Weapons of Last Resort
Quotes of the week: “You use a small one, then you go to a bigger one. I think nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons and we need to draw the line there.” — George Shultz “I don’t think there’s any such…
Tag: Obama administration
A Time Out for New NSG Membership
The changing of the guard from the Obama to the Trump Administration might be a good time to pause and reflect on India’s efforts to gain entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. President Barack Obama promised Prime Minister Narendra Modi…
Taking Stock
The advent of a New Year and a new administration are as good a time as any for taking stock. Decades of hard work to reduce nuclear dangers are at risk. The most consequential but least heralded achievement of the…
Senator Corker and the CTBT
Senator Bob Corker, the Republican Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has taken issue with the Obama Administration’s decision to co-sponsor a UN Security Council Resolution and a companion P-5 statement reaffirming national moratoria against nuclear testing. This non-legally binding…
Humanitarian Consequences (Cont.)
[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,…
Monitoring Provisions of the Iran Agreement
This assessment of the core monitoring provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is necessarily hurried and preliminary. I invite ACW readers to weigh in with their comments. The text of key provisions follows my first-cut assessment. The agreement’s…
Iran: The Punditariat Weighs In
Now that the negotiating endgame for a nuclear limitation agreement with Iran has been extended to July 7th, critics and kibitzers have had an extra seven days to push, prod and excoriate the Obama administration. It’s far easier to criticize…
Responding to Treaty Violations
Gray-haired readers of ACW will remember when the acronym RSVP was treaty-related. During the first term of the Reagan administration, arms-control opponents compiled a long list of the Kremlin’s treaty violations and circumventions, real or imagined. They then commissioned studies…