The 1987 INF Treaty broke the back of the nuclear arms race, completely changed the tenor of U.S. – Soviet relations, and ushered in previously inconceivable intrusive inspections. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev accomplished these results by rejecting nuclear orthodoxy. The New Start Treaty builds on these breakthroughs, but it doesn’t come close to abolishing …
Weekly Public Service Announcement
by | 2010-06-22 | No Comments
In the second of the public service announcements, I’d like to share one event today in DC for the fellow wonks. The book event is at CATO today at noon entitled Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons. The author of the book is Matthew Kroenig, and other speakers are Charles …
North Korea’s Nuclear Test That Wasn’t
by | 2010-06-21 | 13 Comments
Monday, the wonk world was briefly aflutter with the news reported by the Chosun Ilbo: a radionuclide detection station in South Korea had caught a strong whiff of xenon, whose radioactive isotopes are the products of nuclear fission. The Chosun’s correspondent even suggested that the xenon spike, which took place in mid-May, might have something …
Cow Mobile Missile Defense
by | 2010-06-17 | 4 Comments
There has been a back-and-forth about whether the New START Treaty limits or constrains US missile defense capabilities. The central issue is whether a prohibition on further conversion of ICBM silos is a constraint, or irrelevant since the Missile Defense Agency doesn’t plan to do it. (See my contribution, Missile Defense and the Prague Treaty). …
