Avatar photoACW Happy Hour, Thursday, October 8, 6ish

As many of you know, my lovely wife Jill is taking a government job so she can be read in to intelligence compartments that I can’t even dream about. From now on, at dinner, Jill will just sit quietly, thinking “What a supercilious fool I’ve married.” Come to think of it, it won’t change our …

Avatar photoKenneth Waltz

The debate between Ken Waltz and Scott Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (2nd edition, 2003) is a great teaching tool. Waltz, the academic Grinch of proliferation studies, argues that more proliferation is better than any of the alternatives — as long as the Bomb spreads slowly. Sagan argues that more proliferation increases the likelihood …

Avatar photoGeneva: The TRR and Enrichment Abroad

Long time, no speak. Time for a spot of guest blogging at this busy time. Interesting news from the meetings in Geneva today. Iran has agreed, “in principle”, to have some LEU from Natanz further enriched abroad and fabricated into fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. (You might remember President Ahmedinijad recently floated the idea …

Avatar photoSafeguards v. EXPO

Well, I guess Mark Hibbs isn’t going to be getting a building pass to the VIC. That VIC, of course, is the Vienna International Center, home to the IAEA. Hibbs has a long piece on the vicious infighting within the IAEA over whether to release information collected by the IAEA documenting alleged weaponization activities by …