It has been a busy day or so on the nuclear front:
— An Iran nuclear scientist was assassinated Wednesday morning in Tehran.
— The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock warning of nuclear war to 11:56 …
Foreign Policy
Happy 10th Birthday, Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay remains the persistent headache that pretty much all Americans would like to go away. Wednesday marks its 10th birthday as home to alleged terrorists scooped up by the U.S. following the 9/11 terror …
Girth of a Nation
North Korean television has released a 50-minute video honoring the Sunday birthday of Kim Jong Un, the country’s new leader. U.S. intelligence analysts are poring over it, looking for clues into what new direction, if any, the …
“Prime Minister Maliki, May I?”
For nearly a decade, the U.S. Air Force flew anywhere over Iraq, whenever it pleased. For the decade before that – as it patrolled the northern and southern no-fly zones, over the top and bottom third of Saddam Hussein’s
…
How America Painted Itself Into A Corner on North Korean Succession
Great Washington Post piece on China’s intense desire for stability on Korean peninsula, thus the clear backing of the “Great Successor” Kim Jong Eun. Wrap-up paragraph says it all:
The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula
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More Evidence of the Glorious Do-Loop That Is the East Asian Arms Race
WSJ lead story about Chinese developing a ballistic missile designed to fragment – like a cluster bomb – on the deck of a U.S. carrier and wipe out all aircraft and personnel. Naturally, it’s unbelievably provocative to us, …
The “Strategic Pivot” to Asia Now Committed, Pentagon Can Float Allegedly Deep Cuts
Nice piece in the New York Times on Tuesday, previewing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s much-anticipated announcement of almost a half-trillion in defense cuts over the next decade.As Mark Thompson just noted, not a whole lot …
Gorbachev On “A New Arms Race”
It is hard now to recall the electricity that surged through Washington, D.C., when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev first visited late in 1987, and jumped out of his limousine right in front of Time’s Washington bureau. Reported …
The Pentagon’s New Year’s Resolutions
You make them, I make them, we all make them…but few of us keep them. In keeping with the seasonal delusion, let’s imagine our favorite world’s biggest office building is a sensate creature, and suffered shortcomings and …
(U.S.) Blood For (Chinese) Oil
The U.S. has spent a decade, $500 billion and 1,863 lives trying to square away Afghanistan. Yet China – which has done nothing in the past 10 years to bring stability to that troubled land – has just become the first foreign …
General Newt
Former – and missed! — colleague Karen Tumulty takes a look at GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s military bonafides in Tuesday’s Washington Post. Just not sure getting Doug Feith — the No. 3 official at the …
Lost & Found Department: Iraq
Beating the War Drums in Versailles on the Potomac
On 12 December, I described a concatenation of warmongering pressures that were shaping the popular psyche in favor of bombing Iran. Now, in a 21 December essay, Steven Walt describes a further escalation of these pressures — …