by Kingston Reif On May 16 the House approved the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4310) by a vote of 299-120. The bill provides $554 billion for national defense (function 050). This is an increase of approximately $4 billion above the President’s request and $8 billion above the Budget Control Act’s FY 2013 […]
North Korea: Nuclear Self-Restraint… For Now… And Conditional
Kim Jong-un’s finger may be on the nuclear button, but is he politically ready to press it?
HASC Bill Shows GOP Stuck in Cold War; Reduce SSBN-X, Nukes
by Robert G. Gard and Kingston Reif Originally published in AOL Defense on May 21, 2012. Article summary below; read the full text online. There is broad bipartisan agreement that few national security issues are as critical as how to deal with America’s crippling debt. This means we should spend scarce dollars on the weapons we […]
“The Politics of Reduction”
In my May Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column I explore the history of post-Cold War GOP efforts to constrain Democratic presidents from making reductions to the size of the US nuclear arsenal and how such efforts harm US national security.
House Armed Services Committee Gone Wild — Again
Yesterday the House Armed Services Committee marked up the Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. Head over to the mothership for our initial summary. If you thought last year’s version of the bill was bad, this year’s iteration includes a number of proposed funding proposals and policy provisions on nuclear weapons and missile defense that are even more extreme.
Click here, here, and here for our earlier previews of the bill.