Avatar photoThe Big Shift

Since the Cold War ended, no region has experienced more shocks or a more significant reorientation in US foreign policy than South Asia. The big shift was enabled by the demise of the Soviet Union and New Delhi’s turn away from Nehruvian economics to market-oriented entrepreneurship. Then came the 1998 nuclear tests, the Kargil War, …

Avatar photoRockets and the Leap Day Deal

I am beginning to understand how the US-DPRK “Leap Day Deal” came apart . You have to hand it to the North Koreans.  They screwed the Obama Administration. But the Obama Administration didn’t do itself any favors, either.

Avatar photoA Nuclear Coup

  If you liked reading Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal, wait until you see the new monograph by Bruno Tertrais, A “Nuclear Coup”? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test.

Avatar photoThe Gift of Giving (II)

Back in my youth, before thumbs were essential for home entertainment, some of us played a board game called Chutes and Ladders, where you could zoom way up and down the board, depending on where your piece landed after rolling the dice. Arms control isn’t like that. Big gains only happen when confident, courageous, risk-taking …