A dedicated band of anti-arms controllers, led by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, sought to foil President Ronald Reagan’s pursuit of nuclear arms reduction treaties with Moscow. One tactic was to publish charge…
Catherine Dill and I have published a pair of articles concerning allegations that Burma’s generals are building a chemical weapons facility near a place called Pauk. The article published on the CNS website analyzes satellite images of the site, while…
Henry Kissinger wrote two early, influential books on the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957) and The Necessity for Choice (1960). I bought these used books at bargain-basement prices at the Princeton University bookstore. The name on the inside…
Can the West verify a deal with Iran over its nuclear program? Jeffrey and Aaron discuss Ken Pollack’s oped in the New York Times and ask whether the international community should focus more on inspections or “breakout” times. The discussion includes our…
Mathias Rust probably questioned his decision to fly again to Moscow. In 1987, the then-19-year-old West German national breached the Soviet Union’s border in a rented single-engine Cessna, flew nearly 550 miles through what what supposed to be the country’s…
Jeffrey and I discuss the Saudi decision to unveil the Kingdom’s DF-3 missiles. The conversation begins with a brief discussion about the Saudi missile program and includes our thoughts on the likely reasons for the decision to bring the Saudi…
On March 24, 1985, Major Arthur D. Nicholson, Jr. was shot in the chest by a Soviet sentry while observing a tank shed near Ludwigslust, in East Germany. The 1947 Potsdam Agreement for the military occupation and reconstruction of Germany…
Is North Korea about to test (another) nuclear weapon? Or perhaps more than one? Jeffrey Lewis and Aaron Stein discuss the possibilities.
Saudi Arabia made headlines recently, after it publicly paraded two DF-3s for the first time. The Kingdom secretly purchased these missiles from China in 1987, but has hitherto opted not to show them off in public. The consensus is that…
My friend and colleague at Monterey, Philipp Bleek, has been growing weary of the frequent mischaracterization of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, particularly as its relates to Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. He was kind enough to share his weary reflections…
