An announcement by President Obama that the United States would support India's ascension to a permanent seat on the Security Council is less about the future of the Security Council and more about firming up India as a reliable American ally.
65 years ago today, the world entered the age of nuclear weapons. Ban Ki Moon is in Hiroshima, along, for the first time, a U.S. government official, for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima. From UN News Center:
The people who brought you An Inconvenient Truth have set their sites on nuclear terrorism. Countdown to Zero opens in theaters across the United States today. From David Corn's review in Mother Jones:
Lots of goings on around the UN and Iran. As it happened, I attended a small press briefing with Ban Ki Moon at UN headquarters yesterday. He described the recent Brazil/Turkey fuel exchange deal as a potentially "positive step in building confidence if followed by broader engagement with the IAEA and international community." Meanwhile, moments before the conference began, Secretary Clinton declared to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that all five members of the Security Council have agreed on a draft sanctions resolution on Iran.
UPDATE II: The video of Hillary Clinton's address at the NPT Revcon:
In this Bloggingheads conversation with Daryl Kimball, we preview the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference that kicks off at the United Nations today. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, discusses what is at stake, what the Obama administration is hoping will come out of the conference, and what role Iran might play as a spoiler in the negotiations.
The State Department just announced that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead the United States delegation to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the UN next week. In UN terms, this means the United States will be represented at the "ministerial level," which is a reflection of the importance to which a country places a particular meeting. (The only higher level is "head of state.") In U.S.
Everyone agrees that the greatest single external threat facing the United States is terrorists potentially geting their hands on a nuclear weapon. The point of the Nuclear Security Summit underway in Washington, D.C. this week is to agree upon concrete measures to minimize that risk.
A video of the historic arms reduction treaty between Russia and the United States, signed today in Prague.