The control of weapons of mass destruction has been about numbers, treaties and norms. The first two get most of the attention, even though the third is the grand prize. Numbers and treaties are essential tools to build an edifice…
Another edition of ACW’s best regular column! 24 GOP Senators – rubio.senate.gov | The Berlin speech / unilateral nuclear cuts debate continues. We missed it at the time, but back in June, a couple dozen Republican senators weighed in, saying “It…
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of serving my second term as the Director-General of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). I played my role in a simulation set up by the CTBTO’s Capacity Development Initiative (CDI).…
In the mid-1980s, many smart people predicted the death of arms control. Thomas Schelling was one of them. Others included Richard Haass, Albert Carnesale, Les Gelb, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. US-Soviet relations were in terrible shape. The White House and the…
Greetings from Hiroshima, Japan — or, as I like to say, within range of a Nodong. As you can see, North Korea appears to have paraded a Hwaseong-13 (KN-08) without the camouflage we saw last time. The Scuds got a…
The Stimson Center will release an edited volume in September comparing and contrasting deterrence against nuclear and space warfare. Here’s a preview. Nuclear deterrence and space deterrence have common elements as well as distinct differences. No difference is more striking…
This edition of FYRP is an experiment. Instead of a roundup on different subjects, it focuses on just one: Iran’s President-Elect Hassan Rohani and what his presidency might mean for the nuclear issue. A regular FYRP will be published shortly.…
Steph Hagard wrote a great little piece on the Chong Chon Gang interdiction. I have only a few additional comments. 1. I find the story that Cuba was sending the equipment to North Korea for refurbishment plausible. In fact, it…
Sean O’Connor has a really great article on Saudi Arabia’s missile force in Jane’s Intelligence Review (“Saudi ballistic missile site revealed“) that nicely updates his 2009 blog post on the same subject. O’Connor’s article offers a nice excuse to tackle…
The Nixon administration needed to make many adjustments in order to prepare for strategic arms limitation talks with the Kremlin. One change was in the terminology used to describe how US nuclear forces were supposed to stack up against the…
