The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting that the Department of Energy has concluded that North Korea is the source of nearly two tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) surrendered by Libya. The New York Times starts strong: [E]xtensive…
No kidding. Arm Chair Generalist, a promising progressive international security blog, beats me to this one: The LA Times reports that the CIA has released a classified document noting that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons program in 1991 and “Iraq…
Post-test B61-11 mock-up (source) The Washington Post is reporting the the FY2006 budget due out in a few days will request $10.3 million to restart study of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP)— a “bunker busting” nuclear weapon. The RNEP…
Tom Hundley, foreign correspondant for the Chicago Tribune, extensively quotes former US U.S. ambassador to UN organizations in Vienna John Rich in defense of Mohamed ElBaradei: “ElBaradei is exactly the kind of person you would want in the role—someone from…
Cheryl Rofer over at Whirledview, a nice blog maintained by three persons with excellent national security bona fides, has a sensible post about dropping the total U.S. nuclear arsenal to a few hundred deployed warheads. Check it out. I would…
Jafar Dia Jafar (right), a high ranking former Iraqi nuclear scientist, has written a Norwegian-language memoir, Oppdraget (The Assignment) about his years in the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Jafar confirms something that other Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists have suggested: “the…
We scholars of international relations often emphasize the role that large, impersonal forces play in driving policy. The habit is as old as recorded history, running all the way back to Thucydides, who said of the Peloponnesian War: The real…
The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Inside Defense reports that the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) may, for the first time, evaluate nuclear as well as conventional forces. Ryan Henry, principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, would not confirm…
AP describes one paragraph of a confidential summary of EU-Iran negotions this way: But the summary of the last meeting on the issue involving representatives of France, Britain, Germany and Iran says Tehran acknowledged what Washington and its allies have…
Reuters and AP obtained the full-text summary of the recent Iran-EU3 negotiations. The press coverage focuses on the underlying pessimism of the document, which notes: The Iranian position is obviously guided by the goal of maintaining the fuel cycle. Without…
