Ústav mezinárodních vztahů

The Prague Agenda and the Future of Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament -The Introductory Word
The calls for the international control and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons are as old as the nuclear age itself. High-level initiatives such as the Baruch Plan of the 1940’s, the three-pillar bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the presidential proposals at the Reykjavík Summit supported abolitionist visions in the prevalent Cold War strategic discourse marked by the dynamics of superpower arms races and the Dr. Strangelove-like images of a thermonuclear armageddon.

Nick Ritchie: British nuclear weapons are peripheral
Prague Agenda interview with Nick Ritchie. He does research and teaches in the areas of international relations and international security at the University of York. His particular focus is on nuclear disarmament, proliferation and arms control and US and UK national security.

Ukraine crisis is not going to affect the non-proliferation regimes
An interview with Steven Pifer. Being a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution as well as the director of Brookings´ Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a former United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer had a lot to say about the Ukraine/Russia crisis and the current developments regarding non-proliferation regimes and arms control. In a short interview that he gave to us during the Prague Agenda 2014 Conference, Mr. Pifer talked about how he perceives the current state of play regarding arms control and how things could be resolved in the future.

Tariq Rauf: North Korean situation has been badly mishandled
Prague agenda interview with Tariq Rauf. He is the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He is an expert on nuclear non-proliferation issues, nuclear disarmament and nuclear security. Previously, Mr. Rauf was the Head of the Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2002 to 2011, and there he dealt with numerous cases like those of Iraq, Syria, South Korea and Libya, but also more extreme cases like those of North Korea and Iran. As a respected expert on nuclear security, Mr. Rauf was among the speakers of the Prague Agenda 2014 conference, where we posed to him several questions.

Jenny Nielsen: The concerns of Eastern Europe make the Prague Agenda useful
Jenny Nielsen is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland (Australia), and she is researching the 'humanitarian initiative' leading up to the 2015 NPT Review Conference. Previously based in the UK, she was a Research Analyst with the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park (an executive agency of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office), and a Research Assistant for the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (MCIS) at the University of Southampton. At the MCIS,  was tasked with co-editing the 2004-2012 editions of the NPT Briefing Book. She holds a PhD from the University of Southampton which focused on the U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy vis-à-vis Iran in the 1970s.  Jenny's research focuses on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament policy issues, particularly the multilateral Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review process.

Weidlich: The biggest challenge? Military robotic capabilities
An interview with Christian Weidlich, a speaker at the “Regional Perspectives of Nuclear Disarmament” panel. In the morning of the closing day of the Prague Agenda 2014 conference, Mr. Weidlich found the time to express his views and opinions on the issues related to the Prague Agenda and his own work. Christian Weidlich currently works as a Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, with a specialization in Middle East arms control and warfare automatization.

Carmen Wunderlich: The biggest problem is the mutual lack of understanding
An interview with Carmen Wunderlich, who works as a Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF).  She studied Political Science Philosophy and German Language and Literature Studies at the University of Frankfurt. She also carried out a research stay at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non–Proliferation in 2012.

Ulrich Kühn: Future of the CTBT hinges on ratification in the United States
Ulrich Kühn works at the Hamburg University's Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy and was an external advisor on nuclear arms control to the Division for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Federal Foreign Office of Germany in Berlin. He is a co-founder of the IDEAS network for the establishment of a Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community and currently coordinates the project on Challenges to Deep Nuclear Cuts.