Years

2009

377 posts

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What Is North Korea Capable Of?

As regular readers know, there’s something of a dispute in the wonk world over the nature and origins of the North Korean missile program. Basically, it comes down to two issues: First, did a team of Russian scientists and engineers…

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Morality and the Bomb

The 1980s were a time of recreational shopping, “morning in America,” and a rare, public debate in the United States over the morality of nuclear deterrence. A high-octane confluence of events contributed to this intense moral debate — the first…

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The Kyl Amendment

Lots of debate in the blogosphere among the kids about the Kyl Admendment and modernization. Allow me to recap. Senator Kyl proposed an amendment that would have prohibited any reductions under START Follow-on until the Administration did a bunch of…

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Monitoring or Intelligence Gathering?

The infrasound signals from North Korea’s 4 July 2006 missile launch. Infrasound has become an accepted CTBT monitoring technique in recent years with 60 infrasound stations world-wide as part of the CTBTO network. They also, however, detect a bunch of…

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CTBT Scope Note

I’ve been meaning to write something about the scope of the CTBT — this ongoing debate about whether the Russians believe so-called hydronuclear tests are permitted under the treaty I don’t find compelling the evidence that Russia has a different…

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Publishing the Unpublishable

There was some heartburn in the comments about the heat-to-light ratio in Jeff’s post on the Washington Post and the Joint Threat Assessment on Iran. So let’s see if we can’t address the same topic from a slightly different angle.…

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An Introduction to Non-introduction

Israel’s nuclear posture is unique. Some countries with “advanced nuclear capabilities,” such as India and China, have publicly adopted “No First Use” postures. Israel has adopted a declaratory policy that it will not be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons…

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Atomic Won

I came into possession of a lovely collection of images of DPRK bank-notes. (You can go ahead and make your own forgery-related one-liners in the comments.) I was amused to see that the fiver (above) is nuclear-themed.

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WaPo Hit Job on EastWest Institute

Open note to Fred Hiatt: You are a total neocon hack job. I don’t know how Hiatt ended up as the editorial page editor at the Washington Post, and I suppose this ends my chances of placing any op-eds at…

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Donald Report

After the USAF shipped four Minuteman III nosecones to Taiwan, SECDEF Robert Gates asked Admiral Kirkland H. Donald to investigate the “facts and circumstances surrounding the accountability for, and shipment of, sensitive missile components to Taiwan.” Gates eventually briefed the…