March 5, 2020 9:30 AM EDT
It seems this question is put to internet search engines with surprising frequency.
The answer is yes, and the people living there have a message for the curious: you don’t want to suffer what we suffered. Save yourselves before it’s too late. Read More
March 2, 2020 4:00 PM EDT
Last year, I spent a couple of hours at a park in Cambridge, Mass asking passers-by who they thought was involved and had the authority to launch US nuclear weapons. Not surprisingly, most people incorrectly assumed that “Congress,” the “military,” the “Joint Chiefs of Staff” or “the experts” had some say. And when they learned that under current policy, the US president has sole decision-making authority over nuclear weapons their responses included “spooky,” “worried” and “not good.” Not good, indeed.
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February 11, 2020 11:32 AM EDT
Foreign policy is not a priority for most Americans. Health care and climate change are more important. This may be why progressives discuss specific policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal but speak in far less detail about how they would reform the way the United States relates to the world.
February 5, 2020 8:39 AM EDT
New START mandates an intensive monitoring and verification regime that provides the U.S. and Russia with vital transparency into each other’s nuclear arsenals. Photo: Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories.
One year from today, on February 5, 2021, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is scheduled to expire, leaving the United States and Russia without a single bilateral nuclear arms control agreement for the first time in nearly 50 years. This would mean the end of constraints on either country’s nuclear arsenal which, especially when combined with worsening relations between the two, could be a recipe for a new nuclear arms race. It will also end the intrusive verification measures that have provided both countries with substantial confidence in their assessments of each other’s arsenals over the past several decades.
February 3, 2020 11:56 AM EDT
Recent reports would have you believe that hypersonic weapons—an emerging class of low-altitude, high-speed missiles—are poised to revolutionize modern military strategy. A recent op-ed in the New York Times characterized these “game-changing” missiles as the “apotheosis” of airborne weaponry, capable of feats that “no missile can currently achieve.” This fantastical depiction, which underpins a race among the major military powers to develop these weapons, is part of a long pattern of media hype.
But are these weapons really so revolutionary? Will they upend the global security environment? And does their arrival make conflict between United States, Russia, and China inevitable?
