Dive into the archives.
- Cuban Missile Crisis Redux?
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. It seems history may rhyme after all if current news reports are to be believed. According to the AFP, there was discussion in the Russian news of Moscow flying long range bombers to Cuba again.
Russia would cross “a red line [...]
- Why States are Important in the WoT
One major and poorly explained reason for the invasion of Iraq was not the the physical presence of WMD but the willingness of a state with WMD capability and/or weapons to train and equip terrorists and possibly provide them with said weapons. While little serious diplomacy had been attempted with Iran and North Korea, Iraq [...]
- Deterence And the Missile Shield
As is common with most things dominating the news cycle, important background explanations and underlying principles are often if not always left inadequately answered or not touched on at all. One such example is the US missile shield which now has the official backing of NATO and the issue of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. [...]
- Grain of Salt
Here’s the WSJ on the US intelligence report that Tehran has, for reasons yet to be explained, stopped atomic research for military purposes:
Before rolling out the peace banners, though, it’s worth looking at the agencies’ track record in getting these sorts of “estimates” right. As a matter of fact, U.S. intelligence services have so far [...]
- Chinese nuclear sub-spotting
Via the strategist comes a post by Hans M. Kristensen from FAS who used Google Earth to spot and identify two Chinese nuclear Jin-class submarines. Mr Kristensen was the man who spotted the original Jin earlier this year, though that time he didn’t use Google Earth. Someone went to the yard and took an oblique [...]
- Not quite the “transparency” we had in mind
Spotted on page 91 of the Asian version of this week’s The Economist.
- Forecasting April showers
John Robb and Bill Lind are thinking the same thing on a possible April strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Lind says :
... starting about two weeks ago, the Russians have pulled out the hundreds of people they had working on Iran’s first nuclear power plant, now nearing completion. ... If in fact Washington plans to [...]
- Sausage trader caught with weapons grade uranium
That has got to be the best headline of the day, although the story is terrifying.
‘Sausage trader’ caught selling weapons grade uranium
MOSCOW - An international nuclear smuggling scandal erupted yesterday after it was revealed that a Russian man has been caught selling weapons-grade uranium on the open market that could easily be used in a [...]
- 5 minutes to midnight!
The Doomsday Clock has been moved to 5 minutes to midnight. Apparently the Doomsday Clock has been updated to modern times and reflects not only the threat of nuclear terrorism, but also gloabl warming. Wasn’t life during the Cold War a much simpler time?
By the way, the closest the DC has ever been to midnight [...]
- The nuclear terrorism question
Last month’s Atlantic featured an interesting piece that reminded me of my first class at Royal Military College entitled: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb. William Langewiesche flies the reader from one far flung locale to another, weighing the probability of successfully acquiring HEU and constructing a crude nuclear weapon against the impediments put in [...]
