A defining moment for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy legacy is fast approaching
From the Levant and the Persian Gulf to the Korean peninsula, events in recent weeks have offered a clinic in the difficulty of enforcing red lines on rogue regimes and their weapons of mass destruction, as well as how …
The good news in nuclear arms control this last week was of course China’s rather surprising decision to join in international sanctions against North Korea. The single most important thing about sanctions, almost always, is not their material effect but, rather, when the sanctions are universal, the moral and political …
In what seems to be a response to the Corker/Inhofe op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of last week, elder statesmen George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn reiterated their call for more urgent progress on reducing nuclear risks, particularly proliferation. This is their fifth article …
In an OpEd in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Senators Bob Corker, currently Ranking Member on the Foreign Relations Committee, and James Inhofe, well-known global warming skeptic and Ranking Member on the Armed Services Committee, opined about how the administration’s commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons was 1) dangerous, 2) …
From a global perspective, any new entry into the “nuclear club” is high undesirable as such: With every new entrant, there is an exponential increase in the political complexity of achieving total nuclear disarmament — or, to put it more simply, there is an additional obstacle in the way of …
Departing Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s farewell letter is not the usual five paragraphs consisting of gradiose claims and bromides for the ages. At more than 3,750 words, it is the length of a college term paper or a magazine feature article. As …
With the retirement of Senator Jon Kyl and defeat of Senator Richard Lugar — of the unprecedented Nunn-Lugar initiative — Congress’s 113th session will see a significant lacunae in arms control and nuclear nonproliferation expertise. While I am hard-pressed to call Kyl an “expert” — someone who repeatedly questioned the …
Shifting red lines in Syria undermines the tough rhetoric toward Tehran
Many observers have connected the civil war raging in Syria to the broader U.S. standoff with Iran. Critics of the Obama administration’s extremely cautious approach on Syria argue that pushing more forcefully for the demise of …
With the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and the transition from the first to second Obama term, it’s a time for pundits to compile to-do lists. For example, fellow blogger Jodi Lieberman recently circulated an excellent one from the NTI Center for Nonproliferation …
After Iran, arguably the most urgent problem in nuclear nonproliferation policy is Japan’s huge and growing stockpile of separated plutonium, its plans to start commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels next year,* and the bad precedent that will set for South Korea, South Africa and other …
In his most recent, and to my mind, revealing examination of the evolution of the IAEA safeguards regime, Carnegie Senior Associate Mark Hibbs lays out some critical issues facing the evolution of the Agency’s central nuclear watchdog function. What he finds is a swirling morass of political jockeying, an …
In terms of establishing the conditions for a world without weapons of mass destruction (the main theme of this blog), we might as well say frankly that Obama’s first term left a good deal to be desired. Despite the clear commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons the Obama made …
Tomorrow is election day — and the end of the deluge of political adverts — so I thought readers would find a recent piece at Global Security Newswire useful.
Lee Michael Katz, writing for the Global Security Newswire, surveyed a number of arms control advisors and former administration types …
In preparation for the final debate this evening and the FPA live-tweeting of the event — to focus on foreign policy — the Arms Control Association and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists provide nice overviews of the candidates records on key nuclear nonproliferation and arms control issues.
Kingston Reif, the director of nuclear …
I know. Shocking, isn’t it? But, that’s essentially what the Nuclear Energy Institute is saying in its totally unsurprising new report, “Nuclear Export Controls: A Comparative Analysis of National Regimes for the Control of Nuclear Materials, Components and Technology.” Issued on October 1st, the report was done …
