It’s late Saturday afternoon here in Ipanema, 28 degrees C and fair, and my options are to go back to the beach or blog this. So if I get a little speculative as the paragraphs wear on, just chalk it up to compensating for the opportunity cost of being in Rio de Janeiro in late …
Ring Magnets
by | 2013-03-22 | 20 Comments
Last month, David Albright published screen shots of a solicitation by an Iranian company for ring magnets that may suitable for centrifuge bearings – a crucial component of Iran’s centrifuges. The question is whether the magnets, which fall below the thresholds established in the NSG “trigger list” are really suitable for Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges or …
Shoot-Look-Shoot
by | 2013-03-21 | 135 Comments
I have a column up at Foreign Policy (“Billion Dollar Baby”) on the announcement by newly installed SECDEF Chuck Hagel that 14 additional ground-based interceptors ought to do it with regard to North Korea. I noted in the piece that the focus on North Korea led to a comparative neglect of the decision to cancel …
Emerging Powers and Nuclear Politics
by | 2013-03-20 | 39 Comments
Megan Garcia has penned a great little essay on “emerging powers” in nuclear politics in general, and Brazil in particular. Let me also plug her monograph, Global Swing States and the Non-Proliferation Order. The subject is super important — one of the big ideas lurking in the back of my head concerns how the nonproliferation regime adjusts to …
