John Duncan

MOSCOW: A FOLLOW ON TO START

There has been a wide welcome amongst governments and also by the think tank community for the announcement of a’ Joint understanding’ by Presidents Obama and Medvedev earlier this week to reduce their nuclear arsenals to below 1,700 warheads each and their commitment to co-operate more closely on non-proliferation.

With the existing START Treaty due to expire in December this year, the priority has been to get something in place before then. A tall order given the slow pace of Arms Control and Disarmament diplomacy for much of the past decade. And the fact that the US and Russian negotiating teams have been hard at work in Geneva over the past weeks involving some of their best diplomats. This week’s announcement should therefore be seen as a step in a longer process. The US’s still has to complete its own Nuclear Posture Review. These are issues go to the heart of the nation state’s responsibilities – to protect and safeguard its citizens. This is not an area for “gesture politics”. More a time to start putting the substance into the bold vision that both presidents articulated in London and Prague earlier this year.

But we can see that Russia and the US are well on track, reflecting the increasing willingness of the nuclear weapons states to co-operate on nuclear issues and in particular on disarmament. This will be particularly important as we approach the NPT Review Conference next spring.

For our part, the UK has been working hard to strengthen the consensus across all pillars of the NPT. As Gordon Brown commented in his Lancaster House speech and again in the Building Britain’s future paper , we have to confront interconnected challenges of our global society, where the nuclear question is a central issue that plays into many, if not all of them

Posted at 11:41 08 July 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[1]

NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION TREATY NEW YORK DAY 3

A day of surprises. Has the “Decade of Deadlock” finally ended? After 15 years when the final Preparatory Committee, currently meeting in New York, has completely failed to agree the Agenda for the major Review Conference, this morning we actually did it.

Quite remarkable. Of course to anyone outside the community of Disarmament  diplomats this may seem quite a bizarre thing to get exited about. But the agenda sets out in some detail what the 5 yearly Review Conference next year is going to focus on. The fact that the last Review Conference in 2005 failed is largely due to the inability of  nations to agree what they wanted to discuss.

This year both the Nuclear Weapon States (UK, US, Russia, France and China) and the Non Nuclear Weapons states (everyone else in the NPT Regime) simply said enough is enough and refused to allow those who wanted to use procedural tricks to prevent discussion from blocking the way forward. US leadership is part of this, but one nation cannot carry the day alone. It takes those on the centre ground to rally around to defeat those on the extreme wings.

Now of course the serious work begins.

Posted at 03:57 07 May 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[3]

NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION TREATY, NEW YORK DAY 3

A day of surprises. Has the “Decade of Deadlock” finally ended? After 15 years when the final Preparatory Committee, currently meeting in New York, has completely failed to agree the Agenda for the major Review Conference, this morning we actually did it.

Quite remarkable. Of course to anyone outside the community of Disarmament  diplomats this may seem quite a bizarre thing to get exited about. But the agenda sets out in some detail what the 5 yearly Review Conference next year is going to focus on. The fact that the last Review Conference in 2005 failed is largely due to the inability of  nations to agree what they wanted to discuss.

This year both the Nuclear Weapon States (UK, US, Russia, France and China) and the Non Nuclear Weapons states (everyone else in the NPT Regime) simply said enough is enough and refused to allow those who wanted to use procedural tricks to prevent discussion from blocking the way forward. US leadership is part of this, but one nation cannot carry the day alone. It takes those on the centre ground to rally around to defeat those on the extreme wings.

Now of course the serious work begins.

Posted at 03:56 07 May 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[0]

Welcome

Welcome to our new Blog. As the UK's roving ambassador for Arms Control and Disarmament I have been running a blog diary for the past 18 months, so it is good to be on-line with a more interactive version. I look forward to comments and views as we show you what the work of a multilateral mission involves.

The Arms Control and Disarmament team is very different from most UK overseas missions. The core team is based in Geneva at the Conference on Disarmament. The Geneva team are the hub to 10 Virtual Teams drawn from across government, civil society and academia who come together to carry out the actual negotiation that is at the heart of our work.

Making a Better World for a Better Britain is more than just a strapline for us. It actually describes what we do since our job is to negotiate the international agreements in Arms Control and Disarmament that we hope will make the world a safer place. Many of the major treaties in this area were negotiated here in Geneva; from the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty going as far back as the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians and POWs in time of war.

Of course negotiating treaties may seem a particularly dry and legalistic area of work with hours spent discussing texts and the meaning of words. But all diplomacy is fundamentally about people and relationships. Time and again we see that our ability to build compromises and to secure deals is based on personal understanding and trust between the negotiators. Having a good argument is rarely enough to win the day.

But perhaps more important is the effect our work has on people's lives. I think few people would question that the agreement to ban Cluster Munitions in Dublin last May will have a real world benefit to ordinary people caught up in war and conflict.

Over the next 4 weeks my Geneva team will be in New York for the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. We will be joined there by members of our Virtual Teams as the UN membership reviews the political landscape of Arms Control and Disarmament - everything from Nuclear weapons to landmines and depleted uranium. Some 60 resolutions will be put forward urging action and proposing solutions. I hope you will join us on this journey. It is a busy time for all the team, but we hope to give you a glimpse of what our work involves and will do our best to answer your questions. The links on the side bar will tell you more about the issues and our main webpage gives background and information on what we do.

Posted at 13:53 30 September 2008 by John Duncan  |  Comments[5]