nuclear-news

Non Proliferation Preparatory Committee  concludes; Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons states point way forward.

The third Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has just concluded at United Nations Headquarters in New York. Following two weeks of meetings that ended (as anticipated) without the adoption of an outcome document, the discussions illustrated a clear divide between the majority of countries, who are actively working towards nuclear disarmament, and the rest.

Pro-nuclear weapons states have demonstrated a profound lack of urgency in the face of increasingly urgent conditions. Following calls in recent months from some to share, transfer, or station nuclear weapons in new countries, it was dismaying that these states were unable to reaffirm even the most basic principle of the NPT – a commitment to prevent proliferation. 

But the increasing risk of nuclear weapons use, anywhere, demands clarity and courage everywhere. That’s what ICAN brings to the table.

In our statement to the conference, we asked the simple question: Can the non-proliferation treaty agree on non-proliferation? We spoke out against the growing number of NPT states parties entertaining the idea of nuclear sharing or a “Eurobomb.” We reminded governments that disarmament and non-proliferation are not  vague aspirations, they are legal obligations. And we emphasized that the nuclear policies of the few are undermining the security of the many.

Throughout the PrepCom, the ICAN team engaged directly with all five nuclear-armed states, as well as most nuclear-supportive and nuclear-hosting governments. These conversations were frank — and necessary — as we need to show them that we are watching, and that we hold them accountable to their commitments. 

At the same time, we had energising meetings, both bilaterally and as groups, with many of the states championing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). With the first Review Conference to the parties to the TPNW, in November 2026, on the horizon, momentum is building — and the intersessional work ahead will be critical.

Why does this matter? Because the TPNW is where real progress is happening. It’s not just setting the standard on disarmament — it is now the clearest reinforcement of the norm on non-proliferation as well. As South Africa, which holds the presidency for the first TPNW Review Conference, stated: “the TPNW represents the highest non-proliferation standard that any State can commit to, thereby strengthening and complementing the NPT.”

And support for the TPNW is growing. Last week, in its general statement to the PrepCom, Kyrgyzstan (which had never previously expressed support for the TPNW) announced its political decision to join the TPNW.  

The next state to sign, ratify, or accede to the TPNW will bring the number of states that have taken such an action to 99. That’s more than half of the world’s states – a global majority standing together to reject nuclear weapons as instruments of security. 

The increasing support for the TPNW proves that, despite stagnation and posturing in other forums, the global movement for nuclear disarmament is not only alive — it’s advancing.

As this PrepCom ends without consensus, last week’s Nobel Peace Laureate letter, from Nihon Hidankyo, IPPNW, and ICAN to Presidents Trump and Putin, calling on them to meet and to pursue disarmament as a matter of urgency, is all the more urgent.  

May 12, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

NATO leaders as delusional as Zelensky on lost Ukraine war

no chance of prevailing.

Yet, Zelensky won’t budge on his goals of reclaiming all captured territory including Crimea, lost 5 years before his presidency. Nor will Zelensky give up his delusional goal of NATO membership.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 4 May 25

Thruout the 3 year, 3 month Russo Ukraine war, Ukrainian President Zelensky has steadfastly ignored battlefield reality of Ukraine’s destruction and impending defeat.

His delusions started in April, 2022 when he swallowed US and UK demands he walk away from the negotiated peace deal that would have cost Ukraine no new lost territory, albeit no NATO membership for Ukraine and neutrality between East and West.

Since then he’s lost roughly a fifth of his land, a hundred thousand plus casualties, a shattered economy…and no chance of prevailing.

Yet, Zelensky won’t budge on his goals of reclaiming all captured territory including Crimea, lost 5 years before his presidency. Nor will Zelensky give up his delusional goal of NATO membership.

But outside of US realism under Trump, Zelensky is not alone in his war delusions.

Recently, retired Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Sir Richard Shirreff advised that Europe will build up its troops, ships and planes if America pulls back from European defense against imaginary enemy Russia, “if only Europe has the will.” Shirreff appears clueless that due to European economic decline from supporting a lost war, most Western European people only have the will that it end

Current NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is even more Zelensky-like. He trumpet’s Russia’s casualties of a thousand troops daily and that “Ukraine is not losing…and we must ensure Russia does not capture even one more square kilometer of Ukraine territory.” Rutte is oblivious that his intransigence to supporting Trump’s peace plan costs Ukraine more square kilometers of land every single day. Rutte is channeling delusional Baghdad Bob talking about “the mother of all victories” during the second Iraq war..

The oddity of all this delusion is that on just about every domestic and foreign policy issue, Trump is the poster president for delusion. On the Ukraine war he’s the only realist in the war room.

May 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Fantasy and Exploitation: The US-Ukraine Minerals Deal

Dr Binoy Kampmark May 2, 2025, https://theaimn.net/fantasy-and-exploitation-the-us-ukraine-minerals-deal/

The agreement between Washington and Kyiv to create an investment fund to search for rare earth minerals has been seen as something of a turn by the Trump administration. From hectoring and mocking the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the cameras on his visit to the US capital two months ago, President Donald Trump had apparently softened. It was easy to forget that the minerals deal was already on the negotiating table and would have been reached but for Zelensky’s fateful and ill-tempered ambush. Dreams of accessing Ukrainian reserves of such elements as graphite, titanium and lithium were never going to dissipate.

