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Analysis & Opinions - The Oregonian

The Islamic State has made a big mistake

| July 7, 2016

In the global revulsion at the recent terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the Islamic State and other extremists. FDP Senior Fellow David Ignatius examines the diplomatic relationships needed to create an effective counterterrorism strategy.

Blog Post - Nuclear Security Matters

India and the Nuclear Security Summit

    Author:
  • Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
| Apr. 26, 2016

The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit took place in Washington DC from March 31-April 01, 2016.  Despite the initial apprehension about the summits in certain parts of the world, it has been a useful process.  With more than 50 countries represented from across the world, the summits elevated the level of awareness of nuclear security. Leaders of established nuclear states began to think about nuclear security in a new way, reducing complacency about the risks of terrorism and sabotage.  This thinking took shape in national and multilateral commitments in areas including nuclear security regulation, physical protection of nuclear materials, nuclear forensics, protection against nuclear smuggling, and insider threats and nuclear terrorism.

Blog Post - Nuclear Security Matters

India’s Nuclear Security

    Author:
  • Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
| Jan. 04, 2016

Situated in a difficult neighborhood, New Delhi has laid strong emphasis on both nuclear safety and security for a couple of decades now. Almost three decades of state-sponsored terrorism and insurgencies of varying scale and proportion within India have meant that security of nuclear materials and installations has been a great worry to India’s security and atomic energy establishments. India’s concerns even predate the Western focus on WMD terrorism, which gained prominence only after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.  Unfortunately, India’s excessive caution and secrecy in the nuclear arena has led the world to assume that India does not pay much attention to this issue or that it has inadequate security, which is far from the truth.

News - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

Fresh Ideas for the Future: Symposium on the NPT Nuclear Disarmament, Non-proliferation, and Energy

Apr. 30, 2015

On April 28, the Project on Managing the Atom joined the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, The Netherlands government, and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) in convening nuclear nonproliferation experts from around the world at the United Nations to participate in a Symposium on the 2015 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

This frame grab taken from an August 5, 2007 video message carrying the logo of al-Qaida's production house as-Sahab and provided by IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor monitoring al-Qaida messaging, purports to show Ayman Zawahri.

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Delegitimizing al-Qaida: Defeating an 'Army Whose Men Love Death'

    Authors:
  • Jerry Mark Long
  • Alex S. Wilner
| Summer 2014

Al-Qaida has established a metanarrative that enables it to recruit militants and supporters. The United States and its allies can challenge its ability to do so by delegitimizing the ideological motivations that inform that metanarrative.

Actors dressed as German soldiers take part in the re-enactment of the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg in Szkotowo, Poland, Sunday, July 27, 2014, marking the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I.

(AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Analysis & Opinions - The Atlantic

Just How Likely Is Another World War?

| July 30, 2014

"A century ago this month, Europeans stood on the brink of a war so devastating that it forced historians to create a new category: 'World War.' None of the leaders at the time could imagine the wasteland they would inhabit four years later. By 1918, each had lost what he cherished most: the kaiser dismissed, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which European leaders had been masters of the globe came to a crashing halt."

With lessons learned from WWI, Graham Allison asks, how likely is another world war?

Pakistan's battlefield nuclear weapons are to be used at the India-Pakistan border much earlier in an conflict.

NUKEMAP Image

Journal Article - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Destroying Pakistan to Deter India? The Problem with Pakistan's Battlefield Nukes

| July 2014

At first glance, the main advantage of Pakistan's new battlefield nuclear weapon—known as the Nasr missile—would appear to be its ability to slowdown and stop an armored attack by the Indian Army inside Pakistan, before it reaches vital cities. But deeper examination reveals that deploying this particular weapon on the battlefield against an advancing Indian armored column would cause substantial deaths and injuries to Pakistani citizens, rendering its purpose moot.