The international terrorist group Hezbollah, driven by resistance to Israel, now regularly sends low flying drones into Israeli airspace. These drones are launched and remotely manned from the Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon and presumably supplied by its patron and strategic partner, Iran. On the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations since 1995, Hezbollah has […]
A stable and thriving Pakistan is the key to preserving harmony and facilitating progress in the broader South Asia region. Afghanistan, which is to the west of Pakistan, has a long border that divides the Pakhtun people between the countries. As a result of this border, Pakistan not only has a significant role in the […]
The Greatest Threat The weapon was ready, a simple fission device similar to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It had been finally assembled in a rented storage space on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had spent years quietly contemplating while meticulously planning this diabolical, logistically challenging mission. Among other things, the plot necessitated […]
On January 27, 2014, I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting with Dr. Jack Steinberger at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discussed nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, particle physics, great scientific achievements, and solar thermal power plants. Here, I give a summary of the discussion with Dr. Steinberger, a […]
Recent efforts to convene a conference on a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have stalled, reflecting the political difficulties in working towards that goal in the region. Pursuing a regional safeguards organization for nuclear energy programs in the Middle East could be an easier diplomatic and strategic alternative, given the […]
Fifty years ago on January 30th, “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb,” a seminal political-military satire and dark comedic film premiered. Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert, the film gave us some of the most outrageously humorous and simultaneously satirical dialog in the history of the silver screen. […]
The concept of strategic stability emerged during the Cold War, but today it is still unclear what the term exactly means and how its different interpretations influence strategic decisions. After the late 1950s, the Cold War superpowers based many of their arguments and decisions on their own understanding of strategic stability1 and it still seems to […]
Be careful of self-fulfilling prophecies about the intentions for Iran’s nuclear program. Often, Western analysts view this program through the lens of realist political science theory such that Iranian leaders seek nuclear weapons to counteract threats made to overthrow their regime or to exert dominance in the Middle East. To lend support to the former […]
How can citizens of the world work to make the world safer using technology and crowdsourcing? Citizen Sensor aims to bring people together from all around the world to use the power of the web and crowdsourcing to have a profound impact on nonproliferation and international safeguards.
A congressional impasse on what to do with U.S. reactors’ spent nuclear fuel could last to 2017 or beyond unless a compromise can be found between the House and Senate. The House has voted to support finishing review of the site license application for the Yucca Mountain repository, but the Senate has not. Facing opposition […]
A look at the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and its work to reduce the amount of vulnerable nuclear and radiological material located at civilian sites worldwide and improve protection of these materials.
Formed over 6 billion years ago, uranium, a dense, silvery-white metal, was created “during the fiery lifetimes and explosive deaths in stars in the heavens around us,” stated Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias.1 With a radioactive half-life of about 4.5 billion years, uranium-238 is the most dominant of several unstable uranium isotopes in nature and has […]