10 June 2012
This year’s Joseph Rotblat Memorial Lecture at the Hay Festival on 10 June was given by Rose Gottemoeller, Acting Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Obama Administration, and US Chief Negotiator for the new START treaty. This annual lecture is organized by WMD Awareness and hosted by the Hay Festival.
Ms Gottemoeller began by honouring Sir Joseph Rotblat’s contribution to disarmament, explaining that his tireless campaigning helped establish nuclear abolition as an acceptable policy goal. She then outlined progress made towards ‘nuclear zero’ in recent years – most notably President Obama’s Prague Agenda and the new START treaty – and used these as a platform to imagine how future technologies and social media might help overcome obstacles to global disarmament, particularly the problem of verification and ensuring any one country doesn’t cheat.