Parallel Crises
Quote of the week: “Of course I got lawyers. They are like nuclear weapons. I’ve got ‘em because everybody else does. But as soon as you use them, they screw everything up.” —Danny DeVito Crises are usually singular events, but…
Michael Krepon
The Trump Effect
Quote of the week: Alas! Lonely sits the city Once great with people! She that was great among nations Is becoming like a widow; The princess among states Is become a thrall. —The Book of Lamentations Muslim extremists aren’t the…
Modern Man is Obsolete
Quote of the week: “It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they’re used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can…
Is Space the Final War-Fighting Frontier?
Quote of the week: “ASATs possess considerably greater capacity for transforming a crisis into a war, and for enlarging wars, than they do for assisting in military missions or enhancing deterrence.” —Kurt Gottfried and Richard Ned Lebow, “Anti-Satellite Weapons: Weighing…
Deterrence Stability is a Hoax. The Delicate Balance of Terror is, Too.
Quote of the week: “It has in fact become abundantly clear… since the dawn of the nuclear age, that the balance of terror is decidedly not delicate.” —Bernard Brodie, War & Politics Can we hold two contrary notions in our…
After the Prohibition Treaty
Quote of the week: “Longing on a large scale is what makes history.” —Don DeLillo, The Underworld The negotiation by non-nuclear-weapon states of a treaty banning nuclear weapons was followed by the usual refrain, “Now comes the hard part.” Every…
Chance Encounter with Chauncey Gardiner
Quote of the week: “Chance favors the connected mind.” —Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From Longtime readers will recall that Chauncey Gardiner has occasionally imparted his wisdom to readers of ACW. I went looking for him last week, notebook…
U.S.-Pakistan Relations: Duplicity, Betrayal, or National Interests?
Quote of the week: “I heard the president [Reagan] ask Zia how he would handle the fact that they would be violating their agreement [to ‘prevent within its territory the training, equipping, financing and recruiting of mercenaries from whatever origin…
Sechser & Fuhrmann: Deterrence Yes; Coercion No.
Quote of the week: “How can we suppose that something so monstrously powerful would not, after forty years, compose our identity? The great golem we have made against our enemies is our culture, our bomb culture—its logic, its faith, its…
U.S. Leadership on the Rocks
Quote of the week: “He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising these half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine… What animated him from…
