Authors

Joshua Pollack

Writing on ACW 2008–2025 · 162 posts

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Skin in the Game: Why Worry about North Korean ICBMs?

Around these parts, North Korea’s ICBM program is the national-security obsession du jour. That’s validating for someone like me, sure. But why? And why now? As I see it, there are good reasons and bad reasons to be concerned, and focusing on…

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The Great North Korea War Scare

Today’s news continues, or perhaps renews, the weird sense of self-imposed crisis surrounding U.S. North Korea policy:   Entire U.S. Senate to go to White House for North Korea briefing: https://t.co/wbRa4H0IOA pic.twitter.com/l3E4BSEqBR — Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) April 24, 2017  …

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Putting the North Korean Threat into Perspective

It’s not easy, right? To put North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat into perspective. Everywhere you turn, you’ll hear widely differing factual claims, strongly opposed views on what to do or not do, etc. A cacaphony. And that’s a little hard…

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Syria: A Modest Proposal

Those of us laboring in the vineyards of nuclear nonproliferation are forced to learn, alas, at least a little about energy policy. If nuclear technology only were good for making weapons, and not also for electricity, our lives would be…

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Guest Post: The Prague Agenda in a Post-Truth World

This guest contribution from Heather Wokusch, a writer, educator, and activist based in Vienna, Austria, recounts the discussion at the 6th Prague Agenda Conference in early December 2016, and the somber mood of the event. The event took place in…

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Thomas Schelling: Compellence in Asia

For the first part of this two-part essay, see: Thomas Schelling: Deterrence in Europe. (Now with minor corrections and an update in the middle of the post.) * * * So much for Europe. Let’s consider the role of events…

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Thomas Schelling: Deterrence in Europe

(Now with updates and minor corrections, for extra goodness.) When I came to the University of Maryland College Park for grad school in the fall of 1998, I didn’t have to buy either The Strategy of Conflict or Arms and…

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Presidential Command and Control in the Age of Trump

The outcome of the U.S. presidential election has filled many Americans, and people around the world, with bewilderment and dread. How did we get here? Where are we going? How seriously should we take President-elect Trump’s promises? Let’s remember! At various points during the…

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The Range of North Korean ICBMs

If there’s one thing in the public discussion of proliferation that troubles me the most, it might be this: the systematic minimization of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities in the American news media. Someone could write a book on…

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Lessons Learned from Eliminating WMD

If by some chance you haven’t already heard, the Nonproliferation Review is holding an event at the Washington, DC offices of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) this coming Monday, September 12 from 1 to 3 pm local time. We’ll be introducing a new special…