Tom Hundley, foreign correspondant for the Chicago Tribune, extensively quotes former US U.S. ambassador to UN organizations in Vienna John Rich in defense of Mohamed ElBaradei: “ElBaradei is exactly the kind of person you would want in the role—someone from a developing country who has a Western intellect but a Third World sensitivity,” said John …
Whirledview: A New Blog of Note
by | 2005-01-30 | 4 Comments
Cheryl Rofer over at Whirledview, a nice blog maintained by three persons with excellent national security bona fides, has a sensible post about dropping the total U.S. nuclear arsenal to a few hundred deployed warheads. Check it out. I would only quibble with Rofer’s mention that China “holds about 400 nuclear weapons.” As I’ve said, …
Iraq Nuclear Scientist Publishes Memoir
by | 2005-01-30 | No Comments
Jafar Dia Jafar (right), a high ranking former Iraqi nuclear scientist, has written a Norwegian-language memoir, Oppdraget (The Assignment) about his years in the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Jafar confirms something that other Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists have suggested: “the quest for nuclear weapons began with Israeli warplanes bombing the legal Iraqi nuclear reactor at …
Dinner from Hell
by | 2005-01-29 | No Comments
We scholars of international relations often emphasize the role that large, impersonal forces play in driving policy. The habit is as old as recorded history, running all the way back to Thucydides, who said of the Peloponnesian War: The real cause I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. …
