The Nixon administration needed to make many adjustments in order to prepare for strategic arms limitation talks with the Kremlin. One change was in the terminology used to describe how US nuclear forces were supposed to stack up against the…
Amidst talk of budget cuts and further strategic arms reductions, the Pentagon has issued another ritualistic affirmation of the Triad in its report to Congress on Nuclear Employment Strategy. During the Cold War, the big plus of maintaining a strategic…
There have been only two Democratic Presidents since FDR who have been elected to serve two full terms. On nuclear issues, Barack Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton. President Clinton achieved considerable success in reducing…
The cheapest debating trick in the nuclear weapons/arms control business is the well-crafted rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions are asked not to seek answers, but to advance preferred outcomes. Hardy perennials include, “Can’t we do better than…?” The best rhetorical questions…
[Update below the jump. -Ed.] Berlin brings out the best in U.S. Presidents. President Barack Obama has now tried in Berlin to replicate successful JFK’s recipe for curtailing nuclear tests. Senior administration officials have talked privately with the Kremlin about…
President George H.W. Bush bemoaned his lack of “the vision thing.” In contrast, George W. Bush was a bold visionary. By acting on his ambitious rhetoric to extend freedom, fight terrorism and wage preventive war, Bush 43 became America’s least…
Anatoly Dobrynin was the Soviet Union’s Ambassador to the United States for a mere twenty-four years. He arrived in Washington the year of the Cuban missile crisis and left after Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan managed to steer US-Soviet relations…
Pakistan’s national security decisions are usually choreographed between senior active duty military officers in Rawalpindi and government officials in Islamabad. If military leaders feel strongly about a particular policy or initiative, they can usually count on the consent of politicians.…
In a previous post, I asked the question whether the use of drones for targeted killings could be become habit forming. President Obama’s speech on U.S. counter-terrorism policy at the National Defense University constituted a good-faith effort to answer this…
In November 1996, I had the good fortune to attend an ISODARCO conference in Chengdu, with the added bonus of a side trip to visit China’s nuclear laboratory complex at Mianyang. Back then, ISODARCO – an enterprising Italian NGO founded…
