In the wake of the Senate’s consent to New START, Washington’s wonkdom is focusing on ballistic missile defenses and tactical nuclear weapons. The reasons why are clear enough: The Senate has laid down markers calling for discussions on Russia’s non-strategic…
During the Reagan administration, the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty was in Senate limbo, mired in arguments over Soviet cheating. The TTBT limited underground tests to yields no greater than 150 kilotons, but the U.S. intelligence community did not have…
Go figure: The very first conversation between Washington and Moscow on the relationship between strategic offense and missile defense took place at Glassboro, New Jersey. Soviet Premier Alexey Kosygin was visiting the United States in June 1967, and President Lyndon…
Retired Admiral “Fox” Fallon, ex-head of CENTCOM and PACOM, called the ratification of New-START “a no-brainer” in an interview with Mary Beth Sheridan in the Washington Post. General Brent Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, told ABC News’…
Exceptional performances deserve recognition, and there are many worth noting after the Senate’s consent to ratifying New START with seven votes to spare on December 22nd. Here’s my short list:
Jon Kyl’s dance of the veils is finally over. The last veil dropped when, after many accommodations and delays, the White House finally insisted that New START be dealt with in the lame duck session, and Majority Leader Harry Reid…
Edward Teller, a refugee from Hungary, loved to play the piano. While at Los Alamos working on the H-bomb, he kept his colleagues awake at night playing Beethoven. Vaughn Williams penned symphonies. His “The Lark Ascending” contains the most pacific…
My thanks to all who submitted entries in the Best Quips about the Bomb competition. The results are below the jump. Shall we do some variation of this again next year?
Many of New START’s harshest critics argue that the Treaty’s monitoring provisions are deficient. They have an odd way of demonstrating their commitment to verification — by systematically trying to kill off treaties with on-site inspections and clauses protective of…
Thank you, Dear Readers, for responding so well to the Best Quips Competition. Our panel of judges will be sorely tested. It’s good to know that, in these hard times, some of you insist on keeping a sense of humor.…
