Nuclear Issues

The summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended Thursday without any deal. The two sides failed to reach an agreement due to a standoff over U.S. sanctions on the reclusive nation.

"Is this any way for the senior officials of a mature great power to behave? Loose lips sink ships, and loose talk derails effective diplomacy. If there was a purpose behind this statement, then it was lame-brained. And if it was just a petulant bit of verbal payback by a frustrated official, then it's a sign of professional incompetence."

"The nuclear debate in Washington is only about the past, about a notion of this nation as the better of only two options. It's as if the critics are wondering: why must we tinker with everything that made America once spectacular? Endless discussions about whether America is exceptional or not (and whether this president thinks we are or not) are preconditioned on a memory that equates the size of our nuclear arsenal with our own relevance. It is simplicity in its most perverse form. What makes us exceptional is our capacity to adapt to a world that has changed, not holding onto a world dynamic that ended long ago."

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush's decision to award President Vladimir Putin the unique distinction of a weekend in Kennebunkport with two American presidents flummoxed supporters and critics alike. Over the past year, no international leader has been more critical of the president than his Russian guest.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy famously predicted that "by 1970, there may be 10 nuclear powers instead of four and, by 1975, 15 or 20." Today, there are just 8. Why?

"While the US views —  and characterises —  these weapons as defensive, to China and to many other countries the construction of such a system looks more like the development of the Death Star spaceship in the Star Wars film series...."

Anticipate the worst by shoring up reserves for insurance losses.

Research and development activities, known as the "technology base" program, are a vital part of the United States defense program and must be adequately funded.

The fallacy in the Bush administration's appointment of a commission to study intelligence failures is that there is almost never such a thing as a pure intelligence failure. Intelligence failure is usually linked to policy failure.

The recent report on global security released by a high-level UN panel identified seven principal threats, from terrorism and poverty to environmental degradation. Among these, though, the panel gives primacy of place to nuclear Armageddon.