For approximately 36 hours last month, the U.S. Air Force lost track of half a dozen nuclear weapons. Although Air Force leaders characterize the event as a unique occurrence, the incident will likely encourage opposition to the Bush administration’s Prompt Global Strike plan, which aims give the United States the option of using nuclear and non-nuclear weapons on the same delivery systems. On Aug. 30, the crew of an Air Force B-52H Stratofortress unknowingly carried six nuclear-tipped AGM-129 cruise missiles while flying from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Throughout the three-and-a-half-hour [...]
Last week’s testy public exchange between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush could foreshadow continued security tensions between Washington and Seoul even as the negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program move towards a denouement. Bush and Roh held a one-hour private meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Australia. Afterwards, they conducted a joint media appearance. Both leaders delivered formal statements to reporters outlining their assessment of the situation on the Korean Peninsula. In his subsequent comments, Roh remarked that he had not heard Bush explicitly affirm [...]
At the end of August, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn visited Russia to reinvigorate the pioneering U.S.-funded Comprehensive Threat Reduction Program (CTR) they helped launch a decade-and-a-half ago. The CTR program, widely known as the Nunn-Lugar Program, aims to secure and eliminate the weapons of mass destruction the new Russian Federation inherited from the Soviet Union following the U.S.S.R.’s demise in 1991. On Aug. 30, the two senators visited the chemical weapons destruction facility that the United States and other foreign governments — most notably Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Italy, Norway and Switzerland — are [...]
