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 . . .
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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 . . .
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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 . . .
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By Matt Fay, on January 11th, 2012
It’s hard to say a lot about the new strategic guidance released by the Pentagon on Thursday since the document (pdf), titled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” doesn’t say all that much. A more detailed assessment may be possible when the defense budget is released in February. It’s noteworthy that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted that the new defense plan did not factor in the $500 billion is cuts over the next decade mandated by the supercommittee’s failure to reach a deal late last year. According to Panetta, if a compromise isn’t reached and . . .
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By Matt Fay, on November 4th, 2011
A recent foray in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens touches on an interesting subject but is so needlessly alarmist it makes one long for the days of his ruminations on Lady Gaga and American’s standing in the Middle East. The main idea of his most recent offering is that current estimates of China’s nuclear arsenal are far too low, and that it is quite possible that Beijing has far more nuclear weapons than anyone previously believed. Unfortunately for Stephens, past history and basic nuclear strategy make it unlikely that the Chinese nuclear primacy he fears will come to fruition . . .
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By Matt Fay, on September 1st, 2011
Everybody’s favorite former ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, is back with his second op-ed on nuclear policy in as many weeks (h/t Greg Scoblete). This time, writing in the Washington Times, Ambassador Bolton frets that the Obama administration’s commitment to New START and the negative security guarantees made in the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review are going to make American allies uneasy—despite all available evidence suggesting that they are not.
Apparently Ambassador Bolton is worried that reductions in America’s strategic nuclear arsenal and declarations in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review that forgo nuclear retaliation against chemical and . . .
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By Matt Fay, on August 11th, 2011
Adam Lowther’s recent piece over at The National Interest discussing how lower defense budgets brought on by America’s current fiscal crisis demand an increase in the number of strategic nuclear weapons is, unfortunately, something of a mess. To make his case Lowther, a political scientist at Arkansas Tech, cites the “New Look” policy adopted by President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration at a time when budget constraints were being imposed on the Pentagon. The New Look called for an emphasis on building strategic nuclear weapons and a doctrine of massive retaliation to deter potential Soviet aggression, therefore making conventional war less likely . . .
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By Matt Fay, on May 25th, 2011
Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan recently commented on what he considers the “foolish” notion that a preventive military strike should be made on Iran’s nuclear program before it could produce weapons-grade uranium. Jeffrey Goldberg quotes one Israeli official who says, “’Dagan thinks [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak is crazy enough to strike Iran.” Goldberg, who notes that any decision to strike Iran would ultimately rest with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, interpreted Dagan’s statement to mean that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities may be imminent. That may or not be the case, but the question really is whether . . .
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