Secrets in the Sand
Part I in a multi-part series on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In 1996, as soon as it was published, I read Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. The book is a must-read for…
Arms Control Wonk
Latest · page 145
Afghan Non-End Game
With Washington, its partners, and interested neighbors gearing up diplomatic efforts over Afghanistan, I’d like to remind readers what George Shultz wrote in his memoirs about the previous Afghan “settlement.” The 1988 Geneva accords, reached under the auspices of the…
Bolton and DeSutter on INF
John Bolton and Paula DeSutter have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “A Cold War Missile Treaty That’s Doing Us Harm” that calls for the US to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. I found…
Forecasting Proliferation
Alex George, the much-admired Stanford University professor, wrote Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy (1993) to encourage academia to produce more policy-relevant work. This divide has become wider in subsequent years. Hard-pressed government officials rarely look to…
“Monkey with a Grenade”
Officially, the entire country is dry. But our people are highly skilled. Some of the stills I saw there were works of art. —Aleksandr Bolgarov describing how Russian personnel at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant cope with Prohibition in Iran…
Iran Marketing Missiles?
I’ve been working on an absolutely gigantic and totally inconclusive post about Iran-Venezuela ballistic missile cooperation. (Short version: They either are or they aren’t. That concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you.) In the course of digging through that mess, I…
Liston vs. Ali
Two visuals dominated the inner sanctum of Barack Obama’s Senate office in the Hart Building. One was a life-sized oil portrait of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The other was a huge blow up of Neil Leifer’s famous ring-side photograph…
Talking Warheads on EMP
Patrick Disney, who runs the Talking Warheads blog, has a published an article in the Atlantic about the threat (or lack thereof) from EMP. It is part of a broader paper he wrote in his graduate program. Patrick asked to…
Gibrat’s Theorem
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about multinational fuel cycle facilities in South Korea lately, which means I am reading a lot about Eurochemic — a multinational reprocessing facility among thirteen European Countries. When you crack open a…
War and Proliferation
After twelve years as the Co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Scott Sagan is stepping down, ostensibly to have more time for writing. Given how prolific Scott was during his Co-directorship, I think he’s just trying to…