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Published Op-eds
May 2, 2018
This op-ed originally appeared in The Iran Primer of the United States Institute for Peace.
For decades, the international community has grappled with the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation and, in particular, the risk that the Islamic Republic of Iran might seek the capability to design and produce nuclear weapons.
For more than a decade following the 2003 revelation that Iran had surreptitiously built a uranium conversion facility and an enrichment plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the world’s major powers have expended enormous effort and political…
October 12, 2017
This post originally appeared in War on the Rocks.
If you thought “repeal and replace,” or perhaps, “repeal and not replace,” was only a strategy for the botched Obamacare repeal effort, you’d be wrong. It seems to also describe the game plan of President Donald Trump and Republican hawks in Congress when it comes to the agreements and norms that underlie the global nonproliferation regime.
The Trump administration and Congress face critical decisions over the next several months that could have bigly consequences for the international nuclear order. These include whether to continue…
September 26, 2017
This op-ed originally appeared in Fortune.
The nuclear danger posed by North Korea is not new. For more than a decade, the Kim regime has possessed nuclear weapons and has been steadily pursuing the capability to develop compact warheads and longer-range missile systems.
But since the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, a bad situation has become far worse. North Korea has accelerated its missile testing and Trump has vowed a military attack against North Korea if it threatens the U.S. or its allies.
The risk of conflict through miscalculation by either side is now as severe as the…
September 20, 2017
This op-ed originally appeared on InkStickMedia.com
As President Donald Trump threatened North Korea last month with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” over 50,000 gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to recall that the world has in fact seen such horrific acts. Among them were survivors of the “fire and fury” that consumed the two cities 72 years earlier.
The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, called hibakusha in Japanese, were small children at the time, octogenarians today. They are a living challenge to Trump’s bombastic remarks; many have…
August 18, 2017
This op-ed originally appeared in The Washington Post.As U.S.-Russia relations continue to sour, President Trump has taken to Twitter to blame Congress for the continuing deterioration.Trump’s finger-pointing may not pass the laugh test, but the fact that Congress is not to blame for our troubles with Moscow does not mean that it can’t make matters worse. And when it comes to nuclear weapons, Congress appears determined to do just that.Republicans have urged the Pentagon to begin developing a new, potentially nuclear missile prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.…
July 6, 2017
This op-ed originally appeared in Defense One.
If the treaty is allowed to disappear, so will the Pentagon’s best tools for divining facts about the Russian nuclear arsenal.
President Trump apparently has “no specific agenda” for his first in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, slated to occur this week on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany. So we’d like to suggest one: stabilizing the increasingly troubled relationship between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, beginning by extending the landmark New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New…
June 28, 2017
This op-ed originally appeared in Defense One.
Will Trump follow the Bush playbook and start a war with Iran?
The ingredients are in place for the United States to repeat a scenario that has cost us dearly in the past: the misuse of intelligence to muster public support for an unwise war. Fifteen years ago, Bush administration officials led the nation to invade Iraq based on their own political agenda more than facts. This time the adversary would be Iran, the target of unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration.
Donald Trump’s presidency has quickly become one of the most deeply…
May 30, 2017
This post originally appeared in War on the Rocks.
There is no more urgent threat to the global nuclear nonproliferation order than North Korea’s accelerating and unconstrained nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang is estimated to possess enough nuclear explosive material for at least 10 nuclear warheads, and in all likelihood already has the capability to deliver some of these weapons on its arsenal of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. By 2020, some experts believe Pyongyang may have enough fissile material for 100 warheads.
With more nuclear tests, North Korea can…
May 30, 2017
This article originally appeared in LobeLog.
There has been a blizzard of commentaries in recent months on what U.S. policy should be in the face of North Korea’s defiant efforts to develop nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. It is the habit of U.S. government officials to solemnly warn that “all options are on the table” for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons, including a “preventive” first strike, which would disarm as much of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities as possible. Yet there is almost complete silence on the illegality and immorality of any such attack and on how…
April 13, 2017
This article originally appeared on the website Left Foot Forward.
Today, US and Russian nuclear stockpiles are down from their Cold War peaks, but the global nuclear threat remains far too high.
The US and Russia are estimated to have 4,018 and 4,500 warheads stockpiled and assigned for military use. Under the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), each is limited to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons on as many as 700 nuclear delivery vehicles until 2021. If these weapons were used even in a ‘limited’ way, the result would be catastrophic.
Even before the arrival of…