Panel Discussions - Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Finnish Expert: “Regional Conflicts Are Closely Connected With Nuclear Arms Race”
Longtime nuclear-arms expert Raimo Väyrynen told an IPI audience that regional conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia are “closely connected with the nuclear arms race.”
“I think it's unrealistic to think that we can stop the risk of nuclear proliferation and accumulation of arsenals––say in the Middle East and South Asia––unless there are more durable solutions to the Kashmir conflict, to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and so forth,” said Mr. Väyrynen, a former director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “The continued reduction of nuclear weapons must be connected with the strong efforts to find more durable solutions to regional conflicts.”
The May 11th event also featured David Cortright, who co-wrote with Mr. Väyrynen the new book Towards Nuclear Zero, published as part of the Adelphi series by the International Institute For Strategic Studies.
“We all know that nuclear weapons are instruments of mass annihilation,” said Mr. Cortright, who is a director at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. “They are not really instruments of war. They violate every ethical principle of proportionality and discrimination, and cannot be justified under any moral or political doctrine as just instruments of achieving political results.”
The discussion was chaired by Dr. Edward C. Luck, IPI Senior Vice President for Research and Programs.
Read Transcript
The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
Mr. Prendergast discusses the international justice system and the new ground forged by Invisible Children's Kony2012 campaign.
Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.