or degrade the challenger's growth through low-level conflict operations that I call "hassling." The novelty here is that the defender has private information about its hassling capabilities; this implies that the challenger does not know how much it can rise without provoking the defender to hassle or go to war. I find that when the defender's ability to hassle improves, it can provoke a strategic response in the challenger that undermines the defender's ability to use its private information productively and results in lower utility for the defender. This model provides insight into both Saddam Hussein's decision-making leading up to the 2003 US invasion and the stability-instability paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current US nuclear modernization program departs in several major ways from longstanding US nuclear policy: It elevates the role of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy, includes plans for developing several new nuclear weapon capabilities, and resurrects former nuclear capabilities that past US presidents had wisely eliminated. Of all the Trump administration's nuclear modernization plans, however, the most destabilizing are probably the new, low-yield nuclear options and dual-capable systems that may be ambiguously nuclear or conventional. But the United States can still return to a smarter path - one that eliminates these specific nuclear weapons plans, and adopts a more measured nuclear rhetoric to match. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in US nuclear weapons policies introduced by the Trump administration have created new challenges for the US-China nuclear relationship. This is happening at the same time that the bilateral competition is turning increasingly serious and even hostile. As the most important external influencer of China's nuclear policy, the United States can take a number of steps to prevent this bilateral nuclear relationship from falling into a deeper, more negative cycle of action-and-reaction. Such an effort should include at least five elements: lead by doing (and demonstrate the right values); try to get a more accurate understanding of China; find a common framework for maintaining nuclear stability; start by reducing shared risks; and help China better understand US policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation expert Jon Wolfsthal provides his wide-ranging views on the current nuclear situation, how the new Congress might deal with US plans for a $1 trillion-plus modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and ways the inordinate cost of that modernization program might be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins talks about her work on arms control and nuclear security and discusses differences between the Obama and Trump administrations on issues including nuclear weapons modernization and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. She highlights the scarcity of women and people of color in national security, explains why that matters, and describes how the organization she founded last year - Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation - is working to diversify the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores three case-studies—the Munich crisis of 1938, the Suez crisis and war of 1956 and the Iraq war of 2003—as examples of 'how not to run international affairs'. On the face of it, all three episodes were disasters. Irrespective of whether Munich was strategically correct, Neville Chamberlain's public presentation of the agreement was a clear miscalculation. Anthony Eden created an elaborate pretext for invading Egypt, which was nevertheless so see-through that it destroyed British credibility. Tony Blair appears to have persuaded himself into believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and basing his case for war upon this idea left him exposed when the weapons were shown not to exist. Whereas it is easy to say that these mistakes should not have been made, it is harder to suggest mechanisms that would prevent leaders falling prey to such delusions, when their immediate political interests appear to depend on them. The article concludes that in these three cases failure was over-determined; on the other hand, there are many everyday crises that foreign policy actors, who understand 'how not to run international affairs', succeed in preventing from turning into disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has been using its trade power to exert influence in other areas by including non-trade issues (NTIs) in its trade agreements with third countries. One such NTI is the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) non-proliferation clause. We study how the WMD non-proliferation clause affected countries' WMD non-proliferation behaviour. Our results demonstrate that the nonproliferation clause is effective in case of bilateral trade agreements, but not in case of regional trade agreements. The results demonstrate that the EU can use its trade power to exert influence in other areas, but that the extent of such power is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes tort liability of non-state actors for violations of the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Topics discussed are current state of international space law, tortious activities in outer space such as interference with space freedoms, private appropriation of celestial bodies and placing weapons of mass destruction in outer space, as well as redress for harmful activities in space, cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute, public nuisance and waste, negligence and duty of care.

The article is a sociohistorical exploration into how Alfred Korzybski arrived at a functional definition of human beings as a time-binding class of life and what a wide range of possibilities this definition contains. Through the idea of time-binding, Korzybski attempted to explain our complex selves and lives through an epistemic-cognitive-performative approach. While the author of "Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering" proposed the formulation of time-binding as a unique human capacity to pass on information, knowledge, and skills across generations at an exponential rate, he was aware of the promises and perils implicit in this human prowess. The epistemic connotation of time-binding is not devoid of value and ethical underpinnings: time-binding can be interpreted as a cognitive-creative force when it contributes to the inventions that make human lives better; time-binding amounts to a moribund impulse when human expertise and skills are utilized for producing weapons of mass destruction, as it had happened during the First World War. "Manhood of Humanity" has a diagnosis-healing approach toward the grave crises of its contemporary times. The text was written as a herald of hope in desperate times as it proposed strategies for practicing conscious, cautious, and conscientious time-binding and, hence, for promoting the art and science of human engineering for a consolidation of the efforts of human beings for collective benefits and well-being of the species. The article argues that Korzybski continued this endeavor in his subsequent works as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of bioterrorism is increasing in lethality and numbers of events globally. Weapons of mass destruction include devices of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear origin and are often selected by terrorists because they are capable of causing widespread destruction, harm, and panic. Emergency personnel are often first to recognize and report potential terrorist activities. It is essential that emergency personnel maintain a high index of suspicion for symptom patterns that correspond with effects of bioterrorism agents. Health care providers must have a solid understanding of personal protective equipment for specific categories of bioterrorism agents to protect themselves and others while providing care to victims in the emergency department. A clear understanding of disaster protocols, established communication systems, reporting requirements, and available resources to aid in patient management following a bioterrorism event is crucial for optimal, safe, quality care to be administered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As new technologies change the face of war, whether and how to pursue arms-control and disarmament treaties is an urgent question. Our past treaties show us that codified commitments can have an influence on state conduct. The author reviews what we can learn from existing agreements on weapons of mass destruction, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the conventions on biological and chemical weapons. Though in some cases they have had more impact than others, these agreements have been effective in curbing the spread and use of our most devastating weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]