Years

2010

317 posts

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38 North: Master Proliferator or Front Co?

Is North Korea a “master proliferator,” providing complete production facilities and extensive know-how for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to rogue regimes? Or is it a simple front company for passing along other country’s discarded, obsolete…

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Hoffman on the NPR

The other day after Tom Schelling spoke at one of our events, we stepped into the elevator together. David Hoffman, who works upstairs, was standing inside. I introduced them. “A Nobel Prize winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner,” I said.…

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Information Driven Safeguards

Trevor Findlay’s Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance has just released a report on Nuclear Futures which makes for excellent reading. In the report, there is a brief paragraph on information driven safeguards. The Agency claims it is pursuing what it…

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Duality

My favorite track on the Drive-By Truckers Southern Rock Opera CD is “The Three Great Alabama Icons.” It’s about “the duality of the Southern thing,” an interwoven tale about George C. Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van Zant. (Non-US readers…

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ROK Ship: Typical Torpedo Damage

click on the image for a larger version The two halves of the ROK Ship Cheonan are raised from the sea near the ROK-owned island of Baegryeong-do, which in turn is very close to the DPRK’s mainland. The Cheonan was…

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Seoul Purpose

The DPRK has issued its own “nuclear posture review” — actually a “memorandum” titled something like “The Korean Peninsula and the Nuclear Issue” (English | Korean). The Korean version is substantially longer and more detailed. It needs a decent translation,…

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Iranian ICBM by 2015?

The Pentagon submitted a report to Congress containing the claim that Iran could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015. Ah, the dreaded could. Section 1245 of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to submit…

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Ingram on Lib Dems and Trident

After the very unusual television debate among the candidates for UK Prime Minister, the Liberal Democrats have, according to some polls, shot into the lead. (The poll numbers above are from one of those instant response things; the race is…

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Exceptional India

K. Subrahmanyam may be the most exceptional strategic thinker that Western Wonks have never read. During the 1990s, we disagreed intensely about so many things that a mutual friend arranged for a cooling off session over lunch at the India…

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Summer Study on Arms Control 1960

Well, you were going to get a post on the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and the “clean” Negative Security Assurance — until I checked my mailbox. This bad boy arrived. This is the collected papers — and meeting notes —…