The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has been diligently promoting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—usually just called the nuclear ban treaty—since it was opened for signature on 20 September 2017. ICAN’s …
Articles by: "Rod Lyon"
The current tensions between Washington and Pyongyang aren’t just about history. Nor are they simply the result of personal frictions between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. At their core, they reflect the difficulties that typically …
As international concern mounts about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, recent events suggest a Pyongyang strongly interested in a new round of talks—or at least in talks with South Korea and the US, if …
Some years ago, Christine Leah and I published an article that explored Australian thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy. We argued that for more than six decades Australians had essentially espoused ‘three visions of the …
The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has received mixed reviews. Some see it as a dramatic move away from a long-term US policy of reducing the size and salience of its nuclear arsenal, and …
Suddenly and unexpectedly, a small but intense debate has ignited in Australia over an unlikely topic—the wisdom of acquiring an indigenous nuclear weapons arsenal. (Some of the contributions to that debate can be found here, …
Late last week, a ‘pre-decisional’ draft of the Trump administration’s forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was leaked to the Huffington Post. While it would be wrong to treat that draft as the final text—after all, …
Originally published 5 August 2017. As some readers will probably recognise, the title of this post is a phrase drawn from Herman Kahn’s On thermonuclear war, one of the more depressing texts of the 20th …
Originally published 2 June 2017. Recent media reports suggest senior US officials have told Julie Bishop that if North Korea’s nuclear weapon program can’t be reversed, South Korea and Japan will likely pursue their own …
The ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific recently published a small volume of essays titled Nuclear Asia. With North Korea’s nuclear exploits featuring prominently in the headlines over the past 12 months, the issue …
As North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs have become more adventurous, a worrying possibility has begun to emerge. There’s a chance that—at some point—the North Koreans might want to combine the two testing programs, …
Australia’s latest foreign policy white paper is—like the geostrategic region it purports to describe—complex and challenging. White papers usually are, because they are the product of many hands. But in this case there are other …