Years · 2017

April 2017

15 posts

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The American Century

Quote of the week: “Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” —David Fromkin, The Way of the World, with due credit to Heraclitus and Gautama  In an essay published in Life magazine, media impresario Henry…

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Skin in the Game: Why Worry about North Korean ICBMs?

Around these parts, North Korea’s ICBM program is the national-security obsession du jour. That’s validating for someone like me, sure. But why? And why now? As I see it, there are good reasons and bad reasons to be concerned, and focusing on…

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The Great North Korea War Scare

Today’s news continues, or perhaps renews, the weird sense of self-imposed crisis surrounding U.S. North Korea policy:   Entire U.S. Senate to go to White House for North Korea briefing: https://t.co/wbRa4H0IOA pic.twitter.com/l3E4BSEqBR — Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) April 24, 2017  …

Episode43 min

Reviewing that Iran Deal

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced the the Trump Administration is conducting a comprehensive review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the Iran nuclear deal. Jeffrey and Aaron catch up on the deal and try to put the…

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Nuclear Learning

Quote of the week: “The [U.S. Strategic Bombing] survey’s task was to measure as precisely as possible the exact effects of the two [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] bombs – in other words, to put calipers on the problem so that people…

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DPRK Wound Filament Airframes

High-resolution photographs of the airframe for North Korea’s Pukguksong submarine-launched ballistic missile have a surprise. The airframe appears be wound filament, not the simple metal airframes we’ve seen on North Korea’s space launchers. That opens up a lot of possibilities…

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Putting the North Korean Threat into Perspective

It’s not easy, right? To put North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat into perspective. Everywhere you turn, you’ll hear widely differing factual claims, strongly opposed views on what to do or not do, etc. A cacaphony. And that’s a little hard…

Episode63 min

North Korean Missile Parade: JucheFest 2017

Where were you, April 15th? Because we were in front of our computers ironically tweeting about what new missiles North Korea would show us, and then suddenly it got weird. The North Korean’s showed off 8 missile and launch systems,…

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A Three-Person Rule for Nuclear First Use

Quote of the week: “We still tend to conceive of national security almost solely as a state of armed readiness, a vast, awesome arsenal of weaponry… We are haunted by this concept of military hardware.” —Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of…

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The Counterforce Compulsion in South Asia

Quotes of the week: “There has been literally no chance at all that any sane political authority… would consciously choose to start a nuclear war. This proposition is true for the past, the present, and the foreseeable future. For sane…