The year ends on many somber notes – the election of Donald Trump, his modus operandi and appointments to senior positions, the push on Capitol Hill to expand national missile defenses and to once again explore space-based systems, and the…
Guidance from Van Morrison: Rave on John Donne, rave on thy Holy fool Down through the weeks of ages In the moss borne dark dank pools Rave on, down through the industrial revolution Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age Rave on…
Ages ago, I was a Legislative Assistant on Capitol Hill, working for a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The most impressive person who testified before the Committee was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. His mind was like a…
Donald Trump’s narrow victory could bring a reprise of President Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” of deterrence – except on steroids. Nixon and Henry Kissinger believed that projecting an image of readiness to use nuclear weapons could provide negotiating leverage. They…
Note to readers: A somewhat different version of this essay appeared at foreignaffairs.com on November 20th. Donald Trump becomes President when the global nuclear order is wobbly and arms-control agreements are unraveling. Nuclear dangers are growing along three axes – North…
Fred Charles Iklé has not gotten the credit he deserves as a strategic thinker, perhaps because of the density of his prose. Here he is twenty years ago, in “The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age” in Foreign Affairs: “Now…
The United States is so divided that the election of a new President has become a cause of mourning for half the population. To me, Donald Trump’s election feels like Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush over…
Early drafts of the Nuclear Ban Treaty green-lighted by the UN First Committee seek to prohibit the development, production, testing, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer, deployment, threat of use and use of nuclear weapons. This would be the most ambitious treaty negotiated…
Two new sections are now ready for consumption of the Stimson Center’s free, open, online course, Nuclear South Asia: A Guide to India, Pakistan, and the Bomb. These sections cover India and Pakistan’s nuclear doctrines and postures, as well as their place in…
Even after the Iran nuclear agreement, nuclear dangers are growing on four fronts – North Korea; U.S.-Russian relations; India-Pakistan, with China mixed in; and the potential for offshore frictions between the United States and China. Sure, there were more intense periods…
