Strategic Security

Council on Foreign Relations Gets It Wrong on India June 12, 2006

The Council on Foreign Relations just released a “Special Report,” U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation by Michael Levi and Charles Ferguson. Mike and Charles are first rate thinkers but I disagree with almost every aspect of their report. The report is seductively misleading because many of the recommendations make good sense given the presumptions and context of the report. But the presumptions and context are wrong. So first, we need to step back and examine the context. The authors state early on that “…the Bush administration has stirred deep passions and put Congress in the seemingly impossible bind of choosing between approving the deal and damaging nuclear nonproliferation, or rejecting the deal and thereby setting back an important strategic relationship.” [p. 3] This is true, but the problem is with the deal, not the implementation.

NATO Nuclear Policy at Odds with Public Opinion June 9, 2006

Almost 70 percent of people in European countries that currently store U.S. nuclear weapons want a Europe free of nuclear weapons, according to an opinion poll published by Greenpeace…

Turkish Parliament Debates US Nuclear Weapons At Incirlik Air Base June 7, 2006

Deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey was brought up in a debate in the Turkish Parliament today by Turkey’s former Ambassador to the United States, Sukru Elekdag. According to…

WMD Commission Seeks to Revive Disarmament June 1, 2006

In a whopper 231-page report published today, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission presented 60 specific recommendations for how to move the nonproliferation and disarmament agenda forward.

FBI declassifies US bacterial warfare document May 31, 2006

An FBI account of “Bacteriological Warfare in the United States” was obtained by TheMemoryHole.org through the Freedom of Information Act. In all, 709 pages were released relating to bacterial…

NNSA Walking a Fine Line on Divine Strake May 31, 2006

Update (February 22, 2007): DTRA announces that Divine Strake has been canceled. In a surprising move, the National Nuclear Security Administration last week withdrew (!) its Finding of No…

Threat Reduction Legislation Sails through House and Senate Committees May 30, 2006

Last week, lawmakers demonstrated their commitment to reining in the black market trade in deadly conventional weapons by forwarding two important bills to the full House and Senate. On Tuesday,…

Make Trident Conventional May 30, 2006

The week before last, Harold Brown and James Schlesinger argued in an op-ed in the Washington Post that the United States should arm some of the ballistic missiles on…