Close Calls
I have a special Halloween column up at Foreign Policy on various nuclear crisis, accidents and other near-catastrophes. As I said in the opening piece, I was struck at how much I remember correctly – but also how many things…
October 2012
10 posts
Neutron Letter Bombs
I was reading back issues of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as part of a student-led effort on China’s development of the neutron bomb. I was particularly struck by an article by Harold Agnew entitled, “A Primer on Enhanced Radiation…
The Battle of the Khans
There was no love lost between Munir Ahmad Khan and A.Q. Khan. Munir was chosen by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to ramp up the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s work on nuclear weapons. AQ offered his services to Bhutto from Europe, and…
Nuclear Competition, Asian Style
There has been no shortage of remembrances and lessons learned from the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. It’s easy to forget – unless your country codes are 86 and 91 – that this is also the 50th anniversary…
Banning Nuclear-Armed ABMs
I have my semi-weekly column up at Foreign Policy arguing that the impending demise of Nunn-Lugar is of a piece with the loss of monitoring at Votkinsk and obligatory telemetry exchanges with the expiration of the START treaty. The Russians…
SLCM Data Exchanges Revisited
Regular readers know that one of my hobby horses is that the US and Russia should revive the sea-launched cruise missile data exchanges that expired with START as a confidence-building measure because the next agreement will probably have to say…
PSA: CTBT Advanced Science Course
One of the things I am terrible about is promising to post worthwhile public service announcements, then forgetting! Anyway, I don’t want to forget this one. Any chance to listen to Linton Brooks by day, and then hash it out…
Reclaiming Pakistan
A hyphenated word has hung like a shroud over Pakistan ever since its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, vocalized what Great Britain produced in its hasty retreat from empire: a moth-eaten state. In 1947, a British barrister, new to the…
RoK Missile Rationale Roulette
Just as expected, after a protracted negotiation, the U.S. and South Korea have agreed to relax the bilateral “guidelines” limiting the range and payload of South Korean missiles. It’s an election year in South Korea and — well, why mince…
Visiting Pakistan
Twenty years of visiting Pakistan still doesn’t amount to much. My footprint is limited, especially lately, and I can only converse in English. Nonetheless, if you don’t learn something from repeated visits, you’re not paying attention. There’s no shortage of…