ArmsControlWonk.com

The first time I met Piers Millett, we were having a drink at Mr. Pickwick Pub in Geneva.

Now, Piers — one of only three members of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Implementation Support Unit in Geneva — is in town.

Long-time readers know one of my hobby horses is the fact that the policy community obsesses about phantom BW programs at the expense of international cooperation to fight the spread of virulent influenza. Someday, a lot of people are going to suffer for this particular sin.

Anyway, along with my friend Paul Walker at Global Green USA, I am hosting a talk and a wine reception for Piers here at the New America Foundation:

Strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention
Discussion and Wine Reception

Unlike the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has no mechanism to ensure compliance and verification.

Given the dramatic advances in the life sciences over the past decade, the international community urgently needs to discuss strengthening the BWC.

Join the New America Foundation and Global Green USA as Piers Millett, one of the three experts from the BWC Implementation Support Unit in Geneva, and Paul Walker, president of Global Green USA, discuss how best to combat bioterrorism and the spread of bioweapons
.
Start: 07/08/2009 – 3:30pm
End: 07/08/2009 – 6:00pm
New America Foundation
1899 L Street NW Suite 400
Washington, 20036
United States
See map: Google Maps

RSVP

Participants
Featured Speakers
Dr. Piers Millett
Political Affairs Officer
Biological Weapons Convention Implementation Support Unit

Dr. Paul Walker
Director, Security and Sustainability
Global Green USA

Moderator
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis
Director, Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative
New America Foundation
Publisher, ArmsControlWonk.com

Please come and join us. RSVP here.

Hans has the new National Air and Space Intelligence Center Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat.

Lots and lots of pretty pictures, especially of the DF-31, as well as new information. (Lest you think I just love missile-porn — which I course I do — the value of pictures is the IC identification of the particular system pictured.) Tables have been updated to include the number of warheads each missile carries.

I haven’t read it closely yet, but it looks like the folks at NASIC put a lot of effort into this one.

I had to work today, so I decided to do it pool-side. Life is tough, I know.

Tomorrow I am attending a two-day conference organized by the Financial Services Volunteer Corps and funded by the Carnegie Corporation. We meet every year for a trilateral dialogue among US, Chinese and Russian experts on energy, security and economic cooperation.

They try to pick places where Russian and Chinese participants can get to easily, in terms of location and visa requirements.

I can’t help it if the weather turns out to be nice, too.

We’ve lost Herb York.

Herbert Frank York, founding chancellor of the University of California, San Diego and a world-renowned physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb as a young researcher and later championed arms control, died May 19 at Thornton Hospital in San Diego, Ca. He was 87.

The guy was a giant. I am totally bummed I never met him.

I was, in fact, thumbing through Making Weapons, Talking Peace (Basic Books, 1987) the other day for some early history on the test ban negotiations.

I will be at UCSD for a few days this summer. Maybe we’ll do something appropriate to commemorate him.

Joe Cirincione has a blog, which is good.

He also tweets which is great. I am addicted to his morning news summary, Morning Joe.

The DNI National Counterproliferation Center (NPC) has a spiffy new website with several documents including — drumroll — the 2008 721 Report.

Some people have been wondering what happened to TotalWonkerr.com. Well. Glad you asked.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a great island called Atlantis, west of the Pillars of Herakles. (Left at Gibraltar, then a couple blocks down — boom, you couldn’t miss it.) The Atlanteans were zealous in the service of the gods, and labored mightily, offering up many worthwhile reports. Even today, their reports are used as references.

But the gods were capricious, and smote Atlantis. One day there, the next day, bupkis. The many lamentations still ring in our ears.

The memory of that awful day persists, and it makes the neighboring islands kinda jumpy. So much so that the extracurricular activities of their analysts — when identified as such — may be frowned upon.

Thus, TW has been discontinued for the foreseeable future. [See note below.] As for me, I’m still here, and intent on continuing, one way or another.

Thanks, Paul. It’s been fun!

Update: Some people have told me that the meaning of this tale is unclear. So here’s a more explicit version. In 1995, as a demonstration of commitment to a balanced budget, Congress eliminated funding for its own Office of Technology Assessment. As explained here, this episode struck terror into the hearts of managers elsewhere, who accordingly act with an abundance of caution, lest their own organization suffer a similar fate.

I should also add that “the foreseeable future” may not be very long after all. TW is down, but as Paul points out in the comments, no final decision has been made. You’ll know more when I know it.

These things are endurance tests.

I’ve been twittering the interesting stuff, from Linton Brooks saying the US should ratify the CTBT to Rich Mies endorsing a declaratory posture of last resort.

So are other folks. If you find people, post them in the comments.

I am excited, as always, to be seeing so many old friends at the Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference, even if this year’s agenda leaves me a little cold.

Maybe I am just overreacting to the keynote address by Anne Lauvergeon, Chief Executive Officer, AREVA. I have about the same interest in listening to the CEO of AREVA discuss nonproliferation as I have in hearing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opinions about combating anti-semitism.

James will no doubt differ. And not that Lauvergeon isn’t without fanboys — who make creepy videos — and girls who dig her shoes. But I am not one of them.

So …. it seems like the only sensible thing to do is to adjourn to a nearby watering hole during her talk on Monday. Jill and I will be convening across the street at the Round Robin in the Willard Intercontinental — the hotel whose lobby gave us the term “lobbyist” — for one of Henry Clay’s mint juleps.

We’ll arrive around 5:30 and adjourn in time for the reception at 6:30.

Feel free to join us, if you’d like.

It’s out!

We now know that the Obama NSC has named it’s National Security Council-related directives Presidential Policy Directives or PPDs — thanks to Steve Aftergood who has posted a copy of PPD-1.

I am mildly obsessed by this topic of what Administrations call these documents — every President chooses something different.

Since Nixon, Republican Presidents typically describe their NSC directives as “National Security” documents — as in National Security Decision Memoranda (Nixon), National Security Decision Directives (Reagan), National Security Directives (Bush), and National Security Presidential Directives (lesser Bush).

Democrats tend not to — Carter trimmed the title to Presidential Directive, with Clinton (Presidential Decision Directive) and Obama (Presidential Policy Directive) keeping up the trend.

For my money, nothing will ever be cooler than the Kennedy-era National Security Action Memoranda, but I am a purist.