Even as the United States works with allies to isolate Russia diplomatically and deter further Russian aggression, the Obama administration hopes to maintain business as usual in efforts to restrain threats from nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Russia is the sole U.S. peer in the strategic nuclear arena and an important global supplier of nuclear technology and advanced conventional weapons. Russian cooperation will therefore be a prerequisite for almost any meaningful progress in tackling nuclear and WMD proliferation in Iran and elsewhere. In an email to Trend Lines, a State Department spokesman welcomed a recent statement from […]

President Barack Obama’s whirlwind visit to Europe began yesterday in The Hague against the looming shadow of the Ukraine crisis. While Obama will seek to rally Western resistance to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and affirm the administration’s strong commitment to European security, the trip was initially scheduled to coincide with the third Nuclear Security Summit, which focuses on preventing nuclear terrorism. The Nuclear Security Summits look to be one of the Obama administration’s major international security legacies. These recurring meetings of senior national leaders have sustained global attention on an issue that previously had preoccupied mostly technical experts, ad hoc […]

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On two occasions in a period of less than a week over late February and early March, North Korea fired short-range missiles into the sea off its eastern coast. In an email interview, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer for Allsource Analysis Inc. and publisher and editor of KPA Journal, explained the state of North Korea’s missile arsenal. WPR: What is the extent of North Korea’s current missile arsenal and capabilities, in terms of numbers, range and accuracy, and what have been the main sources of its technologies? Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr.: Providing a detailed account of North Korea’s […]

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In the past few years, India has been strengthening its civil nuclear cooperation with countries bordering China. This trend, when taken together with India’s interest in marketing surface-to-surface missiles in Asia, clearly signals a shift in New Delhi’s policy stance. China’s latest wave of nuclear exceptionalism toward Pakistan seems to be pushing India to abandon its traditional self-imposed limits on trade in strategic technology, with the result that India is now willing to broaden strategic technology options for countries on China’s periphery in order to secure Indian geoeconomic interests. New Delhi’s approach is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1980s, when […]