Addressing and Improving the Current Nuclear Policy Paradigm

There is a now a critical need to educate U.S. Representatives, Senators, their staffs, State Department and other officials, as well as public opinion makers, the public, and the press on issues relating to global security and the value and substantive accomplishments in the area of diplomacy, arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament. Without these tools excessive reliance on military power becomes increasing likely and in the arena of nuclear weapons exceptionally hazardous.

For this reason the Global Security Institute has gathered a group of outstanding former diplomats and experts with deep experience in international security issues and successful advocacy. In fact, their collective successes in making our world a safer place is nothing short of inspiring. While the members of the Nonpartisan Security Group do not always fully agree with each other on every aspect of public policy, they are united by an urgent need to assist key constituencies in understanding and responding to the extreme security challenges facing the United States and the world today.

NSG is informed by the successes of the Bipartisan Security Group, which included successful education and advocacy in the U.S. Congress and the executive branch and was able to advance fulfillment of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament treaty commitments. It helped stimulate hearings in Congress and numerous educational events. (Testimonies to Congress by BSG members | Report: GSI Experts Testify Before Congress | Bipartisan Task Force on Limits of Unilateralism).

With an Administration seemingly unconcerned with the consequences of downgrading treaties, this educational service is critical to global security. If the U.S. fails to pursue the power of law it will help to create a world where only power counts. This would be catastrophically dangerous and an insult to the lives and treasure expended by the U.S. to create the modern world where commerce, travel, communications, and generally peace is pursued in a rule based, norm based, peaceful fashion. The alternative will be violence and war.

The NSG’s interests include a focus on several critically important matters of international security. Some are of immediate concern and action and some are more long term:

• Preserving and strengthening international security based on the rule of law, diplomacy, identified shared interests, cooperation, and treaties
• Preserving and strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty with a particular emphasis on fulfilling existing political and legal commitments to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament
• Preserving and strengthening the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention
• Constraining the use of nuclear weapons
• Preventing the weaponization of space
• Ending the further production of weapons usable fissile material
• Lowering the operational posture of nuclear weapons
• Making permanent and legally binding the ending of testing of nuclear weapons
• Stopping the arbitrary use of force and preventing war
• Establishing a new executive branch agency designed to analyze and present to the President proposals for cooperative security measures affecting new weapons technologies that have the potential for lasting damage to humanity.