February 2006

Iran says Russia link to ease mistrust Eighty-five tonnes of UF6 is enough for a dozen atomic bombs once Iran perfects industrial-scale enrichment technology with thousands of cascades operating in centrifuges around the clock, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said recently.
Learn from Europe's past "Will Europe's Past Be Asia's Future?" This is the theme of a thesis that Professor Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University wrote in 2000, and which sparked a lot of debate. The thesis was published in the quarterly magazine of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and emphasized the arms competition and conflict of national emotions in Northeast Asia as unstable factors in the region.
Case Against Iran Differs From Iraq The significance of the document is that it is the rough design for a bomb. "To make a bomb, you put two hemispheres together into a ball and you have this circular core, and then you surround it with detonators," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former State Department advisor on nonproliferation.
Simmons Tries To Convince Taiwanese Right now, China is flooding the Taiwan Strait, which separates it from Taiwan, with an unprecedented level of naval construction, including submarine building that far outpaces United States construction. And its defense spending is more than three times the amount Taiwan spends, according to 2005 figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Kosovo issue inflaming separatism Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the United States was reluctant to accept any kind of enrichment activity in Iran "because once Iran develops this capability, they could easily replicate it to make nuclear weapons secretly, which even the most intensive IAEA monitoring could not detect." He suggested that it would be better for Iran to "forego this capability until it has restored international...
Is Iraq headed for civil war, or worse? "This isn't shaping up to be just a civil war -- it's worse than that. It's a war of all against all," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary University, London. "What we have is a security vacuum that has given rise to various different forces fighting each other for control ... it's much more fractured than a civil war."
Carrot vs stick: curbing Iran's nuclear Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the United States was reluctant to accept any kind of enrichment activity in Iran "because once Iran develops this capability, they could easily replicate it to make nuclear weapons secretly, which even the most intensive IAEA monitoring could not detect." He suggested that it would be better for Iran to "forego this capability until it has restored international...
Nuclear panic Some opponents of the missile shield have said that an attack is more likely to come from a terrorist group armed with a stolen or primitively manufactured nuclear weapon smuggled in on a boat. But a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies makes clear that Russian nuclear weapons have remained safely secured even during the early years of turbulence; there is no evidence of a nuclear back market. Demand has not responded to the minor supply.
Iraq's Pandora's Box Is the world (including the U.S.) safer? No. Ethnic cleansing in Iraq is pushing the country closer to civil war, risking chaos in the region. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (London) stated "al-Qaeda's recruitment and fundraising was greatly boosted by the U.S. invasion of Iraq." Militants expanded their influence across the region, be it the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the growing militant threat on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan (New York Times), increased...
Policies & Politics: Iraq - three years on And this mess is affecting the rest of the world. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), the U.S. invasion of Iraq has benefited al-Qaida. Large numbers of recruits have joined up to fight the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
Defence sector must target strategic work According to Mark Stoker, a defence economist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, UK defence spending has fallen to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product compared with about 6 per cent towards the end of the cold war. "Spending has increased by 1.5 per cent over inflation annually during the last three years," he says. But the value-for-money that spend achieves is probably falling, because of the soaring cost of new technology, fuel and wages.
More Defense Spending, Less Security Military spending is even more lopsided: $11.3 billion compared to $404.9 billion, or less than 3 percent of U.S. defense spending. In fact, U.S. defense spending eclipses that of all other countries. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2003 total United States defense expenditures ($404.9 billion in current year dollars) exceeded the combined defense expenditures of the next 13 countries and was more than double the combined defense spending of the remaining 158...
Pentagon alarmed at NATO allies' cutbacks In an analysis by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States increased its troops from 1.37 million to 1.42 million. However, between 2001 and 2005, the institute found that Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain cut their active-duty forces, The Washington Times reports.
NATO allies cut military since 9/11 A comparison of force structures in 2001 and 2005 showed countries such as Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Poland, Spain and Germany cut their active-duty forces, according to statistics compiled by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. At the same time, the United States increased its ranks from 1.37 million to 1.42 million.
A close ally, but no influence The US could in future be a "more comfortable partner" for Britain, says Colonel Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, if it means there will be greater emphasis on "preventive threats rather than a heavy footprint". But this is only a part of the picture painted by the Pentagon. British military chiefs, MI5 and MI6 have never liked the idea of a war on terror. Now, they say, the concept of a long war gives a spurious legitimacy to...
Iran Restarts Uranium Program "They've now walked across the line in such a blatant way that it's hard to see where any other red line could be drawn," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and a former U.S. liaison to the IAEA in Vienna. "Now they've done what everybody was afraid of."
Is Russia's Offer Just A Diplomatic Device? Iranian and Russian diplomats were supposed to meet on 16 February to discuss Russia's offer to enrich uranium for Iran, a move that would allay fears that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has now delayed that meeting, but Russia's offer remains on the table. How much, though, would it change? Fariba Mavaddat of RFE/RL's Radio Farda sought an answer from Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
U.S. shield blunts Israeli military option "This (Bush's pledge) is a landmark bit of phrasing which I am sure was at least partly calculated," said Patrick Cronin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. But he added that an agreement by Israel to forgo unilateral action on Iran "would not cost a lot, as while tactically (Israeli) military options are not nil, they are close to nil".
Senator seeks answers on Iraq basing plans While officials have been saying there are no plans for any American bases in Iraq once U.S. troops withdraw, Kimmitt used slightly different language in a London speech earlier this week. He said the U.S. will not maintain any long-term bases in Iraq, and added: Our position is, when we leave, we will not have any bases there.
The world as a battlefield The second is the representation of the new security paradigm as the "long war", a phrase that has crept into Pentagon-speak over the past two years and is now being used as a pithy successor to the "cold war" as encapsulating the US defence outlook (in London on 6 January, the deputy director of US central command, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, delivered a speech outlining the US's reconfigured military strategy in what he also called "the long war".)