Why a Demilitarized Palestine Won’t Work
28 mars 2024There are precedents for successful unarmed states—but none apply to the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long resisted the concept of a two-state solution, but rarely so explicitly as in the months since the Oct. 7, 2023,...
Climate costs of military interventions
09 janvier 2024Let's imagine you decided to host an international conference with the declared aim of combating the phenomenon of rain around the world, yet without taking into account the existence of clouds and their behavior. Many observers would probably...
What Sex Means for World Peace
17 juin 2023The evidence is clear: The best predictor of a state's stability is how its women are treated. Well, here is some robust empirical evidence that we cannot ignore: Using the largest extant database on the status of women in the world today, which I...
The atomic origins of climate science
18 mai 2023The Autumn of the Atom: How arguments about nuclear weapons shaped the climate-change debate Bipartisan agreement about the future of the planet falls apart not over the bomb but over the climate. Historically, though, they’re inseparable: the...
Farewell to multilateralism
11 février 2023The risk of seeing the United Nations increasingly disunited is not a simple exercise for Sciences Po students; nor for anti-globalization activists. This is an issue for all Changemakers, Peacemakers and Troublemakers, i.e. those (readers...
Global carbon accounting
23 décembre 2022Time to face up to the military blind spot in global carbon accounting. As the impact of the climate crisis continues to grow, rapid emissions cuts are becoming ever more urgent. Our new report finds that militaries may be responsible for 5.5% of...
Pelosi’s questionable trip to Taiwan
15 août 2022Less than 100 days before the world’s leaders meet in Egypt to tackle the climate crisis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s incendiary trip to Taiwan leaves climate cooperation between the U.S. and China in tatters. It was only last year, in 2021, that...
The Pentagon Is Killing Us
14 juillet 2021The U.S. must downsize its military budget to meet the climate crisis. The dog days of summer are upon us — and the record high temperatures killing hundreds in the Pacific Northwest and bringing 118 degree heat to Siberia serve as a harbinger of...
TPNW: Wishful thinking
06 octobre 2020You could be forgiven for assuming that governments of the world inhabit two parallel universes. In July this year, Australia launched the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which concluded that its region “is in the midst of the most consequential...
Fighting a virus with the wrong tools
01 août 2020Right now, the wealthiest, most scientifically advanced country in history is being brought to its knees by a virus it knew was coming. And having failed to adequately invest in pandemic protection measures, the U.S. government now is fighting a...
Security and Global Justice
26 juin 2020I have been thinking principally about the various kinds of security we all want and the various kinds of insecurity we face. Upon reflection, these turn out to be much broader than the way the concepts of security and insecurity are usually...
NATO - The 2 per cent goal
25 novembre 2019NATO’s main enemy is supposed to be Russia. It doesn’t matter that Russia’s military expenditures are about 6-7 % of NATO’s total expenditures (29 countries). It doesn’t matter that NATO’s technical quality is superior. It doesn’t matter that...
The Role of Nature Conservation in Peacebuilding
18 juin 2019Humanity is facing a biodiversity crisis. To solve environmental problems, we bring people from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority to the same table. Conservation efforts are beneficial for all communities and facilitate constructive...
The Pentagon vs. Peak Oil
31 mai 2019How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees,...
Invest in the UN Green Climate Fund
12 février 2019The U.S. Armed Forces response isn’t to immediately cut its carbon emissions in order to curb climate change. Rather it is to determine how best to defend against the instability and chaos that climate change may bring to the international...
The French 'Green Book on Defence'
10 décembre 2018The “Green Book on Defence” or Livre Vert de la Défense is a French policy paper on environmental security published in February 2014. The project was directed by Senator Leila Aïchi, Vice President of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Commission of...
U.S. Vela satellite, PTBT and Israel
06 août 2018For more than half a century, Israel has maintained a cover of silence and opacity regarding its nuclear program and arsenal, backed up by the threat of severe punishment and persecution for any Israeli (see Mordechai Vanunu) who dares publicly...
Europe divided on strategic autonomy
31 juillet 2018Since 2016, the question of strategic autonomy for the European Union has become unavoidable and faces its first credibility test with the debate on the modernisation of NATO's nuclear deterrent. Will this system be replaced by Franco-German...
