Vartan Gregorian is no longer with us. He passed away at the age of 88, a Keeper of the Library; the man who once saved the sixth largest collection of books in the world – the New York Public Library, now a vibrant intellectual beehive; Vartan managed to convince the Manhattan's moneybags that philanthropy can be both "honorable and glamorous," in his words. The Internationalist left... no matter how strange this word sounds today: Vartan was a true internationalist, which, I think, was helped by his education as a historian; he did not seek conflicts; he did not seek to "take sides"; but he did not go aside either; he strove to resolve conflicts and bring peace closer.

PIR Center experts Vladimir Orlov and Sergey Semenov discuss the prospects for the Russian-American dialogue on arms control.

El Tratado de No Proliferación Nuclear —NPT, por sus siglas en inglés— cumple 50 años este 5 de marzo. A pesar de su edad venerable, el acuerdo no pierde actualidad en nuestros días, opina Vladímir Orlov, jefe del Centro de Problemas Globales de la Academia Diplomática del Ministerio de Exteriores de Rusia, consultado por Sputnik.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is half a century old today. “The NPT Instruments of Ratification were submitted by two of the NPT Depositary States, the Soviet Union and the United States, at a special ceremony at The Reception House in Moscow,” the Izvestiya newspaper reported on its front page on March 5, 1970. Under the terms of NPT Article IX, the Treaty entered into force on the same day following the submission of the Instruments of Ratification by the three depositary states (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom) and 40 other State Parties. “Our goal is to keep the future generations safe from the calamity of war,” the Soviet prime minister Aleksey Kosygin announced at the ceremony.

In preparation for the 2020 NPT Review Conference, one inevitably has to face a question: how to reinvigorate the review process, taking into account both the 1995 decision on strengthening of the review process and a quarter-century experience in between 1995 and now.