Nuclear Issues

Nicholas Burns recounts one of the most important events in American history—the beginning of the end of the Cold War, 20 years ago this week—and pays tribute to President George H.W. Bush's notable foreign policy achievements during his presidency. As the Republican primaries begin, Burns encourages voters to look critically at the foreign policy credibility of their candidates and who is best prepared to lead us through the thickets of the most complex foreign policy landscape we have ever encountered.

Vipin Narang, a research fellow with International Security Program and Project on Managing the Atom, discusses nuclear security and terrorism.

If terrorists detonated a nuclear weapon in Charleston, how many people would die? How many devastated survivors would need hospital beds? And in what ways is the country prepared or unprepared?

It has been over a month since Platon Lebedev, a key figure in Russia's most valuable company and biggest oil producer Yukos, was abruptly and publicly arrested. And while the initial shock has worn off, the implications of what is seen by most as a Kremlin attack on one of Russia's most successful oligarchs remain serious

Distant as it is, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 still offeres the best lens available through which to examine the possibilities of nuclear confrontation, problems of crisis management and opportunities for crisis prevention. It remains the only occasion in the postwar era when the United States and the Soviet Union stood "eyeball to eyeball" contemplating actions that could have led directly to nuclear war. Dino A. Brugioni has now made an important contribution to the growing number of books on the crisis. His is the first account of this event as seen through the eyes of the intelligence officer. He has made admirable use of his own personal experience (he was the supervisor of aerial reconnaissance photographs during the crisis), as well as the historian's craft (he is also the author of a book on the Civil War), to retell this story with special intention to the role played by intelligence.