Years · 2008

August 2008

38 posts

Article

India NSG Exemption in Danger?

Anonymous diplomats tell Reuter’s Boris Groendahl that they may delay India’s NSG exemption: But diplomats from several NSG member states said the draft fell behind earlier U.S. proposals, had unacceptable clauses and omissions, and went against existing U.S. laws on…

Article

W76 LEP Back on Track

The W76 Life Extension Program is back on track — although NNSA officials won’t confirm that they had trouble producing FOGBANK. Frank Munger reports from Y-12: Federal officials today confirmed that workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant had completed…

Article

Missile Defense Quid Pro Quo

Apparently, Poland gets a PAC-3 battery and US personnel as a tripwire, er defensive measure in exchange for hosting the European midcourse interceptor site: A senior Pentagon official described an unusual part of this quid pro quo: an American Patriot…

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USAF Organizational Culture and Reform

The Wonk—or more accurately Jeffrey—has been writing for a while about the organizational problems faced by the US Air Force in its handling of nuclear weapons (see this, this and this). In summary, Jeffery’s oft-repeated argument is this: Heads are…

Article

NSG Exemption for India

Following up on James’s post about the proposed NSG exemption for India, the Arms Control Association has the full text of the document. If you haven’t been reading Siddharth Varadarajan’s commentary at Reality, One Bite At A Time and in…

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India's NSG Exemption

The US has apparently finished drafting the NSG exemption for nuclear trade with India (apologies, this is a few days old—I’ve been behind on my blogging). At a meeting in London last month US Ambassador to the IAEA Greg Schulte…

Article

IHOP of Doom

People often ask me why, as a philosophy major, I ended up in this particular field. I was an epistemologist — someone who studied knowledge and justified belief. The art of intelligence is, in that way, a massive exercise in…

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Marisa Ann Sketo-Kirsh

You may recall Asher Karni — the Israeli citizen living in South Africa who pled guilty to assisting the Pakistani nuclear program. One of his alleged accomplices went on trial recently, according to Caryn Dolley in the Cape Times: AN…

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Continuous Deterrence: Still Necessary?

I’ve had UK nuclear issues on my mind a lot recently—all sparked off by my Barcelona talk, I guess. Preparing for that talk, I spent a lot of time reading the transcript of the House of Commons Defence Committee’s enquiry…

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ACT Blog

Arms Control Today has a blog to allow readers to comment on recent articles in the magazine. There is some new content as well, such as a list of ACA recommendations for Nuclear Vacation.