Years

2004

332 posts

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PIPA Gets Some Hot Blog Action

A couple of weeks after I mentioned a study by Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)—a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and my employer the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), School of…

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Paris Negotiations 1: Boucher Confuses Everyone Over Iran

Apparently we do have an Iran policy: be very, very vague. Check out these headlines: U.S. Signals Opposition to Light-Water Reactor Offer to Iran; Tehran Expected to Offer Deal to Europeans (Global Security Newswire, October 21, 2004) US presses Iran…

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Impasse at the Conference on Disarmament

My talk at the UN went well today. I heard a couple of especially blunt comments by officials from national delegations to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Among the things I heard: The Conference remains at an “impasse” created…

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Paul Nitze, 1907-2004

The New York Times and Washington Post have excellent obituaries that capture Nitze’s good and bad qualities. Decorum inhibits candor, however. Nitze’s role in slandering Paul Warnke, during Warnke’s confirmation hearing for Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency…

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CSRS and CounterCom (Blame it on Nanjing)

While I was in Nanjing, Space News confirmed (“U.S. Declates Satellite Jammer Ready” October 11, 2004, p.1) that the Air Force canceled the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System (CSRS or “scissors) and has delivered the first Counter Communications System (now called…

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Cuba BW "Program" Redux

I had an interesting conversation with Steve Weisman at the New York Times regarding his story on the “new” intelligence estimate that concludes “it is no longer clear that Cuba has an active, offensive bio-weapons program.” We still disagree about…

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CIA Declassifies 1948-1972 NIEs on China

The CIA has partially declassified “over seventy National Intelligence Estimates on China covering the period 1948-76.” The Agency claims this is “the largest such release ever made at one time.” The documents were also published in a book and CD/ROM…

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Vandenberg, Greely … Fylingdales?

The Independent reports that Washington and London have secretly agreed to place a US missile defense interceptor site at RAF Fylingdales in the UK. London insists Washington made no formal request to site the missiles, but The Independent reports a…

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North Korea … after further review

Paul is right; Chuck Kartman is talking about North Korea’s ability to reprocess Pu during the pre-1994 period. As for the post-2002 period (when North Korea may have reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework). In…

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North Korea and the Bomb Redux

Paul Kerr suggests that I need to make clear that there are 2 different time periods during which NK may have reprocessed spent nuclear fuel: before the 1994 Agreed Framework and after the 2002 ejection of inspectors. During the latter…