I have a new post up over at 38 North looking at the role of the Panel of Experts supporting the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1718 (2006) — the resolution establishing sanctions on the DPRK. I had…
Thankfully, I have never laid eyes on plans to fight a nuclear war. The biggest advantages to not knowing these plans are that my sleep habits and powers of analysis have not been further impaired. Knowledge is usually a good…
I always figured the number of Tomahawk cruise missiles in the Navy inventory was a classified number. Turns out, the Navy has been publishing the number since at least 1997. The Navy also, between 1997-2000, published the number of TLAM/N…
In April 2012, the Defense Department released another edition of the (purportedly) annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of Iran. As in 2010, I am struck by the arbitrariness of headline that has emerged. This year it is:…
I was in DC briefly this week to participate in a workshop hosted by the Carnegie Endowment. James Acton asked me to propose a US-Russia confidence-building measure, which offered the welcome opportunity to make a suggestion I’ve been kicking around…
President Obama has yet to make a compelling, positive case for his re-election, including his track record in reinstituting verifiable reductions in nuclear forces, securing dangerous proliferation-relevant materials, and reaffirming the global compact known as the NPT. His opponent, Mitt…
As we had anticipated last week, last Friday the United Nations Security Council published its 2012 Panel of Experts Report pursuant to UNSCR Resolution 1874. Here it is. A year ago, the Chinese member of the POE would not sign the final report for…
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…
Phil Karber has placed another story, this time directly associating himself with the discredited claim that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons. Karber found an essay by General Viktor Yesin (in Russian), a former commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces,…
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…
