Arms Control Wonk

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Python Library for Nuclear Weapons Effects

Edward Geist has created a Python library of nuclear weapons effects, including Soviet models.  If there was ever a reason for this blog to exist, announcing something like this is pretty much it. Introducing GLASSTONE—a Python library for modeling nuclear…

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Evaluating the Visit to Hiroshima

What are we to make of President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima? To my ear, President Obama’s speech was oddly unequal to the occasion – and not just because he signaled no new efforts to move in the direction of his…

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Announcing Geo4Nonpro!

There’s a lot of hype about the use of both commercial satellite imagery and crowdsourcing for verification activities. Well, I decided to put those two hands together and build a website with Jeffrey and Catherine (it’s why you haven’t heard…

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Admitting Non-NPT Members: Questions for the NSG

The Nuclear Suppliers Group in coming weeks may consider an application for membership from India, and perhaps also from Pakistan. Both states possess nuclear weapons and are outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Hence, they are states whose nuclear weapon…

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The Second Coming of MIRVs

Reminder! The book launch event takes place on Monday, May 16, at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. If the Pentagon is to be believed, the second coming of MIRVs is upon us, this time in Asia, with China’s deployment of…

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Nuclear Weapons and the Laws of War (cont.)

Note to readers: Dr. Justin Anderson continues the conversation about nuclear weapons and the laws of war with this contribution. Rejoinders are, of course, welcome. Justin is a Research Fellow at National Defense University’s Center for the Study of WMD.…

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Producing Tritium in North Korea

Jeffrey has asked me to post a blog written by Hugh Chalmers, who works with me here in London. It covers possible ways in which North Korea could produce tritium for its nuclear weapons programme. It first appeared in Trust…

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Unilateral or Bilateral Reductions?

The next US president faces lots of questions relating to nuclear weapons and nuclear threat reduction. Here’s one: Should the United States unilaterally reduce strategic forces deemed to be in excess of the Pentagon’s needs, or wait instead for an…

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To Hiroshima (cont.)

An earlier post called on President Obama to visit Hiroshima when he visits Japan for the G-7 Summit on May 26-27. If he fails to visit, the journey begun with a stirring speech at Prague in April 2009 and the Nobel…

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The Advantage of Being the Weaker, Nuclear-Armed State

Doyens of nuclear deterrence strategy during the first nuclear age were convinced that size mattered. The nuclear-armed state with a bigger arsenal, or greater missile throw-weight, or sharper missile accuracy, or more tactical nuclear weapons, or [fill in the blank]…