The countdown is on. In three days, Chicago will be hosting the 2012 NATO summit from May 20th to 21st. New figures will be traveling to Chicago, among them the newly elected French President François Hollande. Prior to the beginning of the Summit, this piece will outline one of the most important threats that NATO […]
A distinct sense of déjà vu has gripped the Korean peninsula, as Pyongyang now threatens to conduct a nuclear test in the forthcoming weeks, smarting from the embarrassment of its failed satellite launch to mark Kim Il-sung’s birthday in mid-April. The current sequence of events is almost a carbon copy of those that led up […]
After much delay and intense global controversy, Britain’s Nature magazine has published online the first of two papers describing how the bird flu virus could be modified to be more transmissible from mammal to mammal through the air. The paper, “Experimental adaptation of an influenza H5 HA confers respiratory droplet transmission to a reassortant H5 […]
I wrote yesterday about the ridiculous inconsistency of the Administration’s response first, to the DPRK’s failed launch and second, to the non-response to the Indian Agni V launch shortly thereafter. Well, it seems I’m not alone. Enter Walter Pincus, Columnist for the Washington Post. Writing yesterday in a piece entitled Washington Double-Talk on Nukes, Pincus […]
image lifted from http://cdnnews.onepakistan.com Pakistan and the United States of America may seem like polar opposites, but when you push aside the semantics, you’ll find the same people everywhere: insecure, intolerant, injudicious and irrational. In Pakistan: The Domestic Violence Bill was first proposed in the Senate in 2009 and has since been lying dormant and the […]
While the ruckus over the failed DPRK missile test cum-satellite launch continues to linger, another non-NPT country recently followed suit with its own test. But this time, the uproar, well, didn’t happen. Or at least, that’s what the media wish us to believe. Here is what the NYT reported after Thursday’s test: “The United States, […]
The following is a guest appearance by Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow at American Progress. Mr. Korb is also a senior advisor to the Center for Defense Information and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Mr. Korb was also assistant secretary of defense during the administration of President Reagan. The following originally appeared in […]
For a discussion of all technicalities connected with the Korean launch–from its military implications to the launch plan–I highly recommend the preview physicist David Wright had in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week. Wright, who is codirector of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is unsure whether the rocket’s […]
Today in 1987, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was established by seven countries, including the U.S., in order to control the spread of unmanned delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction, and to coordinate national export licensing efforts aimed at preventing their proliferation. The regime, which has since expanded its membership to thirty-four (plus Israel, […]
Nuclear negotiations with Iran having been punted forward six weeks to a day in May, a positive development in principle, attention is focusing on whether Iran can be trusted at all and on who’s really in charge. The consensus of close observers seems to be that the country’s eminence grise Ayatollah Ali Khameini has tightened […]
With the expected launch of a long-range Unha-3 rocket by North Korea in the next couple of days, speculation has turned to whether or not the exercise is a cover for a new ballistic missile test. Space Development Department Deputy Director Ryu Kum Chol explained that “The launch of the Kwangmyongsong 3 satellite is […]
Without commenting on Israel’s decision today to declare Guenter Grass persona not grata, Grass’s peculiar decision to publish what is really a short op-ed piece in the form of a poem, his decision to publish the piece at all given the embarrassment he suffered when his S.S. membership became known, the literary qualities of the […]
As promised, here are my thoughts and reflections on the 2012 Security Jam. First of all, over this weeklong discussion, the numbers have been quite impressive with over 15.000 logins, 3.000 posts, and experts from 110 countries. These facts give an idea of the extent and depth of the discussions taking place in the eight […]
My colleague Andreas Persbo, the director of the UK-based VERTIC, has recently highlighted the existence of a very useful resource provided by the IAEA. The page, which includes a newly-released document entitled Guidance for States Implementing Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements, helps to shed light on the ” how, what, when and why of practical safeguards implementation”. While […]
Huff Post draws attention today to an interview on the subject of the Iranian nuclear dilemma that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did with the daily Yedioth Ahronoth on March 18. In it, amazingly, the hard-right, ultra-nationalistic Lieberman said: “If, God forbid, a war with Iran breaks out, it will be a nightmare. And we […]