Prospects for arms control in 2013 look bleak on most fronts, with a few important, potential exceptions. Prognostication is a fool’s game, since surprise – pleasant, but more often painful – comes with this territory, but here goes… In the…
Shall we label 2012 as The Year of Waiting? The fourth year of a U.S. presidential term is usually marked by the absence of big initiatives and the presence of partisan gridlock. This year was no exception. Compound this with…
The theory and practice of deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union were predicated on the unitary, rational-actor model. Life-or-death decisions in deep crises would be made by leaders driven by rational calculations of national interest and executed…
A hyphenated word has hung like a shroud over Pakistan ever since its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, vocalized what Great Britain produced in its hasty retreat from empire: a moth-eaten state. In 1947, a British barrister, new to the…
Twenty years of visiting Pakistan still doesn’t amount to much. My footprint is limited, especially lately, and I can only converse in English. Nonetheless, if you don’t learn something from repeated visits, you’re not paying attention. There’s no shortage of…
This space has periodically sung the praises of Bernard Brodie, but even All Stars occasionally go into slumps. Brodie was off his game in Escalation and the Nuclear Option (1966), in which he argued the case for tactical nuclear weapons.…
Two decades of Stimson Center Research Assistants and interns have compiled a chronology of confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan. I asked the most recent keeper of this database, Drew Stommes, to help me discover patterns in these data points.…
For four years now, STRATCOM has hosted an annual deterrence symposium that provides opportunities for younger officers and their seniors to hear old hands, U.S. government officials, foreign perspectives, policy influentials, and the occasional heretic. As a networking and learning…
Two vignettes and an organizational chart: I. In August 1991, I was part of a group of maybe fifteen Americans who visited with Gennady Yanayev in the Kremlin. Yanayev was a big deal at the time — the Vice President…
Negotiations between the United States and Pakistan over the cost of hauling freight from Karachi port to Afghanistan and the wording of a statement of regret or apology over Pakistani deaths at a border clash last November have become demeaning…
