The Obama Administration has agreed to start negotiations with Iran on the basis of the latest Iranian proposal. A decision I certainly applaud and fervently hope that we can finesse to include the nuclear issue (an issue that was part of Iran’s May 2008 submission and one that they have suggested could still be talked …
Herman Kahn
by | 2009-09-10 | 21 Comments
Herman Kahn has a favored place in my shoe box collection because he followed his logic train to territory where other deterrence strategists feared to tread. Kahn was plus-sized (above), utterly confident, and easily caricatured. A sense of the man’s mind can be found in the preface of one of his important books, On Escalation, …
Missiles on Parade
by | 2009-09-09 | 9 Comments
October 1 is the Sixtieth Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. You know what that means: Silly hats! And, of course, missiles on parade! Apparently, this year the wonkporn factor will be higher than average. Kang Juan, writing in Global Times, quotes an anonymous source as claiming that China will showcase …
Parsing Enrichment in North Korea
by | 2009-09-07 | 6 Comments
Last week’s letter of the Permanent Representative of the DPRK to the UN Security Council President — see the KCNA translation — has stirred up a lot of excitement for what it says about uranium enrichment, or, to be precise, for what it doesn’t say about uranium enrichment. The statement doesn’t mention nuclear weapons in …
