Reading 1,000 pages of memoranda, meeting notes, and transcripts of conversations about SALT I in Volume XXXII of Foreign Relations of the United States prompts many unsettling questions, beginning with the competence of President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Nixon comes across as someone with a surprisingly uncertain grasp of the issues …
AQ Khan and India at CEIP
by | 2012-01-24 | 24 Comments
A fun time was had by all yesterday morning at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC, where I presented my research on AQ Khan and his fourth customer. (Well, perhaps there might have been a few stony faces out there.) George Perkovich moderated. I’m grateful for all of his compliments, starting with the invitation itself. …
North Korea’s Leadership Transition and Proliferation
by | 2012-01-23 | 10 Comments
The journal Asia Policy has published a “book review roundtable” with essays about Jonathan Pollack’s excellent book No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security, followed by a response essay from Pollack The Elder. I contributed one of the essays, as did Toby Dalton, Sue Terry, and Sung-Yoon Lee. Both Toby and I raised a similar …
Prime Ministers and Army Chiefs
by | 2012-01-23 | 2 Comments
Pakistani and Indian politics baffle me, even after two decades of watching. You can’t keep track of the players, even with a scorecard, because they change positions so often. In Pakistan, jockeying for power used to be a triangular affair among the Army Chief, Prime Minister and President. Now the Supreme Court, feeling its oats …
