“No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane. … Whether Americans, Russians, and other humans can rise to the challenge of reversing these policies and eliminating the danger of near-term extinction caused by their own inventions and proclivities remains to be seen. IRead More

On 27 July 1953, the Korean War Armistice was signed, suspending hostilities (after 4 million deaths, mostly civilian, in three years) “until a final peaceful settlement” was “achieved at a political conference” to be convened “within three months.” Sure enough, less than 90 days later, a treaty was concluded: theRead...

In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear William Blake   Was the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a breakthrough or a let-down, a successRead More

In a speech at the University of Geneva on May 24, UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres launched a new ‘Agenda for Disarmament’ – Securing Our Common Future – designed to revitalize and refocus efforts to achieve the core objective the UN Charter to “save succeeding generations from the scourge ofRead More

“The road to hell,” the saying goes, is “paved with good intentions.” If a path to peace in Korea, however long and winding, emerges from the currently scheduled June 12 Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un, it will have been paved by the best and worstRead More

On March 22, President Trump tweet-sacked National Security Adviser (NSA) Lieutenant-General H.R. McMaster, naming as his replacement John Bolton, one of the most hawkish, controversial and unpopular officials in the trigger-happy administration of George W. Bush. Bolton learned the news while appearing on the Fox ‘News’ Channel, his soapbox inRead More

On February 2, the United States released its first Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) since the 2010 study commissioned by then-President Barack Obama. The Obama NPR disappointed many disarmament advocates in its doctrinal timidity – it failed to declare the US would never use nuclear weapons first, and only ever use themRead More

This past fall, I boarded a one-way flight to New York City with two outrageously sized suitcases, a backpack and a yoga mat. I had a faint idea about what I would be doing in the Big Apple, but nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead in theRead More

At times of heightened international tension the first duty of diplomacy is simple to define, harder to practice: providing a venue for the meeting of otherwise warring minds. In co-hosting, with the United States, the ‘Vancouver Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Security and Stability on the Korean Peninsula’ on January 16,Read More

In 1729, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift made “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” There was, Swift’s imperialist Protestant persona reasoned, a “fair, cheap and easy method”Read More