A joint post by Catherine Dill, Jeffrey Lewis, Melissa Hanham and David Schmerler Two years ago, on 17 July 2014, someone shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight Number 17 (MH17) over an area of Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists, killing all…
Kashmir is on the boil again. Unrest has been on the rise for months now. The involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence can be safely assumed, but less than in previous flare-ups, if clashes along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir…
The Bill Clinton Administration made a questionable call to expand NATO after the Cold War ended. The George W. Bush Administration made matters far worse by expanding NATO up to Russia’s border in the Baltics and pushing club membership further…
India tried hard to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group with strong backing from the Obama Administration. It was a bridge too far. There was no consensus at the NSG meeting in Seoul to accept India’s candidacy, which was muddied by…
Last week, a piece of debris from North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong rocket washed up in Japan. Images of the debris show it is the smaller half of the fairing that covers the satellite during launch. The larger half was recovered in…
Diplomatic posturing on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, and new strategic arms reductions waxes as prospects for progress wane. Progress requires lubrication for friction between Russia and the United States, China and the United States,…
Arms limitation is ridiculously hard to explain and even harder to accomplish. Arms limitation is useful when dealing with bad actors that possess fearsome weapons. If success requires self-limitation as well, the results are often met with derision, since bad…
Or, geolocating Kim Jong Un by his (somewhat questionable) fashion choices. A joint post with Dave Schmerler. Surely, you remember this image, notable because it shows a mock-up of a compact nuclear warhead and Kim Jong Un in a ridiculous…
“MIRV” stands for Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicles, the ability to put lots of very accurate nuclear warheads on a single missile. Michael Krepon watched the US-Soviet arms race dangerously accelerate as both sides deployed large numbers of MIRVed missiles in…
Dear Readers of ACW: I have posted the perspectives of others in this space on whether the explosive use of nuclear weapons can be reconciled with the laws of war. This discussion is useful, in my view, because it clarifies…