Details remain somewhat sketchy, but the agreement supposedly sets out a sharing of revenues in a manner satisfactory to the parties while floating, if only tentatively, the prospect of renewed military assistance. That assistance, however, would count as US investment in the fund. According to the White House, the US Treasury Department and US International Development Finance Corporation will work with Kyiv “to finalize governance and advance this important partnership,” one that ensures the US “an economic stake in securing a free, peaceful, and sovereign future for Ukraine.”  

In its current form, the agreement supposedly leaves it to Ukraine to determine what to extract in terms of the minerals and where this extraction is to take place. A statement from the US Treasury Department also declared that, “No state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, stated that the subsoil remained within the domain of Kyiv’s ownership, while the fund would be “structured” on an equal basis “jointly managed by Ukraine and the United States” and financed by “new licenses in the field of critical materials, oil and gas – generated after the Fund is created.” Neither party would “hold a dominant vote – a reflection of equal partnership between our two nations.”

The minister also revealed that privatisation processes and managing state-owned companies would not be altered by the arrangements. “Companies such as Ukrnafta and Energoatom will stay in state ownership.” There would also be no question of debt obligations owed by Kyiv to Washington.

That this remains a “joint” venture is always bound to raise some suspicions, and nothing can conceal the predatory nature of an arrangement that permits US corporations and firms access to the critical resources of another country. For his part, Trump fantasised in a phone call to a town hall on the NewsNation network that the latest venture would yield “much more in theory than the $350 billion” worth of aid he insists the Biden administration furnished Kyiv with.

Svyrydenko chose to see the Reconstruction Investment Fund as one that would “attract global investment into our country” while still maintaining Ukrainian autonomy. Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, thought otherwise, calling it “Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukraine deal.” Instead of focusing on the large, rather belligerent fly in the ointment – Russian President Vladimir Putin – the US president had “demonstrated nothing but weakness” towards Moscow.

The war mongering wing of the Democrats were also in full throated voice. To make such arrangements in the absence of assured military support to Kyiv made the measure vacuous. “Right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on MSNBC television, “all indications are that Donald Trump’s policy is to hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and in that case, this agreement isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on.”

On a certain level, Murphy has a point. Trump’s firmness in holding to the bargain is often capricious. In September 2017, he reached an agreement with the then Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to permit US companies to develop Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals. Having spent 16 years in Afghanistan up to that point, ways of recouping some of the costs of Washington’s involvement were being considered. It was agreed, went a White House statement sounding all too familiar, “that such initiatives would help American companies develop minerals critical to national security while growing Afghanistan’s economy and creating new jobs in both countries, therefore defraying some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more reliant.”  

Ghani’s precarious puppet regime was ultimately sidelined in favour of direct negotiations with the Taliban that eventually culminated in their return to power, leaving the way open for US withdrawal and a termination of any grand plans for mineral extraction.

A coterie of foreign policy analysts abounded with glowing statements at this supposedly impressive feat of Ukrainian diplomacy. Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Centre, thought it put Kyiv “in their strongest position yet with Washington since Trump took office.” Ukraine had withstood “tremendous pressure” to accept poorer proposals, showing “that it is not just a junior partner that has to roll over and accept a bad deal.”

Time and logistics remain significant obstacles to the realisation of the agreement. AsUkraine’s former minister of economic development and current head of Kyiv school of economics Tymofiy Mylovanov told the BBC, “These resources aren’t in a port or warehouse; they must be developed.” Svyrydenko had to also ruefully concede that vast resources of mineral deposits existed in territory occupied by Russian forces. There are also issues with unexploded mines. Any challenge to the global rare earth elements (REEs) market, currently dominated by China (60% share of production of raw materials; 85% share of global processing output; and 90% manufacturing share of rare earth magnets), will be long in coming.

May 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

No Victory in Ukraine: The Costs of Western Delusion

Having invested enormous political capital in the narrative of Ukrainian success, Western governments now face a stark choice: admit failure or fabricate further illusions.

A negotiated settlement can succeed only if it acknowledges Russia’s control over key Ukrainian territories and guarantees that Kyiv will not join NATO. Anything less is strategic fantasy.

Analyzing the impending failure of Ukraine’s war effort and the urgent need for strategic realism in U.S. and European policies.

POST-LIBERAL DISPATCH, Apr 29, 2025, https://postliberaldispatch.substack.com/p/no-victory-in-ukraine-the-costs-of?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4747899&post_id=162368952&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The conflict in Ukraine represents not merely a military failure but a profound collapse of political imagination and strategic discipline across the West. To evaluate this ongoing debacle through the lens of political realism and realpolitik demands dispensing with sentimental narratives, ideological attachments, and moralized illusions that have distorted serious analysis for years. Strategic clarity begins with the uncomfortable but inescapable fact: Ukraine’s defeat, whether through a forced diplomatic settlement or battlefield collapse, is no longer a possibility to be debated—it is an inevitability. The West’s refusal to acknowledge this reality stems less from misunderstanding battlefield dynamics and more from a systemic dysfunction wherein political leadership has fused strategic aims with public relations imperatives, thereby serving neither effectively.

