By Matt Fay, on November 23rd, 2012
Earlier this week, Max Boot responded to my post from Sunday night on the differences between Israel’s Iron Dome and U.S. missile defense efforts. Unfortunately Mr. Boot obscures the issue even further in his response than he did in his initial post. The new post misrepresents the history of missile defense, fails to properly address the errors in his initial post, continues to ignore the conceptual differences between Iron Dome and national missile defense, and erects a strawman argument as to the motives of those opposed to his views. Needless to say, I am less than impressed.
First things . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on October 15th, 2012
Blogging has been slightly slower than my usual prolific pace lately due mostly to the soul crushing experience that is the first year of grad school the large amount of reading one encounters in their first year of graduate study. While I try to get caught up I thought I would indulge in some shameless self-promotion. In the latest edition of Cato Journal, a public policy journal published by the Cato Institute, I have a review* of Philip Taubman’s book The Partnership: Five Former Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.
Taubman attempts to piggyback off the . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on August 7th, 2012
A former classmate of mine, Mira Rapp-Hooper, recently had an excellent post at The Diplomat laying out the case for why Japan is unlikely to pursue its own nuclear deterrent. Mira is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and her thoughts on matters of nuclear proliferation are always worth reading. That being said, a discussion of whether this country or that will go nuclear at some point always raises a simple question in my mind: should the United States really care?
This question is commonly answered in the affirmative, as the general assumption seems to be that . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on April 30th, 2012
Following a post from a few months back, I was pointed in the direction of an intriguing study by Duke University’s Hal Brands and David Palkki of the National Defense University that is germane to the current debates over a potential Iranian nuclear weapons program and its implications for Israeli security (h/t Zach Novetsky). “Saddam, Israel, and the Bomb: Nuclear Alarmism Justified?”, published last summer in International Security, is the result of countless hours pouring over documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The implications of Brands and Palkki’s findings for Israeli security are alarming but . . .
→ read more
By Harrison Moar, on February 24th, 2012
Pundits, academics, and the mainstream media have turned the volume up to eleven on the “Bomb Iran” debate in the past two months. Much of the discussion has been healthy, indeed necessary when discussing matters of nuclear proliferation and war. But much of the reporting and opining has also been reckless fear-mongering (see Glenn Greenwald’s assessment). And most arguments for a preemptive strike are premised on the assertion that the Iranian regime will eventually pursue nuclear weapons, if it is not already.
So it is refreshing to see a few major outlets cutting through the noise and stepping back . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on February 15th, 2012
Many are obviously alarmed over the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. Some of these fears are cartoonish and should be ignored, but there are others that should be given due consideration. One example of the latter is the question of whether or not an Iranian nuclear weapon would raise the likelihood of an accidental nuclear war between the Islamic Republic and Israel. Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg outlined a potential scenario last month in one of his regular columns for Bloomberg View. But the type of “warp speed escalation” to nuclear war that Goldberg invokes is not nearly . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on January 26th, 2012
Numerous essays have been written in recent months taking up positions on whether or not the United States should use military force against Iran in an attempt to forestall its nuclear program. Foreign Affairs offers an excellent debate on the subject that iss highlighted by contending essays from Matthew Kroenig and Colin Kahl, taking the pro- and anti-bombing positions, respectively. Perhaps the silliest offering in this ongoing discussion though was an op-ed in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal by Mark Helprin that is filled with contradictions and paints an exceedingly cartoonish picture of Iran.
Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on January 17th, 2012
Last Monday, the blog for the Weekly Standard offered an argument against President Obama’s nuclear disarmament agenda so filled with factually errors and serial inaccuracies it is amazing the magazine’s editors allowed it to run. The post, by Mark Davis, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush, makes three claims in particular need of challenge: uncritically repeating the flawed findings of a Georgetown University team about the size of China’s nuclear arsenal, misstating the conclusions of the IAEA’s most recent report on Iran, and flat-out lying about President Obama’s stated timeframe for achieving the goal of nuclear disarmament.
The . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on December 15th, 2011
There seems to be one area of agreement between hawks and doves on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program: the veritable certainty of a nuclear proliferation “casacade” in the Middle East whereby Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and others respond to an Iranian nuclear weapon with nuclear programs of their own. Fears of that scenario were understandably raised recently when Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family and former head of Saudi intelligence, explicitly stated that the Kingdom would consider pursuing its own nuclear capability were Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon of its own. Max Boot cited . . .
→ read more
By Matt Fay, on December 1st, 2011
Let it never be said that if there’s an opportunity to make a hackneyed historical analogy that Max Boot will not take it. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Boot, a senior fellow at the Council Foreign Relations, asserts:
Why did the West do so little while the Nazis gathered strength in the 1930s? While the Soviet Union enslaved half of Europe and fomented revolution in China in the late 1940s? And, again, while Al Qaeda gathered strength in the 1990s?… The answer to the riddle—why did the West slumber?—becomes easier to grasp if we think about present-day relations . . .
→ read more
|
|
