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 …
Treaty Math
by | 2009-09-04 | 2 Comments
A pop quiz for wonks: Question: What do the following numbers represent? 95, 93, 93, 88, 87, 80, and 74 Answer: The number of Senators voting for the SORT, START I, INF, ABM, START II, Limited Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention. One of the conclusions that Dan Caldwell and I reached in …
