John Duncan

BLOG ACTION DAY 2009: THE NUCLEAR EQUATION

Climate change, perhaps the biggest issue for the world community. Twenty years ago I experienced this at first hand in Sudan. To see the inexorable spread of the the Sahara southwards engulfing villages and fields that only a few years before had been fertile land was a real personal wake up call.

Today I am very conscious of the environmental aspect of our work in Arms Control & Disarmament. How to ensure that development of civil nuclear power is not diverted into nuclear weapon programmes is at the heart of what we are about. But on the conventional side too the environmental damage caused by landmines and cluster munitions is not only the fact that explosives, including heavy metals leach into the soil, but as agricultural land becomes too dangerous too use, people are often  forced to clear new land, increasing deforestation. 

It will be a major challenge to meet the  demand for energy across the world from renewable energy sources. Nuclear energy will be part of the solution. Gordon Brown set out our vision on this issue in his speech at Lancaster House conference earlier this year.

In my statement today at the UN I referred to David Miliband's comment that “Get it right, and we will increase global security, pave the way for a world without nuclear weapons, and improve access to affordable, safe and dependable energy. Get it wrong, and we face a new and dangerous era of new state nuclear weapon holders and the chilling prospect of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists.” 

Posted at 10:41 15 October 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[0]

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: NEW YORK MEETING CONCLUDES

Making the Best the enemy of the Good is a trap that multilateral diplomacy often fails to avoid. But we also have to prevent that easy slide to the lowest common denominator. This is the balance we have been struggling with in New York this week.

Those of you who have been following the discussions on TWITTER and Flickr will have seen that it was something of a roller coaster ride.

At the end of last week we had already broken open the 15 year deadlock where the Preparatory meetings had failed to agree the Agenda for the five yearly Review Conference. Suddenly with next year's Agenda agreed the way was open to get into a discussion of policy.

In the end we were not able to agree the chairman’s draft policy recommendations. This was a very ambitious thing to attempt to do in just 5 days. No-one has ever managed it before and we very nearly pulled it off. With such high stakes it is hardly surprising some of the discussions became quite heated. People often confuse diplomacy with tact, which is just one way of persuading people. When time is short and the issue important, theatre is just as much an element. The skill lies in knowing which approach to deploy, with whom and when This brings me back to my oft repeat theme in these blogs – diplomacy is about trying to understand other people. Finding out what will encourage them to agree with you and what will prevent them.  Having a well reasoned argument rarely works on its own

 So has it been a worthwhile 2 weeks? Definitely yes. We are out of the foothills of endless procedural wrangling and into the open grassland of the real debate. We have 12 months in which to deepen discussion of what really matters - how to elaborate a shared vision of the steps needed to achieve a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.

Posted at 01:36 16 May 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[2]

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]

LIFTING THE NUCLEAR SHADOW: WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS

As part of our ongoing dialogue on how to achieve a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, David Miliband will launch next week a new public consultation paper. He has also given an interview on BBC’s World Tonight programme  (Thursday 29th edition) which covers many of the issues we deal with in Geneva.

Making progress in Nuclear Non proliferation and Disarmament is vital to the security of our world both now and for future generations. Climate change has increased the demand for cleaner energy, but we cannot allow this to increase the risk of nuclear wars.

The Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York next year will be the moment when the world community comes together to look at how far we have got towards stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, and setting the world on the path towards nuclear abolition.  Diplomats will meet in New York in May this year to set out the agenda for the Review Conference.

Our consultation paper aims to encourage wider public to speak up. It outlines the large number of practical measures the UK is taking, (in addition to reducing our own nuclear arsenal down 75% since the end of the Cold war) such as:

- a major conference this March, called by Gordon Brown, to develop further proposals for minimising the proliferation risks which could arise with the global expansion of civil nuclear power;

-  building greater confidence in nuclear disarmament through the pioneering work by our Atomic Weapons Establishment on the verification of nuclear disarmament, including their work with Norway and the verification NGO, VERTIC and  a conference of the recognised nuclear weapons states to discuss the way forward on verification.

Those of us at the negotiating front line need your voice to be heard. The BBC is inviting listeners’ comments.
There will be a live web stream of the launch of the new paper on the FCO website and the video will be available to download. So please do engage in the debate.
 

Posted at 19:29 30 January 2009 by John Duncan  |  Comments[12]

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]