SASSI’s New Islamabad Office

South Asian Strategic Stability Institute Pakistan
Street.1, House # 427,
F-11/1 Islamabad
Tel:- +92-51-22-90-917,
Tel:- +92-51-22-91-061

Fax:- +92-51-210-34-79

Could nuclear warheads go off 'like popcorn'?

26 June 2008 - YOU might think nuclear weapons have been carefully designed not to go off by accident. Yet more than 1700 of them have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple warheads to explode one after another - an effect known as "popcorning" - according to a UK Ministry of Defence safety manual.

A typical Trident nuclear missile contains from three to six warheads, and a US submarine might carry up to 24 missiles. Weapons builders aim to prevent accidental explosions of warheads by designing them to be "single-point safe". This means that a sudden knock at a single point - say if it were dropped from a crane while being unloaded from a submarine - should not detonate the plutonium core.

However, a nuclear-weapons safety manual drawn up by the MoD's internal nuclear-weapons regulator argues that this standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent popcorning. The document was declassified last month. More >>>

Global warming could increase terrorism, official says

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Global warming could destabilize "struggling and poor" countries around the world, prompting mass migrations and creating breeding grounds for terrorists, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council told Congress on Wednesday.

Climate change could increase flooding in coastal areas, like the flooding that hit the Philippines. Climate change "will aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions," Thomas Fingar said. "All of this threatens the domestic stability of a number of African, Asian, Central American and Central Asian countries." People are likely to flee destabilized countries, and some may turn to terrorism, he said. "The conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity," he said.
"Economic refugees will perceive additional reasons to flee their homes because of harsher climates," Fingar predicted. That will put pressure on countries receiving refugees, many of which "will have neither the resources nor interest to host these climate migrants," he said in testimony to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. More >>>

Pakistan's New Counterterror Strategy

After years of unsuccessful military campaigns, Pakistan’s leaders have realized that unrestrained attacks on militants are counterproductive, and are relying more on negotiations and reconciliation.

However, this tactic runs the risk of upsetting the international community, which expects Pakistan to root out militants attempting to launch attacks in Afghanistan from Pakistani soil. More >>>

Food Crisis: A Global Emergency

It has been called the "silent tsunami." In the past 24 months, grain prices have doubled. Prices of fertilizers and fuels have tripled. Thirty countries from Bangladesh to Haiti have seen food riots, and there is sticker shock at supermarkets even in rich nations.

"This is the world's big story," says Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs. "We're really in the perfect storm."

The storm includes rising demand from growing populations; stagnation in the growth of crop production; increasing diversion of food crops into biofuels; and droughts from Australia to Italy, which may be the cutting edge of ongoing climate change.
According to Sachs and other Earth Institute leaders, the world must adapt to climate and other challenges using both technology and common sense, in order to produce more food, and ensure that the poor, as well as the rich, have access to it. More >>>

Iran's 'dance' of nuclear packages

"Our proposed package and yours contain common points and we are in Tehran today due to these commonalities," Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief visiting Iran as the head of an "Iran Six" delegation to submit the group's latest "incentive package" geared to soliciting Iran's nuclear cooperation, stated at his first press conference in Tehran on Sunday.

Much, then, depends on the ability of both sides to get past divisive issues and expand on these "suitable commonalities" for the sake of what Solana has termed a "win-win" negotiation. (The "Iran Six" consists of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany.) More >>>

After the oil crunch?

The end of cheap oil helps renewables, but makes far dirtier alternatives viable. A low-carbon future will demand brave leadership

There are two competing explanations for today's high oil prices. One sees the price rise as the result of a temporary imbalance between supply and demand, exacerbated by a weak dollar and a bubble of speculative commodities trading. Fix these problems, adherents suggest, and the price can return to previous low levels, allowing business to continue as usual. The other sees the current price spike as symptomatic of a much deeper crisis, one that could end life as we know it in the rich, consuming west as global supplies of cheap oil begin to run short, not temporarily, but for ever. As Chris Skrebowski, editor of the UK Petroleum Review, puts it: "This is what I would describe as the foothills of peak oil." More >>>

Nuclear official calls for India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea to join disarmament talks

June 10, 2008 - SYDNEY, Australia: The world may need a new nuclear weapons treaty that includes India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, an Australian official said Tuesday.

Former foreign minister Gareth Evans, who was appointed chairman of a new international body for nuclear disarmament, said nuclear powers who currently refuse to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had to be included in a new process if the world were to abandon nuclear weapons.

"We've got to bring in India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — all those that are presently with weapons but outside that framework," Evans told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio from Romania. More >>>

Finnish PM urges rich nations to take lead on climate change

TOKYO (AFP) 9 May 2008 — Finland's Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen on Monday urged developed countries to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while helping emerging economies with clean energy technologies.

"Competition for vital natural resources, in particular water, may further intensify in many parts of the world as a result of changing weather patterns. This is likely to lead to increasing local and regional strife," he said.

While all countries must tackle climate change, industrialised nations have a historical responsibility for the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, Vanhanen told a press conference during a visit to Tokyo.

"It is the developed world that has to lead by example," he said. More >>>

Climate change and security

How is global warming affecting existing competition for resources and changing international security priorities? A survey of recent research shows how complex the picture could become.

The societal implications of climate change crucially depend on how human beings, social systems, and political in- stitutions respond. Some measures facil- itate adaptation and minimize the risks, others may cause more problems. For instance, populations could respond to environmental hardships by migrating, which would spread potential hotspots of social unrest.4 These developments could turn into security problems, as the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change acknowledges: “Climate- related shocks have sparked violent con- flict in the past, and conflict is a serious risk in areas such as West Africa, the Nile Basin, and Central Asia.” [PDF download] More >>>

Exploration drives uranium resources up 17%

03 June 2008 Current economic uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates, while it is expected there is twice that amount awaiting discovery. With reprocessing and recycling, the reserves are good for thousands of years.

Worldwide around 5.5 million tonnes of uranium that could be economically mined has been identified. The figure is up 17% compared to that from the last edition of the Red Book because of a surge in exploration for uranium prompted by a dramatic price increase. More >>>

Envisioning a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

Arms Control Today - Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre

On the 40th anniversary of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), there is a resurgence of interest in achieving the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. It is welcome. To be sure, the vision is not new. My government, along with many others, has been a stalwart advocate of the elimination of nuclear weapons for decades. Indeed, all parties to the NPT have committed to this objective.

Government policies in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons fall along a wide spectrum of commitment. Nonetheless, they share a fundamentally aspirational quality. Few if any government policies advocating elimination have fully reconciled themselves with countervailing realities, such as reliance on a nuclear umbrella or the difficult and complex challenges of transparency and verification in a world with only handfuls of nuclear weapons.

Thanks in no small measure to the courage and commitment of former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, the prospects for reconciling aspiration with reality could be getting brighter. More >>>

Climate change and energy crisis threaten global security, Nato secretary general warns

Bruxelles - June 2008. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer insisted the alliance must look to a new “strategic horizon” where dwindling water and food supplies, global warming and migration cause international tensions.

“Climate change could confront us with a whole range of unpleasant developments – developments which no single nation state has the power to contain,” he told a defence conference in Brussels. “It will sharpen the competition over resources, notably water. It will increase the risks to coastal regions. It will provoke disputes over territory and farming land. It will spur migration and it will make fragile states even more fragile.

“The scarcity of fossil fuels is already leading to a renaissance of civilian nuclear energy – and this poses its very own proliferation problems.” More >>>