My American Spectator colleague Jeffrey Lord’s interesting article recalling his youthful experiences on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated brought back some of my own vague memories (I was only a few months past my fourth birthday on…
“Let me share with you a vision of the future,” said President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983, in an address to the nation on defense and national security. “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that…
George Washington’s first message to Congress contained the words, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Though he didn’t mention the word, he was speaking of the concept of deterrence. Deterrence is…
As CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Obama administration, Ivo Daalder is a member in good standing of the foreign policy establishment. In a recent piece on the Foreign Affairs…
“With a nuke-nuke here and a nuke-nuke there, here a nuke, there a nuke, everywhere a nuke-nuke….” I know, I know — I shouldn’t use a nursery rhyme in commenting on something as serious as nuclear proliferation. After all, one…
At first blush it almost seems rational: placing U.S. nuclear weapons in Poland, a NATO member that spends nearly five percent of its GDP on defense would enhance deterrence against a potential Russian attack. And Polish President Andrzej Duda requested…
Having spent much of my government career in the nuclear weapons community, I’ve watched with fascination as Donald Trump has called for the development and deployment of what he refers to as an “Iron Dome” missile defense shield to protect…
The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, described in news reports as “a Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The organization received the award for its “activism…
The publication of a new biography of Paul Nitze, who served in national security posts in Democrat and Republican administrations between 1940 and 1989, is a good moment to reflect on the need for knowledgeable, informed, and courageous experts to…
