The International Crisis Group, to my mind, is a very uneven operation. It also annoys me that they never sign their reports. But Dan Pinkston, out in Seoul, has a trio of very good reports on North Korea’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs, Nuclear and Missile Programs and Getting Back to Talks. Top notch stuff …
Nuclear Sesame Street
by | 2009-06-20 | 9 Comments
I’ve been reading “Caging the Dragon” on the flight to London and it reminded me of a little song from Sesame Street that goes: One of these things is not like the others One of these things is just not the same. What reminded me of that? These three yields: – Fission yield – Fusion …
K. Sundarji and India's Bomb
by | 2009-06-19 | 3 Comments
Very few military men figure prominently in the story of India’s Bomb. This is partly due to civilians who jealously guard their prerogative to make national security policy, and partly due to New Delhi’s practice of relying on seniority to fill the top-most military positions. Consequently, India’s Army Chiefs have been a varied lot. One …
Sagan on No First Use
by | 2009-06-18 | 19 Comments
Scott Sagan argues very convincingly in the pages of Survival that the United States should adopt a declaratory policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons (Scott D. Sagan, “The Case for No First Use,” Survival 51:3, June–July 2009, pp. 163–182). Particularly compelling, to me, is his demolition of “calculated ambiguity” using a case study …
