What is it about the New START treaty’s Bilateral Consultative Commission that seems to stir up such paranoia on the right-wing? Jack Goldsmith and Jeremy Rabkin, two conservative legal scholars, have what at first glance to be the most boring op-ed in the history of the Washington Post — a proposal that the Senate ratify …
Deterrence, North Korea-style
by | 2010-08-04 | 2 Comments
As regular readers are well aware, North Korea’s KCNA often features heartwarming turns of phrase like this one: The DPRK will bolster up its war deterrent under the uplifted banner of Songun as long as the U.S. military threat and provocations against it persist. “Bolstering” is ideally carried out through nuclear or missile tests, but …
The Stakes for New START
by | 2010-08-03 | 9 Comments
Conventional wisdom has it that New START matters only at the margins, fitting comfortably within projected U.S. and Russian strategic plans, foreclosing nothing of substance and costing the usual ransom to assuage skeptics. I’m not buying this line of argument.
The Logic of a Silo Conversion Ban
by | 2010-07-29 | 9 Comments
By now, New START aficionados (if that’s the right word) will know all the talking points about missile defenses. Treaty critics in search of unacceptable restrictions on interceptors have homed in on Art. V, Paragraph 3, which prohibits either the conversion of ICBM silos or submarine missile tubes into interceptor launchers, or conversion the other …
