My latest at the Diplomat expresses skepticism that the North Korean nuclear test is something to get all that excited about: The first and most important lesson is that North Korean policy towards its neighbors does not appear to have appreciably changed in Kim Jong Il’s wake. North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles, it […]
Tag: nukes
Early, but looks as if the Norks may have just “expended some fissile material.” Jeffrey Lewis thinks maybe 10kt (probably bigger than either of the previous two tests), but obviously it&#
In my latest Diplomat column I make the case for retaining a (reduced) boomer fleet: My own view is that the United States can accept a lower threshold for at sea nuclear deterrence, but this leg shou
Derp: The Department of Defense is a leader in equal opportunity for all patriots seeking to serve this great nation. . . The vigilant warriors in AFGSC understand they are all equal and unified in purpose to provide a safe, secure and effective deterrent force for the United States. . . Dr. King would be […]
Here’s a fascinating series of photographs from a book on the Soviet bomb program. Someday, I would love to see a big coffee table book of pictures like these from all of the nuclear powers. T
Is Saudi Arabia laying the groundwork to go nuclear? The idea that an Iranian nuclear test would force Saudi Arabia and other regional powers to develop their own nuclear programs was one of the most
Apparently wide swaths of the US public approve of the use of nuclear weapons in non-retaliatory circumstances. Randomly selected groups of survey respondents were told that the nuclear and conventional attacks would either be equally effective or that the nuclear attack had a greater chance of success. Everything else was held constant. When both options […]
My final entry into the Yale Journal Iran nuclear debate is up: Ackerman and Cohen accept many of these lies at face value. Ackerman apparently believes that the autocrats in Bahrain would not have su
Last Sunday I found myself in a twitter brawl after declaring that a nuclear armed Iran, while hardly ideal, would have no significant effect on the Middle East balance of power. Yale Journal of Inter
Hey now, it’s not as if knowing whether China has nuclear weapons is at all relevant to the practice of American foreign policy: I do view China as a potential military threat to the United States… we already have superiority in terms of our military capability, and I plan to get away from making cutting […]
Now this is fascinating. Jeffrey Lewis discusses a startling claim by AQ Khan: Simon Henderson and I disagreed on an issue related to the broader question of whether North Korean officials really show
Thomas Schelling, via Erik Voeten: In 1982 I published an article that began, “Sometime in the 1980’s an organization that is not a national government may acquire a few nuclear weapons. If not in