Recently, the Obama Administration has come under fire for potentially making unilateral cuts to the United States nuclear arsenal. Such unilateral cuts were proposed in the International Security Advisory Board’s (ISAB) November report on “Options for Implementing Additional Nuclear Force Reductions.” Legal arguments aside, there are many problematic assumptions that …
Fifty years ago, the world came to the brink of nuclear war. On October 14, 1962, U.S. policymakers learned that the Soviet Union was building missile bases in Cuba, which would have allowed Moscow to attack anywhere in the continental United States within minutes. An international crisis followed, and while …
In his recent article in Foreign Affairs, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Kenneth N. Waltz is swimming upstream against the consensus position regarding the instability stemming from nuclear proliferation. In this case, the consensus position is right, and Waltz is wrong. The international nuclear …
Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force General Robert Kehler, described the U.S. nuclear deterrent as being “in really bad shape.” Years of neglect and lack of funding after the Cold War have weakened the nuclear infrastructure, …
At the NATO Summit in Chicago this weekend, leaders will gather to discuss a number of issues facing the alliance. Top of the agenda will be Afghanistan, improving NATO’s military capabilities, and extending NATO’s partnerships with regional and global partners. However, nothing agreed at the summit will matter if America’s …
Recently, Daryl Kimball and Tom Collina, both of the Arms Control Association, criticized the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) for taking hostage the implementations of the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) in order to provide necessary funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The article misrepresents facts. New …
According to press reports, the House Armed Services Committee has preserved a provision in its draft of annual defense legislation that would place ballistic missile defense interceptors on the East Coast to defend U.S. territory more effectively against ballistic missile attacks, including short-range missiles carrying electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warheads that …
In a recent National Journal article, three-quarters of defense experts interviewed opposed any attempt by the Obama Administration to scale back missile defense deployment in Europe in exchange for promises of Russian cooperation with Iran. “If we drop these plans, we could witness the reemergence of Russia as a dominant …
