Patriotism, it’s said, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. A worthy example now making its way into the national spotlight is the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), which is making strained national security arguments on Capitol Hill to pave the way for a $2 billion federal bailout. If…
At first blush, our government’s approach to head off Iranian nuclear weapons with tighter sanctions and military threats seems totally at odds with its continued effort to negotiate a disarmament deal with Pyongyang. Yet, in one key respect, both of these approaches and a broad swath of bipartisan…
In Western Europe, Fukushima’s power reactor disaster has produced a loud round of anti-nuclear power reactions. Germany says it will phase out atomic power by 2022, and the Swiss insist they will shutter their reactor fleet by 2034. Earlier this month, the Italian public rebuked Prime Minister…
While nuclear experts in Washington are wringing their hands over the fate of the New START agreement in the U.S. Senate, a formal U.S.-Russian civilian nuclear cooperative agreement came into force today with barely a whisper of public debate. In time, though, this deal which the White House…
In the old TV commercials for the E.F. Hutton brokerage firm, conversations would come to a screeching halt when someone dropped the Hutton name, and everyone would lean in to hear what E.F. Hutton was advising. The tagline: "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen." The Washington version of this is…
PERHAPS THE ONLY THING more disappointing than Moscow's shipment this week of lightly enriched uranium to fuel the power reactor at Bushehr in Iran was President Bush's endorsement of it. "If the Russians are willing to do that [supply the uranium], which I support, then the Iranians do not need to…
NOW THAT NORTH KOREA has called America's diplomatic bluff by testing a nuclear device, and the wrangling has begun over how best to sanction Pyongyang, the question arises of what's in store for Iran. Will we bomb? Some insiders say yes, that President Bush has already decided that if Iran fails…
SOME PEOPLE just can't take yes for an answer. A year ago, the White House proposed giving India civilian nuclear help in hopes of improving relations with New Delhi. That India had used earlier U.S. nuclear assistance to test a bomb in 1974 and then proceeded to test more weapons in 1998 was…
LAST WEEK, PRESIDENT BUSH played a card that President Clinton and, before him, President Carter, had only toyed with: guaranteeing India, a nuclear weapons state that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), full access to civilian nuclear energy goods. The president did this in…
WHEN YOU ARE UP AGAINST the most worrisome modern security threat there is--the spread of nuclear weapons--history becomes more than an academic pastime. Get it right and you avoid the errors of the past. Get it wrong and the worst of the past is almost certain to rhyme into the future.
AS THE UNITED STATES and its allies give Tehran its fifth chance in nearly two years to suspend activities that could bring it within weeks of having enough enriched uranium for a large arsenal, the question arises: Isn't there a better way to prevent states from getting nuclear weapons? The answer…
BOTH ZEALOUS CRITICS and supporters of President Bush's war against Saddam seem finally to have agreed on one thing--the Central Intelligence Agency goofed. The president's own Iraq weapons sleuth, David Kay, now asserts that our intelligence on Iraq was simply wrong, that Saddam didn't have…
WITHOUT ACTUALLY meaning to do so, the Bush administration has pulled off one of the most remarkable nonproliferation victories since the advent of the nuclear age: Libya, a hostile, isolated dictatorship, pledged to give up its support of terrorism and its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. This…
THE UNITED STATES and the key members of the International Atomic Energy Agency deserve high praise for demanding that Iran rectify its nuclear naughtiness. Together with the agency's February report to the U.N. Security Council on North Korea's violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the…
THE UNITED STATES has only begun to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. This is the core message of George W. Bush's May 31 speech in Krakow, where he announced his intent to work with like-minded states to interdict nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to carry…
Code Name Kindred Spirit Inside the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal by Notra Trulock Encounter, 385 pp., $26.95 NOTRA TRULOCK'S BOOK "Code Name Kindred Spirit: Inside the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal" is unique among histories of U.S. intelligence failures. It doesn't just describe what went…
FIRST, IRAQ VIOLATED ITS PLEDGE not to try to acquire nuclear weapons. Then North Korea did the same. Who's next? Bank on a slew of others, including a fair number of America's friends.
WITH NORTH KOREA'S announcement Friday that it is withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Pyongyang's nuclear defiance is no longer just an American or Korean problem. It is a world problem. It requires an international rejoinder, one that treats Pyongyang as a violator--not of…
THIS WEEK, after pulling off one of the most remarkable interdictions in naval history and succeeding for the first time in making nonproliferation something more than a feel-good slogan, the Bush administration concluded that it had made a mistake. Announcing December 10 that the Spanish Navy with…
AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ponders how to respond to North Korea's defiant admission of having violated every nuclear nonproliferation pledge it ever made, it's worth recounting how we got into this mess. Certainly, Pyongyang--currently armed with one or more nuclear bombs and a set of uranium and…
AFTER 9/11, keeping plutonium out of the hands of the world's Saddams and bin Ladens (who, with only 10 pounds of this reactor-generated stuff, could flatten lower Manhattan) would seem to be an urgent task. Tell that to the federal bureaucrats in charge of plutonium disposal. The programs they…
AT THE MOSCOW news conference following his summit meeting with President Bush, Vladimir Putin highlighted a disturbing inconsistency in U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy: How, the Russian president complained, could America keep objecting to Moscow's completing two nuclear power reactors for…
FOR NEARLY A YEAR NOW, THE MEDIA have detailed how China has been stealing America's strategic technology. Last week, though, the New York Times dropped a bombshell. Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist already suspected of handing China information about a U.S. nuclear warhead…
Presidential spokesman Mike McCurry last week justified the Clinton administration policy that allowed the transfer of satellite technology to the Chinese military with the hoary "they started it" defense. "This administration," said McCurry, "has pursued the exact same policy pursued by the Bush…
PERHAPS THE MOST SERIOUS ARGUMENT the Clinton administration makes in favor of its "engagement" policy towards China is a strategic one: Beijing's military capability requires it. We want to get China to stop selling strategic-weapons technology, and so we must offer Beijing some carrots --…