142 posts
Yet another flow-forming machine has appeared on North Korean television. (Here are the earlier ones.) This one is shown being exhibited to Kim Jong-il, late in his life by the look of him. If you’re coming late to this story,…
What do you do when you are the subject of nuclear threats, you don’t have the Bomb, and you can’t match up in planes, tanks, and ships? Mao’s answer was people’s war. And ping-pong. And fifteen years after gaining power,…
Having the good fortune to live along a beautiful country road that weaves between woods and cow pastures, I can assert with authority that natural beauty is no deterrent to throwing litter along the roadside. By my count, the most…
What this week’s Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community said about North Korea was stark but hopefully not too surprising: its nuclear and missile programs “pose a serious threat to the United States and to the security environment in East…
US intelligence agencies have been guilty of four general types of error — or more, depending on counting rules. The most costly type of error is a failure to recognize and pull together “actionable” intelligence in time to foil bad…
The following post was authored by Mark Hibbs and Andreas Persbo. When the six powers and Iran announced in Geneva on November 24, 2013 that they had agreed to an “initial step” toward comprehensive resolution of the nuclear crisis, some…
We are so used to hearing bad news about Pakistan that good news can go under the radar. Since May, there has been a changing of the guard at the positions of Prime Minister, the Chief of Army Staff, the…
No. Two of our graduate students review Chinese-language materials to shoot down that silly story from a few weeks ago about China giving Ukraine a nuclear umbrella. That’s Not What Xi Said! By Catherine Dill and Jonathan Ray Catherine…
Are the new Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, taking the United States for a ride? Have they agreed to an interim deal on enrichment as part of a master plan to lull the West…
After striking an interim agreement in November 2013, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1 have been engaged in technical discussions about implementation. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, has indicated that the two sides are close to reaching…
