According to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il used his visit to China to express his desire to return to the Six-Party Talks. But skepticism abounds. In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported that nameless U.S. officials thought it “notable” that KCNA, the official North Korean news agency, had failed to carry the same message.
So, how carefully have the anonymous officials or Mr. Harlan been reading KCNA?
Has anyone written a great book that covers the complex relationship between religion and the Bomb? Please help me out here. I can’t think of one. The subject is so rich for so many reasons, that whoever writes brilliantly about how religion has shaped the approach/avoidance of nuclear weapons in different societies deserves to become the next Richard Rhodes. Book projects are hereby solicited.
Some of the most informative and provocative reporting on nuclear proliferation and policy to be found these days emerges from the keyboard of the Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon. More’s the pity, then, when he seems to be cutting corners. Tuesday’s article on Jon Byong-ho and Yun Ho-jin — the Dynamic Duo of North Korean missile and nuclear exports — looks like one of those times.
If you are interested in the technical details regarding Iran’s Qiam ballistic missile — or really, in how to estimate the measurements of a ballistic missile from photographs — you really ought to be reading the comments to my post, Schmucker/Schiller on Iran’s Qiam.
It is pretty much the most impressive thing I ever seen in blog comments. You people are amazing.
B61 computer simulation. Image credit: Sandia National Laboratory
Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the Cold War meant that I had a lot of friends whose parents worked at Sandia National Labs (SNL) doing “nuclear bomb things”, or whatever vague description they’d get out of their parents about what was paying the bills. Things are somewhat more transparent these days, of course. For example, without revealing anything classified, the lab and the NNSA regularly provide updates on various LEPs; this year, SNL revealed some specifics regarding their refurbishment work on the B61 mod 7 and 11.
Over the past year or so, the B61 has been a topic of interest for several reasons. For one thing, the B61 was a prominent star in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which mentioned plans for “a full-scope B61 LEP study and follow-on activities”, as well as the intention to make the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter capable of carrying it.
Our friends Robert Schmucker and Markus Schiller send along a short note on Iran’s Qiam missile, concluding that it is a test bed for a new guidance system that will eventually find its way in the Sejil.
A couple of weeks ago I summarized here that Saudi Arabia was moving ahead with plans to do nuclear power and that there were some potential issues.
In July, after having read that some weighty nuclear industry companies were trying to dip their toes into Arabian sands, I talked this over with some people who know their way around Riyadh.
The military cemetery at Nuttuno, thirty miles south of Rome, is serene and immaculately kept. Almost as many GIs are buried there – 7,861 – as at Normandy, painful testimony of how botched the Italian campaign was. I’m named after one of the soldiers buried there, my Uncle Mickey, who died at Anzio.
Gar Alperovitz argues in Atomic Diplomacy (1965) and in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1995) that the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “did not derive from overriding military considerations.” In this view, the use of A-bombs was unnecessary, since Japan was already defeated, for all intents and purposes. Instead, Alperovitz contends, President Truman and Secretary of War Stimson used nuclear weapons to keep the Kremlin in line.
While considerations of post-war geopolitics had to intrude on the thinking of Truman and Stimson, their immediate, primary objective was to end a world war in which U.S. troops had been engaged in brutal combat for three and one-half years.
It was easy to overlook amid the discussion of the Bushehr reactor starting up, but Iran’s military, always busy, announced a new ballistic missile test last week. According to Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, the new Qiam-1 liquid-fueled ballistic missile marks an advance in countermeasures against ballistic missile defenses.
There’s a serious new study by a group of authors in the United States and Russia being published in the coming days that calls for deeper cuts in nuclear weapons—well beyond those envisioned in the New Start treaty pending before the Senate.
The new study is based on extensive computer modeling of a nuclear war, and it suggests strongly that both the United States and Russia could preserve deterrence with fewer warheads and launchers than under New Start. The current treaty calls for 1,550 warheads and 700 active launchers on each side. But the computer modeling showed that further reductions to 1,000 warheads and 500 launchers—or, even lower levels—would not weaken security on either side.