Preventing a Nuclear Iran, Peacefully
09 mai 2018THE debate over how to handle Iran's nuclear program is notable for its gloom and doom. Many people assume that Israel must choose between letting Iran develop nuclear weapons or attacking before it gets the bomb. But this is a false choice. There...
Hyman Rickover’s vision
18 avril 2018I believe that nuclear power for commercial purposes shows itself to be more economic, but that's a fake line of reasoning because we do not take into account the potential damage the release of radiation may do to future generations. I'll be...
European nuclear deterrence in the making
10 janvier 2018The American commitment to European security has been one of the few constants since World War II. Fractures have started to appear in the alliance, however. In May 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed that “the times in which we can...
Why are Nuclear Disarmament Initiatives Bound to Fail?
11 décembre 2017The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for being a strong and active force in campaigning for disarmament and pushing for the adoption of the nuclear weapons ban treaty, 2017. Despite...
The Pentagon's Carbon Bootprint
22 février 2017The Pentagon occupies 6,000 bases in the US and more than 1,000 bases (the exact number is disputed) in 60-plus foreign countries. According to its FY 2010 Base Structure Report, the Pentagon's global empire includes more than 539,000 facilities at...
Militarism in an age of climate crisis
16 avril 2016How is the US military seeking to address climate change and what are its implications for environmental and social justice? For anyone concerned with militarism, news of the terrorist attacks in Brussels brought a familiar sense of dread. We ached...
The 5th Geneva Convention
22 décembre 2015The acceptance that legal protection for the environment from the ravages of armed conflict needs improvement has a long history. During the last three decades, initiatives have repeatedly flowered, only to wither and die in seminars and conference...
The Great Debate - Michael Renner
03 décembre 2015It is sheer coincidence that Paris was struck by terrorists on the eve of a key climate conference known as COP 21. To some, the attacks may appear like an unfortunate distraction in the face of efforts to meet a civilizational challenge like no...
COP21 – War and Peace
04 novembre 2015An argument can be made that COP21 must address the subject of war and peace as an ecological issue. Because secrecy veils the true numbers, it is difficult to accurately determine the amount of atmospheric pollution caused by the military....
At least 21 reasons to… take a look at this blog
23 mars 20151 – Athena is the Greek goddess of war who disliked battles and preferred to end quarrels in a peaceful manner. 2 – Athena’s favourite creature was the owl, which to my mind symbolises the whistleblower. Whistleblowers like the International...
An Uncommon Peace: Environment, Development, and the Global Security Agenda
03 février 2015In the 20 years since the Brundtland report’s publication, the specter of nuclear destruction has not yet been “removed from the face of the Earth,” as the report called for, but has merely changed scale: the threat of the mushroom cloud has been...
Whistleblowing, truth, INES and INESAP
14 novembre 2014INES ou International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility was founded in Berlin in Novembre 1991. Knowledge becomes property. Property of knowledge exist in two forms: 1. Property per se and most effective is secret...
Ben's book on war and peace, an ecological issue
03 novembre 2014The militarization of the world is the main cause of the deterioration of our environment on land, at sea and in space. Our planet is in need of intensive care and it is increasingly being damaged by the very people who are its self-proclaimed...
The available Literature on Nukes and money
22 novembre 2013It is not surprising that the political community and civil society have little visibility on the nuclear issue, as even among researchers and other stakeholders there has been a marked absence of available literature, particularly on the issue of...
To be or not to be a Nuclear Weapon State
14 juin 2013"As long as lions don't have their historians, hunting stories will always glorify the hunters." African proverb How can France belong to the 'happy few' who have a say on the international arena, while the country (3% of the world's GNP) is...
The Effects of Climatic Change on Security
06 novembre 2012Environmental security, a relatively recent concept, has provoked intense debate amongst theorists of international relations. What are the indicators for environmental security? To what extent is the scarcity of a natural resource likely to cause...
Nuclear Weapons: At what cost?
11 septembre 2012Cramer is a political analyst of the arms race with experience as a journalist and as an activist on disarmament and security issues. In this facts and figures packed book published by the global peace umbrella group, the International Peace Bureau...
NPT, the nuclear Non-Protestation Treaty
13 janvier 2009Obama has vowed that he will do 'whatever it takes' to stop the Iranian enrichment programme. The threat of military force must stay on the table—'As President, I will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran'. He will have support in...
