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(The following op-ed by Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, first appeared in Defense News on March 5, 2007.)
Following the end of U.S. nuclear testing a decade and a half ago, some scientists and policy-makers worried that the reliability of U.S. nuclear warheads could diminish as their plutonium cores age. They claimed it would take a decade or more to see if the nation’s weapon laboratories could maintain the existing stockpile of well-tested but aging weapons without further nuclear blasts.
Such concerns led many senators to withhold their support for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999.
Time has addressed the skeptics’ concerns. For more than a decade, a multibillion-dollar Stockpile Stewardship program has successfully maintained the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal in the absence of testing. As the importance of nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy has diminished, there has been no need to test new types of nukes.
But now, the Bush administration is asking Congress to fund an ambitious effort to build new replacement warheads, which it claims is needed to avoid plutonium aging problems that could reduce weapon reliability. (Read More)
Russia's decision to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty - an important and successful component of the arms control regime - threatens nonproliferation goals. Rather than unilaterally withdrawing, Russia should request exceptions to accomodate its concerns.
In his chapter, "What Should We Expect from India as a Strategic Partner?" Ashley J. Tellis analyzes the historical "sine wave" nature of the U.S.-India relationship and outlines the value and practical consequences of the transforming bilateral relationship.
Russian foreign policy’s modern-day motives are completely dissimilar to those of the recent Soviet and the more distant czarist past. Where-as the empire was predominantly about Eurasian geopolitics and the Soviet Union promoted a global ideological and political project backed up by military power, Russia’s business is Russia itself. Seen from a different angle, Russia’s business is business.
In this discussion, India's Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns share their perspectives on how India and the United States view their interests in the emerging international system.
The United States and Japan have one of the most important relationships in the world, based on shared values, the size of their economies, and their technological sophistication. New cooperation between the U.S. and Japan will benefit not only the two countries but also the whole Asia-Pacific region, possibly providing the building blocks for an Asia-Pacific partnership.
The failure of U.S. policy in Iraq has provided autocratic regimes in the Middle East a reprieve from the pressure to democratize, as long as they position themselves clearly on the side of Washington in its looming confrontation with Iran, Syria, and Shiite Islamists.
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