In the Issue

• Countries in Crisis: Halting the Slide Toward Failure
• Reducing Nuclear Dangers
• How Can the Gs Best Work With the UN?
• The 2010 NPT Review Conference: What It Is All About
• Star Wars: A Not-So-Distant Reality?

Features

Countries in Crisis: Halting the Slide Toward Failure. For decades, the balance of power between strong states was the central issue in discussions of international security. But today it is so-called “fragile” states that are seen by many as posing equal, or potentially even greater, threats to global security. Read more from award-winning journalists Kira Kay and Jason Maloney who recently explored the successes and failures of international interventions in four countries—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Bosnia, and Haiti.

Reducing Nuclear Dangers. The last month has seen a flurry of new policies on nuclear weapons and materials, with a pair of summit meetings including the first US-Russian strategic arms control treaty in nearly two decades. The upshot is a recalibration of the United States’ approach to the world’s most lethal weapons, moving away from Cold War policies and adjusting to today’s realities. In this opinion piece Stanley Foundation program officer David Shorr examines whether leaders will only tackle the “easier” nuclear challenges or whether they will take on the much tougher ones too.

How Can the Gs Best Work With the UN? Just over a month from now the G-8 and G-20 summits will open in Canada. The G-8, a club of predominately Western industrialized nations, finds itself searching for a new identity. Meanwhile the G-20, meeting for the first time as a permanent heads of state summit, has emerged as a vital forum for leaders to coordinate international economic policy. These developments raise important questions about the future shape of the international system. Diplomatic cooperation is becoming “multi-multilateral” with an intricate web of different intergovernmental forums and mechanisms.

But if this multilateral cooperation is to fulfill its purpose of solving problems and spreading peace and justice around the world, governments and their leaders will need to mobilize and harmonize the efforts of all these intergovernmental instruments now at their disposal. The Stanley Foundation’s 41st UN Issues Conference convened some 35 governmental and nongovernmental officials near New York in March to discuss effective collaboration between the UN and the G-20. Participants included UN officials, diplomats from a number of countries, and global governance specialists. A new Stanley Foundation policy memo includes highlights and key observations from the meeting.

Beyond the Headlines

The 2010 NPT Review Conference: What It Is All About. May 3 marked the start of the three-week long Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at UN headquarters in New York. The NPT represents the sole binding multilateral treaty with the goal of disarmament of nuclear-armed states. Conferences to review the operation of the treaty have been held at five-year intervals since it went into effect in 1970. Each Review Conference has sought to find agreement on a final declaration that would assess the implementation of the treaty’s provisions and make recommendations on measures to further strengthen it. Sergio Duarte, UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament, said that the Obama administration’s focus on nuclear issues has yielded a “completely different atmosphere” than that of the 2005 Review Conference, which is widely remembered as a failure due to the two-week stalling on basic procedural measures. Come May 28, the outcome documents agreed upon by state parties to the treaty will mark the 2010 Review Conference’s success or failure.

Star Wars: A Not-So-Distant Reality? Are the US and China gearing up for war in space? The US launch of the unmanned X-37B space plane on April 22 has raised questions over whether the US may be in the process of space weaponization. It is unclear whether US prototypes like the X-37B are crafted for military or civilian use since the space program encompasses dual-use technology leaving plenty of room for other nations to speculate about US intentions. Military and security analyst John Pike and others contemplate whether crafts like this may be a part of a secret Pentagon budget for space weapons or simply being used to mislead other nations.

China has remained largely silent despite having every reason to pressure the US to release information regarding the mysterious launch of the X-37B. Instead, China appears to be promoting peace efforts and aiming to reduce tensions with the Pentagon. The Obama administration has been busy working on arms control and nuclear security issues including the April 12 Nuclear Security Summit and the New START treaty to reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals. With these initiatives in place, a next logical step might be to extend commitments to space where there are likely to be no winners in a weapons race.