Dear all, 

It’s been a very busy week with the launch of the Strategic Defence Review. Thank you all for your continued support.

Strategic Defence Review

• Sophie spoke to LBC News about the Strategic Defence Review. You can hear a clip of the discussion on our FB and IG pages.
• CND’s response to the SDR, focusing on plans to build 12 nuclear-powered submarines and to acquire an air-launched nuclear weapons capability.
• FT: Britain must spend £68 billion to modernise military, defence review suggests.
• Professor Karen Bell, editor of the Alternative Defence Review supported by CND has an opinion piece in the Guardian. You can read more about the ADR and find a link to the report here.
• CND Vice-President Kate Hudson discusses the need for an ADR in Declassified UK.
• Another good comment piece from David Edgerton of King’s College London: Labour claims to be defending Britain from new threats, but its warfare state is steeped in old thinking.
• Declassified UK (video): Yanis Varoufakis exposes Keir Starmer’s military spending scam.
• The i Paper: How Britain might use tactical nuclear weapons – and why.
• Another pro-nuclear column from the Telegraph’s Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: A nuclear strike on Britain is a real possibility. Here’s what we need to do.
• Coverage of CND’s upcoming demonstration at the Devonport Dockyard. You can also find our press release here. It follows a successful lobbying of local MP and Armed Forces Minsiter Luke Pollard’s office last week.
• The Spectator: Remembering Hiroshima 80 years on.
• New York Times: Why we should worry about nuclear weapons again.

Iran

•  BBC: Iran’s supreme leader criticises US proposal for nuclear agreement.

NATO / Europe

•  The Hill: Instead of nuclear weapons, give Poland a nuclear umbrella.
• Hegseth says NATO allies ‘very close’ to raising defence spending target to 5%.
• Britain meanwhile, GDP.

• Professor Paul Dorfman has a letter in the Guardian on why building new nuclear plants will take too long and be too costly.
• How a nuclear fuel plant was allowed to dump three tonnes of uranium into a marine conversation zone.

AUKUS / Indo-Pacific

• UK defence review says AUKUS is on schedule but fears remain over possible capability gap for Australia. Starmer government’s own major projects agency says plan to power subs is ‘unachievable’.
• ABC (watch): AUKUS has serious problems, Australia probably won’t receive any submarines: Malcolm Turnbull.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament