123 posts
Note to ACW readers: This week, guest contributor Hannah Haegeland continues a series of posts on the morality of nuclear deterrence. Strategic modernization programs, which are proceeding on a significant scale in the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India,…
There have been two Russian cruise missiles in the news lately. One is a ground-launched cruise missile that apparently violates the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the other is a sea-launched cruise missile that Russia recently fired against targets…
[See the previous post. -Ed.] Yes, every kind of weapon, if used against noncombatants, can violate the humanitarian laws of warfare. But nuclear detonations add a whole new scale to this problem. A single mushroom cloud, except under highly particular circumstances,…
In 1868, the Imperial Cabinet of Russia convened an International Commission to issue a Declaration on the laws of war. In its Preamble, the St. Petersburg Declaration stated, The only legitimate object which states should endeavor to accomplish during war…
The IAEA has completed its managed access to Iran’s Parchin site, which reportedly included the taking of samples and images. The process by which the samples were taken and questions about how the IAEA would authenticate the samples has led…
During his first term, President Obama set about to extricate the United States from the wars he inherited from George W. Bush. Not surprisingly, getting out has proved to be harder than getting in. His second term’s agenda has been…
Earlier this year Bruce Blair kindly loaned us a copy of an important body of work in the field, C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation, by Valery E. Yarynich. We digitized it (thanks to two graduate research assistants) and have put…
Much to my dismay, I find that I’m still catching up on reading from the summer. In August, Hui Zhang published a new report on China’s uranium enrichment capacity, and he makes a wonderful identification of a new civilian centrifuge…
Stanislav Petrov’s story is about to be featured in a new movie, The Man Who Saved the World. This title suggests more than the usual artistic license, but if license weren’t granted when dealing with the Apocalypse, then where would…
The Washington-based Republican Party has reverted to isolationist tendencies that are harmful to U.S. national security. This variant of isolationism is very different than the kind the Grand Old Party practiced during the years between the First and Second World…