At the core of Western miscalculation lies a fatal contradiction. Ukraine was encouraged—indeed, materially and rhetorically incentivized—to resist with the implicit, sometimes explicit, promise of ultimate victory. Yet Western capitals were neither prepared to mobilize the industrial base, financial resources, nor political will necessary to sustain the prolonged total war required to defeat a nuclear-armed Russia. This contradiction was not an accident; it arose naturally from the structural incentives within Western democracies, where leaders needed to appear resolute without assuming the irreversible costs and risks that genuine strategic victory would demand. Thus, Western “support” was expansive in quantity but defective in quality—sufficient to prolong Ukraine’s resistance but insufficient to enable decisive success.

This dynamic exposes why further support—whether billions of dollars in aid, advanced weapons, or rhetorical escalations—cannot now alter the outcome. Ukraine’s manpower shortages, industrial exhaustion, and political fragmentation cannot be reversed by external injections of matériel or funding. The critical variable—human capacity—has been irreversibly degraded. Realpolitik demands the recognition that no arsenal of Western weapons can compensate for a collapsing force structure facing an adversary that enjoys both conventional and nuclear escalation dominance.

The strategic illusion driving continued support is not born of a sincere belief in Ukrainian victory but rather of a desperate attempt to delay political reckoning. Having invested enormous political capital in the narrative of Ukrainian success, Western governments now face a stark choice: admit failure or fabricate further illusions. In this sense, Ukraine’s war effort has been subordinated to Western political needs rather than judged on its own strategic merits. This helps explain why Ukrainian leadership was encouraged to reject diplomatic offramps like the Istanbul talks: the West preferred a failed gamble on battlefield reversal to an early settlement that would have publicly exposed the limits of Western power and credibility.

This leads to an unavoidable truth: Ukraine has been treated less as a sovereign actor and more as an instrument of Western strategic signaling. The dominant objective was never the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders—an outcome unattainable without direct NATO intervention—but the maintenance of an image of Western resolve against authoritarian revisionism. Once battlefield success proved elusive, the war transformed into a conflict of perception, with Ukrainians paying the real, human cost for abstract political imperatives.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s blunt diplomacy is not a betrayal but rather a belated reassertion of strategic rationality. The alternative—prolonging Ukraine’s suffering for a fantasy of reversal—serves no tangible Western interest. Trump’s reported willingness to “walk away” unless a settlement is reached recognizes a fundamental truth of realpolitik: power is the only currency in negotiation. With no remaining strategic leverage, Ukraine must accept the least unfavorable terms while it still retains a semblance of bargaining power. Otherwise, total military collapse and unconditional surrender will be the inevitable conclusion.

This analysis must also grapple with the secondary consequences. Ukraine’s defeat will undoubtedly damage U.S. credibility in the eyes of key allies such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Yet political realism demands prioritization. The Indo-Pacific, not Eastern Europe, is now the primary theater of geopolitical competition. Resources, strategic focus, and credibility are finite. Every dollar expended in Ukraine without materially altering the balance of power weakens Washington’s ability to contain China, the only peer competitor capable of fundamentally reshaping the global order. From a purely interest-based perspective, retrenchment from Ukraine in favor of bolstering Indo-Pacific commitments is not only logical but strategically imperative, however politically unpalatable it may seem.

Nor should any illusions persist about containing Russia through continued proxy conflict. Prolonged war has already incentivized deepening Russian-Chinese strategic alignment, revealed political fractures within NATO, and accelerated the global shift toward a multipolar order. The longer the West clings to the illusion of salvaging Ukraine’s position, the more divisive it will become at home—and the more strategic ground it will cede abroad. Realpolitik demands ruthless triage: sacrifice what cannot be saved to consolidate and defend what remains viable.

Finally, it must be recognized that Russia, having paid the costs of prolonged conflict, has no rational incentive to settle for partial gains. Political realism teaches that actors seek to translate battlefield success into maximal political objectives. Unless confronted by overwhelming force or existential risk—neither of which the West is prepared to employ—Russia will continue pressing its advantage. A negotiated settlement can succeed only if it acknowledges Russia’s control over key Ukrainian territories and guarantees that Kyiv will not join NATO. Anything less is strategic fantasy.

The dominant narratives that have framed Western engagement in Ukraine—invocations of democracy, sovereignty, and resistance to aggression—may possess emotional resonance, but they have been strategically catastrophic. They obscured the real stakes, concealed the true balance of forces, and ultimately subordinated hard strategic interests to soft illusions. In the brutal calculus of international politics, sentimental attachments are liabilities, not assets. Strategic clarity demands recognizing irretrievable losses, minimizing further damage, and reallocating resources to theaters where the balance of power can still be decisively shaped.

May 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment