Years · 2012

March 2012

13 posts

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The NPT, the NSG, and the AAAS

Steve Miller is a friend, a colleague, and an authority on the Sangiovese grape in central Tuscany and on the chunky red wines of the Piemonte. He also happens to be a tenured professor at Harvard who has just published this essay for the American Academy of…

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Hostile Intent

I am back from London –where I participated in a Track 2 conversation with real live North Korean officials, with Kim Il Sung pins and everything.  It was very interesting!

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The Big Shift

Since the Cold War ended, no region has experienced more shocks or a more significant reorientation in US foreign policy than South Asia. The big shift was enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and New Delhi’s turn away…

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Rockets and the Leap Day Deal

I am beginning to understand how the US-DPRK “Leap Day Deal” came apart . You have to hand it to the North Koreans.  They screwed the Obama Administration. But the Obama Administration didn’t do itself any favors, either.

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A Nuclear Coup

  If you liked reading Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, wait until you see the new monograph by Bruno Tertrais, A “Nuclear Coup”? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test.

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The Gift of Giving (II)

Back in my youth, before thumbs were essential for home entertainment, some of us played a board game called Chutes and Ladders, where you could zoom way up and down the board, depending on where your piece landed after rolling…

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Long Range Missiles Of Any Kind

I have previously noted the importance of reading very, very closely the utterances of the Great Fitzpatrick. Another case in point: On March 15, Mark gave a talk at the Daiwa Foundation Japan House in which he “predicted trouble” over…

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Honest Johns in Korea

I find it hard to believe that one could confuse a nuclear weapon with a latrine, but during the 1970s anything was possible.

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The Gift of Giving

Readers beware: The next two posts are ridden with conflicts of interest. Policy entrepreneurship to reduce nuclear dangers would dry up without foundations. National leaders and bureaucracies are too consumed by their daily calendars to serve as their own think…

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Tuppenny Trident?

In case you haven’t been watching, some very interesting fissures are now evident in the support for an independent British nuclear deterrent.  This is going to be very interesting. There are two factors at play — the looming UK budget…