A couple of articles in the French language press (one this weekend in Le Monde, the other today in Le Figaro) indicate that, contrary to what I’d expected, Russia is in fact annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the installment plan. Apparently most of the political leaders installed in the two provinces are Russian (the new South Ossetian prime minister is a product of the Russian security forces), a rail bridge that linked the Abkhazia’s ethnically Georgian populaiton to Georgia has been blown up, and negotiations are under way for pemanent military bases. (I imagine that bargaining will be less [...]
Last week, the U.S. government completed one of the largest nuclear recovery operations in history when it helped relocate 341 pounds (154.5 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium — enough to construct six nuclear weapons — from a Soviet-era nuclear research reactor in Hungary to a more secure storage site in Russia. The operation was led by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and involved the cooperation of Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Euratom Supply Agency. While lauding the Russian and American governments (.pdf) “for [...]
I just got finished reading David Sanger’s NY Times article comparing the foreign policy positions of the two presidential candidates. Like David Shorr at Democracy Arsenal, I agree that it’s “probably the best stand-in we’ll get for the foreign policy debate that might’ve been,” and an illustration of how the much-derided written press can often confront candidates’ position more effectively than the presidential debate format, which veers towards the theatrical for obvious reasons. Like Shorr, too, I agree that John McCain’s late reversal on the acceptability of an NPT-compliant uranium enrichment program in Iran is probably closer to my own [...]
