PSR and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) have released a report that demonstrates that a regional nuclear war could put 1 billion people at risk of famine. Without strong movement towards nuclear abolition, more countries will develop their own domestic nuclear weapons programs and the threat of a regional nuclear [...]

One of the more pernicious obstacles to rational policy-making is the “ratchet effect”: the tendency for policies, once adopted, to acquire a life of their own and to become resistant to change, even when they have ceased to be useful. For example, you can be confident that we will all be wasting time in airport [...]

Without a crystal ball … it seems very difficult to tell exactly how they’d be different — or which future would be better. Here’s why: They’ve both shown a capacity to directly and unapologetically contradict their previous rhetoric with their actions. Would President Obama be more or less willing than President Romney to wage war [...]

By RAVI NESSMAN – Associated Press NEW DELHI — India’s successful test of a powerful new missile that can carry nuclear weapons to Beijing caused barely a ripple – even in China – just days after North Korea was globally vilified for a failed rocket launch. The vastly different responses show the world has grown [...]

Greek profligacy may be blamed for triggering the debt crisis that now threatens to tear the eurozone apart, but if there is one area where Berlin is less excoriating of state largesse it is in Athens’s extravagant taste for arms. Behind the frequent exhortations that Greece rein in spending after living “beyond its means” – [...]

By HELMUT SCHMIDT and SAM NUNN The two of us have joined a number of our colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic in discussing a threatening development: the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how and nuclear material. We now face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons and materials ever invented could [...]

Is the global arms trade recession-proof? Almost, it appears. While government spending is being cut across the globe, military spending is staying remarkably steady. The world’s countries spent $1.7tn on their militaries last year, according to new figures published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It’s barely changed from the year before, masking [...]

Global spending on weapons totals more than $1.7tn (£1tn), and Russia has overtaken Britain and France to take third place in the world league table, according to the latest figures released by a leading research body on Tuesday. While military expenditure fell last year in most western countries, including the US, which is facing serious [...]

The US is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programmes – the extraordinary amount [...]

WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration has adopted a demand in the negotiations with Iran beginning Saturday that its Fordow enrichment facility must be shut down and eventually dismantled based on an understanding with Israel that risks the collapse of the negotiations. It is unclear, however, whether the administration intends to press that demand regardless [...]