Special book release luncheon co-sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment's Russia/Eurasia Program and Non-Proliferation Project.
Bad weather twice postponed the intercept test scheduled for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, previously known as National Missile Defense. Weather plays a much greater role than most realize in the success of these demonstrations. The official reason for cancellation is that the poor weather at Vandenburg Air Force Base "did not meet range safety requirements." High winds at the test site may have been enough to force a postponement, but less than ideal weather could mean that the interceptors cannot intercept at all.
President Bush said in May that he wanted to build a new "strategic framework" for nuclear relations between the United States and Russia. Six months later, he has taken a significant step in that direction with the announcement Tuesday of intentions to reduce U.S. nuclear forces and of a hoped-for compromise on missile defense to be worked out at Crawford, Texas, in days to come.
Homeowners all across America are renegotiating their mortgages to lock in historically low interest rates. President Bush should do the same this week with nuclear weapons. He and President Vladimir Putin should take advantage of historically good relations to lock in deep reductions to both nations’ nuclear arsenals.
Rose Gottemoeller discusses the nuclear and radiological threats, how they differ, and what the level of concern should be about them.
Carnegie experts provide a briefing to lay out key agenda items for the Bush-Putin Summit. Read the transcript or listen to audio.
There is significant evidence that both proliferating states and terrorist groups are actively seeking to acquire stolen fissile material for nuclear weapons. Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, among others, have all been reported to be seeking to acquire such material, as have the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult in Japan, and Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaida.
On Tuesday President George W. Bush acknowledged that the al Qaeda network terrorist network has been attempting to acquire nuclear materials for use in terrorist plots against the West. Construction of a nuclear device from the ground-up, however, is not an easy task. The following excerpt from Tracking Nuclear Proliferation, A Guide in Maps and Charts 1998 provides insight into the level of expertise and technological sophistication that are required to build a nuclear weapon.