Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal by Kingston Reif The Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editor by the Center’s Kingston Reif, where he assures that, despite Russian violations of arms control treaties, the pursuit of further treaties and arms reductions is well worth the effort.
Senate Appropriators Defy Administration On Nukes
Kingston Reif and I have a new analysis on the Center website of the FY 2015 Senate Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Here is an excerpt:
A new Senate bill released in late July contains a number of small but critically important victories, most notably in the realm of funding nuclear material security and nonproliferation.
As a budget battle between the President and Congress rages on, there is a conspicuous difference in the level of funding requested by the White House versus that approved by Senate Appropriators for programs that make us safer from the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism. It is hard to understand why the Obama administration, whose stated priorities make nuclear nonproliferation a top priority, has for the past three years cut the budget for these very activities. Luckily, the Senate continues to restore the funding, as evidenced by its recent action. However, in past years the higher Senate funding levels have not survived in the final spending bills passed by Congress.
The contradiction between the President’s words about preventing nuclear terrorism and the dwindling resources he has requested in his budget submissions is concerning because it represents an unsustainable punt to Congress at a time when lawmakers are mandating significant reductions in government spending. Despite the Senate’s best efforts, Congress has not restored funding to sufficient levels in its final spending bills. What’s more, even the Senate’s current prioritization of nonproliferation programs could evaporate if the Senate changes hands next year.
Read the full analysis here
Senate Appropriators Defy Administration on Nukes
by Kingston Reif and Gabrielle Tarini A new Senate bill released at the end of July contains a number of small but critically important victories, most notably in the realm of funding nuclear material security and nonproliferation. As a budget battle between the President and Congress rages on, there is a conspicuous difference in the […]
Why America Doesn’t Need All Its Nukes
by Kingston Reif Earlier this week in RealClearDefense, the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Evan Moore made his case for “why America still needs nukes.” Moore points to the conclusions of the recently released National Defense Panel (NDP) report on defense policy as evidence of the importance of nuclear weapons to U.S. security and the need to […]
Think Progress Story on Iran Quotes Kingston Reif
Experts Challenge Israeli Government’s Position On Final Iran Nuke Deal July 3, 2014 by Ben Armbruster A handful of non-proliferation experts are taking issue with the Israeli position on a final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, specifically, Israeli demands that the deal model the plan that ridded Syria of its chemical weapons (CW) […]
