Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed Congress on Friday, September 21 that the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq‘s (MEK) will be removed from the U.S. foreign terrorist organization list. Many worry that this decision, announced just days before her October 1st deadline to make a verdict, will exacerbate already tense relations with the government of Iran.
Prague, Revisited
Written by: Kingston Reif Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on September 17, 2012 Article summary below; read the full text online. Few national security issues are as important to President Barack Obama as reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Obama devoted his first major foreign policy speech as president to the […]
There’s a Reason Mitt Romney Doesn’t Want to Talk About National Security
Another post over at the Doctrine blog today, this time taking a look at President Obama’s national security record.
Cold comfort – And a few more thoughts on extended deterrence
The problem with relying on tactical nuclear weapons as tools of extended deterrence is that they are archaic arms that serve no demonstrable military purpose, and their growing financial and opportunity costs outweigh any assurance benefit. In the event of a nuclear attack against an ally, the presence of these weapons on their territory will not increase the likelihood of a US nuclear response. In so far as nuclear weapons play a role in assuring allies, US strategic nuclear forces do the heavy-lifting.
The Facts According to Bill Gertz
Take, for example, his apparent scoop last week that a Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks. Two days after Gertz broke the story, Pentagon spokeswoman Wendy Snyder stated: “I don’t know what that information was based on, but it was not correct.” Perhaps the Pentagon is wrong, but that sounds like a categorical denial to me.
