What’s next on nonproliferation and international security, in Washington and around the globe.
– Oct. 7: The U.N. General Assembly — with all its talk about Syria and Iran — may be over, but international leaders will continue with plenty of disarmament debates on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The General Assembly’s First Committee on Disarmament and International Security will meet on Monday and work throughout the month. The panel, which works closely with the U.N. Disarmament Commission and the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, has no small task: It “deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community and seeks out solutions to the challenges in the international security regime.” Ibrahim Dabbashi, permanent representative of Libya to the United Nations, was elected chair of the First Committee on Oct. 1. The panel’s formal meetings will be webcast, and videos of its past gatherings are archived.
– Oct. 7: An event at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will tackle the thorny question of whether the United States and Russia truly can work together to resolve the conflict in Syria. Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University, will speak. As the talk proceeds at the Washington think tank — just a stone’s throw from the White House — international experts will be on the ground in Syria planning the early stages of a nine-month effort to inventory and dismantle chemical-warfare assets controlled by President Bashar Assad’s regime.
– Oct. 8: The U.S. government may be shut down (as of this writing), but that doesn’t mean the Pentagon has forgotten its other major budget crisis: sequestration. The Senate Armed Services Committee is planning a hearing on the decade-long $ 500 billion reduction to defense spending. The big military honchos are slated to testify: Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh. Welsh is likely to talk about plans for a new nuclear-armed bomber aircraft, which he views as vital even during tough fiscal times.
– Oct. 8: The libertarian Cato Institute is heading to the Hill — Capitol Hill, that is — for a discussion of why it believes a U.S. nuclear triad is no longer necessary. Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the think tank, and Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies there, will discuss their new white paper that asserts U.S. nuclear weapons policies are based on rationales that have been on life support since the Soviet Union’s demise. Cato says they will “explain why a far smaller arsenal deployed entirely on submarines would be sufficient to deter attacks on the United States and its allies and would save roughly $ 20 billion annually.”
–Oct. 8-11: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Executive Council plans to meet in The Hague, where it is expected to talk about Syria’s chemical-weapons program. The 41-member body adopted a resolution on Sept. 27 that calls for eliminating Syria’s chemical arms by the middle of next year. The Netherlands-based international organization — which is responsible for implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention — prior to that vote had been at loggerheads with the United Nations regarding which body would take more of a leading role in Syria. The Executive Council’s three-day meeting in early October will mark its 74th session.
– Oct. 10: Nuclear-weapons modernization programs will be front and center at a House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing. The panel is slated to hear from four key atomic-arms officials: Donald Cook, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration; Madelyn Creedon, assistant secretary of Defense for global strategic affairs; Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, head of U.S. Strategic Command; and Jerry McDowell, deputy laboratories director and executive vice president for national security programs at Sandia National Laboratories. The hearing comes just a week after the State Department released data showing that since March the United States has marginally increased the number of deployed nuclear weapons and launcher vehicles it holds, despite plans for the stockpile to decrease under the 2011 New START agreement with Russia.
– Oct. 10: The Senate Armed Services Committee is pushing forwarding with reviewing more of President Obama’s nominees for top national-security posts. On Thursday the panel will review the nominations of Jamie Morin to be director of cost assessment and program evaluation at the Pentagon, Michael Lumpkin to be assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, and Jo Ann Rooney to be undersecretary of the Navy. Obama sent the Senate the nominations on Sept. 11. Morin, in particular, could hold significant sway over the Pentagon’s nuclear-related work, as the so-called “CAPE” office keeps close tabs on weapon systems’ development and procurement costs.
– Oct. 11: Another House Armed Services subpanel will examine biodefense, and the Pentagon’s resources and priorities for it, during a Friday hearing. The Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee plans to question Brett Giroir, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at Texas A&M University; Philip Russel, founder of the Sabin Vaccine Institute; and Amy Smithson, a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Biodefense could be an issue in the closely watched Syrian civil war, as some Middle Eastern intelligence officials have voiced concerns that Assad’s regime could use biological weapons even as its chemical stockpile is eliminated.
A LOOK AHEAD
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