Senator Corker and the CTBT
Senator Bob Corker, the Republican Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has taken issue with the Obama Administration’s decision to co-sponsor a UN Security Council Resolution and a companion P-5 statement reaffirming national moratoria against nuclear testing. This non-legally binding initiative would also urge the Treaty’s entry into force, now delayed for two decades, as […]
Donald Trump’s Challenge to Nuclear Orthodoxy
The belief system in nuclear deterrence makes the most sense at the most elementary level: nuclear weapons deter use by an adversary for fear of retaliation in kind. Deterrence therefore requires survivable nuclear capabilities. It doesn’t take much by way of force structure to convey the threat that leaves something to chance, which is the […]
The Lesson of Nagasaki
Hiroshima gets all the attention, but Nagasaki teaches the more important lesson. The need to destroy Hiroshima will be forever debated, but the counterarguments were unpersuasive to President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. A world war had taken the lives of tens of millions. Noncombatants were not spared. When a war-ending weapon […]
Not Just Yet for No First Use
The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. Allies who believe otherwise are attached to a fiction and a psychological crutch. But these allies have been badly spooked, first by Vladimir Putin and now by Donald Trump. Despite Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Russian salami-slicing elsewhere around its periphery, I […]
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Partners with the Stimson Center on the UNSCR 1540 International Student Essay Contest
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is excited to partner with the Stimson Center on the UNSCR 1540 International Student Essay Contest. The Stimson Center, which launched the contest in April, is looking for innovative ideas from students around the globe to prevent the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons. To read the full press […]
Not Just Yet for No First Use
By Michael Krepon: The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. Allies who believe otherwise are attached to a fiction and a psychological crutch. But these allies have been badly spooked, first by Vladimir Putin and now by Donald Trump. Despite Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Russian salami-slicing elsewhere around […]
Congressional Hearings as Inquisitions
During the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy convened hearings to discover Soviet moles in Hollywood, the State Department and the U.S. Army. The Army-McCarthy Hearings led to his downfall. Abusive practices by Committee and Subcommittee chairmen (no women) were reined in. Occasionally, hearings even became vehicles for serious and sustained investigations. Senator J. William Fulbright of […]
Arms Control Wonk Podcast: MIRVs!
Jeffrey Lewis hosted Stimson Co-Founder Michael Krepon on the Arms Control Wonk podcast to discuss The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age, a recent Stimson publication on the U.S.-Soviet experience with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) during the Cold War and the second coming of MIRVs in Asia today. […]