Project Ploughshares Briefings List

(05/2) Policy recommendations for a Canadian response to the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons (SALW)
(English) (French)
Small Arms Working Group of the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (March 2005)

(05/1) Reviewing BMD Options and Implications for Canada
Ernie Regehr
This briefing clarifies the BMD options that Canada faces, explores the implications of Canada's taking political ownership of this US-controlled system, and suggests a way out of the BMD conundrum. (February 2005)

2004

(04/8) Facing the arms control challenges of BMD
Ernie Regehr
In addition to rejecting participation in Washington's deployment of strategic ballistic missile defence, Canada should now be working with like-minded states to define clear arms control measures to mitigate BMD's negative strategic consequences and to halt the drift towards space combat. (October, 2004)

(04/7) Industrial benefits and BMD
Ernie Regehr
Estimates that a Canadian political endorsement of ballistic missile defence (BMD) could yield billions of dollars worth of work for Canadian high-tech firms in the coming years and decades are just that, very rough estimates – rough estimates tending toward wishful thinking. (August, 2004)

(04/6f) Un lancement furtif pur le BAM
Gerry Barr, Ernie Regehr, and Maria-Luisa Monreal
Il y a quelques semaines à peine, le premier ministre Martin a profité du débat des chefs des partis nationaux pour promettre de s’opposer à la militarisation de l’espace - une promesse inattaquable et bien accueillie. Cependant, si l’on en croit les rumeurs qui circulent à Ottawa, les fonctionnaires auraient emprunté un raccourci vers un « lancement furtif » de la participation du Canada au bouclier antimissile (BAM), au moment où le reste du pays se préoccupait de choisir son nouveau gouvernement. (juillet, 2004)

(04/6) BMD's Stealth Launch
Ernie Regehr and Gerry Barr
Barely weeks ago Prime Minister Martin used the national leaders’ debate to pledge welcome and unalterable opposition to weapons in space, but – if Ottawa rumours are to be believed – Canadian officials may have been fast tracking a “stealth launch” of Canada’s participation in the US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) while the rest of Canada was preoccupied with choosing its new government. (July, 2004)

(04/5) Ballistic Missile Defence and Canada's Vital Security Interests
To join or not to join President Bush's Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) initiative will be one of the first major foreign policy decisions facing the Government Canadians will elect on June 28. And the absence of the issue from the election campaign ignores the importance of what is at stake. (June, 2004)

(04/4) BMD, NORAD, and Canada-US Security Relations
Ever since the Government announced that it was pursuing ballistic missile defence (BMD) discussions with the United States , the Department of National Defence has made it clear that it wants the US to place responsibility for command and control of the BMD interceptors with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
(March, 2004)

(04/3) Space and Missile Defence: Sorting Fact from Controversy
The United States has been entirely frank about its intention to weaponize space and to prepare its forces for combat from, into, and within space. (March, 2004)

(04/2) BMD and Arms Control Implications
It is not credible to continue to argue that BMD has no strategic
implications and no implications for non-proliferation. (March, 2004)

(04/1) Canada's Weakening Commitment to a Prohibition on Weapons in Space
The US commitment to placing weapons in space is unambiguously part of its strategic BMD intention. It is an intention that Canada would not escape as a BMD collaborator. (February, 2004)

2003

(03/6) Going forward? The UN Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms and the Programme of Action
Civil society must continue to encourage annual government reporting on small arms activities.
Also published in the Ploughshares Monitor, Autumn 2003.

(03/5) Canada and BMD
Geography and economics regularly conspire to ensure that whatever gets onto the American security agenda will soon find its way onto the Canadian political agenda, so it was inevitable that the Bush Administration’s tenacious and now reinvigorated pursuit of ballistic missile defence (BMD) would once again deliver to Ottawa an offer that it will find difficult to refuse.

(03/4) Retaliatory launch only after detonation
Allan F. Phillips, M.D.
As long as USA and Russia retain arsenals of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, with some of these weapons on high alert, there remains a danger of a purely accidental nuclear war between the two countries. Neither side wants this.

(03/3) Preventing the weaponization of space: options for moving forward
... there is strong movement within the US military establishment to expand the military uses of space to include war-fighting capabilities, to go beyond the accepted parameters of “peaceful uses” and the norm against placing weapons in space.

(03/2) Inspectors and assurance: why deadlines defy logic
In the current "Showdown Iraq" frenzy, it is easy to lose sight of the real job facing the Security Council – first, to give the international community reliable assurance that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction do not present an imminent and egregious threat to international peace and security, and second, to confirm the final elimination of such weapons.

(03/1) Peacebuilding conundrums in the Horn
Leenco Lata
Three peacemaking activities are simultaneously underway in the
strife-ridden Horn of Africa region:
• mediation to end Sudan’s decades-long internal conflict,
• a new round of talks on how to reconstitute state and society in
Somalia, and
• border negotiations to settle the territorial dispute that ostensibly
led to the 1998-2000 Ethiopia/Eritrea war.

2002

(02/7) A New Bridging Role for Canada
Senator Douglas Roche, O.C.
On October 25, 2002 in the United Nations First Committee,
Canada pushed the green yes button on the New Agenda Coalition
omnibus resolution, L.3, Revision 1. This was no ordinary vote. For
Canada was the only NATO country to support the resolution.
What does this action say about the New Agenda, NATO, and
Canada itself? What are the implications for the nuclear
disarmament agenda? Where should Canada’s NGO community
now concentrate its attention?

