Long-time readers may recall that I was fairly vexed by the utter inability of the Bush Administration to produce a policy on Iran. And by “produce” I mean actually write an an honest-to-goodness National Security President Directive that the President signs. I observed that they never got around to it (Anybody got an Iran policy?, …
Playing Peek-A-Boo With Nuclear Opacity
by | 2009-08-14 | 13 Comments
A picture is worth… You already know the saying. But what’s a picture worth when it comes without a caption? This may sound like an off-brand Zen koan, but it’s actually the windup to a small exercise in decoding ambiguous nuclear signaling. Earlier this month, Amir Mizroch grabbed a rather unusual screen image from a …
The Buddha on Arms Control
by | 2009-08-13 | 10 Comments
One of the many benefits of foreign travel is discovering what hotel nightstands offer as their equivalent to the Gideon Bible. In 1996, while spending the night at a hotel near Narita airport awaiting a morning flight to Beijing, I opened the drawer to find The Teachings of the Buddha. Can the sufferings of arms …
North Korea's Yongbyon Complex
by | 2009-08-13 | 2 Comments
Jon Herskovitz of Reuers penned an odd little news analysis the other day suggesting that North Korea might start from scratch on its bomb program, shifting from the well-developed infrastructure for producing plutonium at Yongbyon to an Iran-like centrifuge program. This is nuts. The entire article hangs on the following speculation by an unnamed South …
