Tag: Henry Kissinger

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Reasons for the Great Unraveling of the Arms Control Enterprise

New Feature: Quote of the week “The demagogue, though he professes (and fails) to readjust matters in the interests of the majority of the electors, yet stereotypes mediocrity, organizes intolerance, disparages exhibitions of uncommon qualities, and glorifies conspicuous exhibitions of…

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Year End Blues

The year ends on many somber notes – the election of Donald Trump, his modus operandi and appointments to senior positions, the push on Capitol Hill to expand national missile defenses and to once again explore space-based systems, and the…

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Retrospectives on MIRVing in the First Nuclear Age

(Continued from here.) Why did the Nixon Administration open the floodgates to MIRVs when it was clear that the Kremlin would follow suit, effectively ruining prospects for serious strategic arms limitation? Domestic politics had something to do with this result,…

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Decent Intervals

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…

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The Iran Deal: Critiques and Rebuttals

“Obama imagines that this deal will bring Iran in from the cold, tempering its territorial ambitions and ideological radicalism.” — Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, April 9, 2015 “If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its…

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The Negotiating Endgame in Iran

The negotiating endgame with Iran is upon us. The Obama administration had no choice but to hold fast to the March 31st deadline, allowing further time only to add detail if a framework agreement can be reached. Restiveness on Capitol…

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Reagan, Gorbachev and Reykjavik (II)

(Note to readers: This is the second half of a review of Ken Adelman’s Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War. This review will also appear in The Nonproliferation Review. The first half appears here.) Ronald Reagan, the unreconstructed Cold Warrior…

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Lulling and Stifling

A standard hawkish critique of the practice of arms control and the pursuit of nuclear disarmament is that treaties pave the way to perdition. It’s senseless, in this view, to seek to override divergent national interests and political cultures. Arms…