Authors

James Acton

Writing on ACW 2007–2010 · 88 posts · On the podcast: 2 episodes

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British warheads

There was an interesting story in the Guardian on Friday about the future of British nuclear warheads. When the decision to replace the Vanguard submarines was taken last year, the government announced that it had not yet made any decision…

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Schulte on the IAEA in the DPRK

US Ambassador to the IAEA, Greg Schulte, was in London yesterday selling the US-India deal. I saw him talk at the IISS. Given all the speculation that both the US and North Korea want the IAEA to have a minimal…

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Two Questions for Mr Hague

I just got back from the IISS where William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, gave a speech on Preventing a New Age of Nuclear Insecurity. It is, apparently, exactly two years to the day since he last spoke on this…

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Jib Jab's latest

I generally avoid posting about subjects unconnected with the essential subject matter of this blog, but Jib Jab’s 2008 election song is so funny I can’t resist. Their 2004 election song had the immortal line about George W “you can’t…

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Off to Barcelona…

… to give a talk about the UK debate over whether to build a successor to the Vanguard class of submarines. It’s part of a session on Evidence-based policy or policy-based evidence? Nuclear weapons decision making in Europe at The…

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Persbo on NORKS, Japan and the IAEA

Andreas Persbo, over at the blog formerly known as Verification, has had a couple of nice posts recently about the role of the IAEA in verifying disarmament in North Korea (or lack thereof) and the resulting Japanese frustrations. Just thought…

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Safeguards in India

Having had a chance to digest the India safeguards agreement, I’ve become interested in what is left out. Specifically, how will the IAEA analyse and draw conclusions about Indian compliance? How the Agency analyses information is, in many ways, just…

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Big Questions, Small Questions

The Six Party talks restarted yesterday in Beijing with verification of North Korea’s declaration topping the agenda. I’ve blogged about the technical aspects of verification on a number of previous occasions (including here and here). Today I want to focus…

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India update

Over the last year or so the Indian communist parties (Marxist and otherwise) have made a valiant attempt to block the US-India nuclear deal. I don’t think the Communists and I agree on why the US-India deal is a Bad…

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More on the NORK declaration

I’m back from Wye now. The (fairly awful) photo is of Jeffrey, Wonk alum Jane Vaynman and me. It turns out that Jane and I have the same all-time favourite Foreign Affairs article: the one on monkey sex. In my…