Nuclear Strategy & Nonproliferation Initiative

Within Washington, a consensus seems to have emerged that the Obama administration will have to wait for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to die before re-engaging with Pyongyang.

It worked so well with Fidel Castro.

Since last fall, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has been stumping for the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program, which would develop new nuclear warheads to swap into the U.S. arsenal. In a sit-down with Wall Street Journal editors last November, Chilton held aloft a prop to make his case: "I remember what these things were for. I bet you don't. It's a vacuum tube. My father used to take these out of the television… more

The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) as envisioned by the Bush administration is effectively dead. This past fall, for the second year in a row, the Democratic Congress zeroed out funding for the RRW program despite Bush administration claims that extending the life of the current warhead types in the U.S. nuclear stockpile would, at some distant point in the future, lead to a sharp uptick in aging-related defects.

The George Bush administration's decision to open direct contacts with Iran is to be welcomed, but precisely because it marks such a break with previous U.S. policy, it also carries a great danger.

This is that hard-liners in the American and Israeli governments will treat this Western proposal as a last chance for the Iranians, to be followed by an attack if Tehran fails to accept it.

Meanwhile, it is already clear that much of the Iranian establishment interprets the latest Western conditions not as a final red line, but… more

Nuclear deterrence is a rather subjective concept: How many weapons are enough to ensure deterrence? How difficult is it to achieve and maintain deterrence? How important are the technical details of a country’s nuclear forces, such as the size, configuration, and readiness, to the goal of maintaining deterrence? The answers to these questions vary across recent history and across geographic areas.

One view, I would say the dominant view in U.S. defense planning, is that deterrence can be achieved only through… more