Arms Control Wonk

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Long Range Missiles Of Any Kind

I have previously noted the importance of reading very, very closely the utterances of the Great Fitzpatrick. Another case in point: On March 15, Mark gave a talk at the Daiwa Foundation Japan House in which he “predicted trouble” over…

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Honest Johns in Korea

I find it hard to believe that one could confuse a nuclear weapon with a latrine, but during the 1970s anything was possible.

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The Gift of Giving

Readers beware: The next two posts are ridden with conflicts of interest. Policy entrepreneurship to reduce nuclear dangers would dry up without foundations. National leaders and bureaucracies are too consumed by their daily calendars to serve as their own think…

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Tuppenny Trident?

In case you haven’t been watching, some very interesting fissures are now evident in the support for an independent British nuclear deterrent.  This is going to be very interesting. There are two factors at play — the looming UK budget…

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The Moon Race

America’s race to the moon was like the competition with Nazi Germany to make the atomic bomb: the “race” mobilized immense resources while the opponent failed to compete. In the case of the A-bomb, this became evident only after Germany…

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Significant Quantities Rant

Working at a think tank with lots of proliferation specialists offers certain advantages, especially the casual conversations. It turns out Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Miles Pomper and I all share a pet-peeve: When people incorrectly convert amounts of plutonium and especially highly…

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DPRK Announcement

Surprise can come in two big packages labeled pleasant and unpleasant. North Korea’s announcement that it has agreed to suspend enrichment and long-range missile flight tests while resuming IAEA inspections clearly falls in the first category. If Pyongyang reneges on…

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Pakistan and the FMCT

Pakistan is blocking the start of negotiations of a global halt to the production of highly-enriched Uranium and Plutonium for nuclear weapons. The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty can’t begin, Pakistani diplomats say, because existing stockpiles won’t be covered. But Pakistan…

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Goldschmidt on Iran

Pierre Goldschmidt imagines a fictional conversation with a senior Iranian official that presents in lively way the arguments in his excellent talk, The Iranian Nuclear Issue: Achieving a Win-Win Diplomatic Solution. Click on the jump for the full text.

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A Public Service Announcement

Now hear this. If you haven’t already discovered Restricted Data, Alex Wellerstein’s steadily more remarkable blog on the history of (secrecy in) the nuclear age,* then you’re late to the party. Sorry — nothing terribly clever to say at the moment. I’ll…