(02/6) Increased Security Spending Doesn't Mean Increased Defence Spending
While Canada should be upgrading its contributions to international
peace and security, there are at least three reasons why such
measures should not take the form of defence spending increases:
• Canadian defence spending in absolute terms is already
substantial by global, rather than US, standards;
• Post-Cold War spending on key non-military contributions to
international peace and security have been subjected to deeper
cuts than has defence spending; and
• The pre-eminent threats to international peace and security
cannot for the most part be mitigated by increased military
prowess.

(02/5) Iraq and the broader disarmament context
At the centre of the international community’s commitment to
forcing Iraq to forego all weapons of mass destruction should be
a firm commitment to pursue comprehensive international
disarmament measures.

(02/4) The challenge of Iraq
A broad range of governments and non-governmental groups
have rejected Washington’s call to war. Even if authorized by the
Security Council, they argue, it is unlikely to leave a stable,
compliant regime in its wake. Instead of war, the challenge of
Iraq requires a comprehensive program of change that includes:
• a reinvigorated diplomacy aimed at concluding credible inspections,
• a commitment to balanced disarmament in the Middle East region,
• a meticulous commitment to lawful action, and
• aggressive support for Iraqi civil society, the one credible agent of change.

(02/3) Getting serious about the ballistic missile threat
North America, like the rest of the world, faces serious ballistic missile threats and our governments have a duty to try to offer us some protection. Any "homeland security" policy worth its name should obviously make the homeland safer, so the Bush Administration is not wrong to mark ballistic missiles for prominent attention.

(02/2) Now is the time for Canada to resist US nuclear planning
Washington’s active exploration of ways and occasions to use nuclear weapons, as set out in the recently leaked January 2002 US "Nuclear Posture Review" (NPR), stands in stark, opposite contrast to Canada’s own version of a "nuclear posture" statement, issued in April 1999.

(02/1) The UN and a small arms program of action: measuring success
The UN Conference on "The Illicit Trade In Small Arms and Light Weapons In All Its Aspects" held in New York in July 2002, focussed international attention on small arms issues, and resulted in the ‘Programme of Action’, which holds the promise of being translated into a genuine political will to act. This Briefing is a summary of the results of the conference, and an overview of the challenges now faced by NGOs seeking the implementation of the Programme of Action.

2001

(01/8) Responding to terror
The public response to the horrific events of September 11, 2001 is beginning to engage the difficult questions of how those responsible for planning and assisting in the attacks are to be brought to justice, and how the international community can take effective measures against the threat and practice of terrorism wherever it occurs.

(01/7) Security sector reform and the demand for small arms and light weapons
Dominick Donald and ’Funmi Olonisakin
Trying to control the global trade in small arms and light weapons (SALW) can seem depressingly thorny. Setting aside all the usual political difficulties that accompany a business seen as a flag-bearer for often far from prosperous states, and which is often used as a deniable means of furthering state interests, the simple mechanics of control can seem unassailable.

(01/6) Addressing the demand dimensions of small arms abuse: problems and opportunities
Alejandro Bendaña, Director, Centro de Estudios Internacionales (CEI), Managua, Nicaragua
International humanitarian attention has underscored the importance of confronting the proliferation, accumulation, and misuse of small arms. The humanitarian imperative, however, often tends to sideline, purposefully or not, the more contentious political issues.

(01/5) Small arms demand reduction and human security: towards a people-centred approach to small arms
The purpose of this paper is to examine small arms demand reduction from the perspective of human security and peacebuilding. The paper will begin with a brief discussion of what it means to adopt a human security approach. It will then draw out the implications of such an approach, first for small arms generally, and then for small arms demand reduction specifically.

(01/4) Missile proliferation, globalized insecurity, and demand-side strategies
For the moment, demand for weapons of mass destruction remains significant, though not overwhelming. There are at least four prominent elements to reducing demand for WMD and long-range ballistic missiles: promoting accountable governance, ameliorating regional insecurities, blocking ballistic missile defence, and challenging the double standard of non-proliferation.

(01/3) Transfer of Canadian military equipment to Colombia exposes loopholes in export controls
The transfer of surplus Canadian military helicopters to Colombia via the United States exposes a significant loophole in the Canadian export control system. A separate deal through which a Canadian company has contracted to repair and overhaul Colombian military aerospace equipment exposes a second loophole. (This Ploughshares Briefing was released as a background document at a press conference held jointly with Amnesty International Canada and The Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) on March 20, 2001 in Ottawa.)

(01/2) NATO and nuclear weapons: "Paragraph 32" process endorses status quo.
NATO Foreign Ministers met in Brussels in December 2000 and approved the final report of the Alliance's "Paragraph 32" nuclear policy review. The outcome of this review reinforced the case for continued public attention to NATO nuclear policy.

(01/1) Missile defence: deployment is not inevitable.
The new administration of US President George W. Bush is coming into office with a strong commitment to deploying a Arobust@ National Missile Defense (NMD) system. Such a system would have major, potentially very damaging, implications for global security, provoking dangerous reactions in Russia and China, undermining or destroying important arms control agreements, blocking vital safety initiatives such as the de-alerting of nuclear forces, and even raising the possibility of a new nuclear arms race.
Ploughshares Briefing 01/1

2000

(00/1) Canada and nuclear weapons: Where do we stand at the beginning of the year 2000?

1999

(99/3) Canada and the crisis in Yugoslavia

(99/2) MPs call for nuclear disarmament: parliamentary committee completes 2-year study

(99/1) Canada and nuclear weapons: recent developments

1998

(98/10) Keeping the promise of peace

(98/9) Let's rethink policy on Iraq: Economic Sanctions and military attacks have backfired in Iraq

(98/8) Nuclear weapons and Canada

(98/7) UN resolution a breakthrough for nuclear abolition

(98/6) The wars of 1997: Introduction to the Armed Conflicts Report 1998