Published 2017 Strategic Demands Editor, Steven Schmidt: It is time to recall my memories of Dan Ellsberg of nearly 50 years ago… From a nondescript building in Santa Monica to a house on the beach in Malibu, from a basketball court in Pacific Palisades to a Parade editor’s tennis court on Sunset Boulevard… My […]
How can Washington and Moscow stop nuclear escalation? Nuclear experts, east and west, are scrambling to obey orders from the top. While academics debate whether there is a ‘new nuclear arms race’ underway (there is), the new nuclear Cold War, nuclear version 2.0, is growing hotter every day
As the international nuclear arms control architecture collapses, the progenitors of nuclear weapons control meet up at their annual DC confab to talk of strategic issues and academically shake their heads witnessing a descent toward a nuclear precipice … Nukes in the new era of proliferation … The 2019 Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference
Artificial Intelligence as a Tool of War … AI Tracks to Target and Bomb … Since launching war on Gaza last October, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and injured over 77,000. Bombing, shelling, missiles, drones have destroyed large sections throughout the narrow enclave and displaced millions who are now facing famine and starvation. […]
A feature news story by the globally distributed Associated Press (AP) service only begins to touch on a deeper story of nuclear proliferation. Strategic Demands takes a few salient lines from the AP update on US nukes and reminds our readers of what we are now calling a “Nuclear Arms Race 3.0”
2024 Multiplying Pits ‘n Triggers Multiplying Pits Mean Multiplying Nukes Read more about the Academy Award winning movie Oppenheimer — the tragic legacy of ‘the Bomb’ StratDem: A Legacy of ‘Perpetual Insecurity’ Those who envisioned, designed and built the Bomb began warning of nuclear dangers and proliferation […]
GreenPolicy360 & Strategic Demands Snapshot of Reviews the Day After Oppenheimer’s Premiere (with a personal memory of a father’s flight over the Trinity site days after ‘the Bomb’ was first tested by Los Alamos scientists) ♦
Is an official end to Authorization for Use of Military Force in sight? It is over 20 years since the beginning of AUMF-enabled war in Afghanistan… which begat the Iraq war, which begat two decades of US war in MidEast / CentralAsia / North Africa and beyond. Today, Congress may begin a new direction
The Doomsday Clock, first unveiled in the late 1940s when atomic scientists who built the first nuclear weapons were having second thoughts, is now closer to a midnight of disaster than ever before. We’ve arrived, humanity has arrived. The clock’s hands of fate display we’re on the brink of paroxysm and unimaginable cataclysm
To look at some 200 nations of the world and ask how democracy’s doing these days is to witness what’s being called ‘backsliding’. Signs of loss in democratic norms are global and the world wide web — the Internet with its social media storms — is pushing breakdowns. Democracy’s ‘backsliding’ & its breakdowns are all-too-real
“We will not cooperate” … “The ICC is dead to us” John Bolton threatens the International Criminal Court. In a tirade against the court, Mr. Bolton says: The ICC is a threat to “American sovereignty and US national security.” “If the court comes after us, Israel or other US allies, we will not sit quietly.” […]
It’s on. After back and forth negotiations, a deadline passes and what is being described as a “trade war” commences. What sort of trade war? The market’s collective judgment so far? Day one, the global markets shrug. We consider the negotiating strategies, risks, costs, and ripple effects. Go…
After the Singapore summit, the commentators, op-ed writers, columnists, analysts, foreign policy experts and seemingly everyone within reach of a keyboard or smartphone all have an opinion. Who are we not to join in with StratDem’s opinion? Consider the alternative to negotiating, “politics by other means”, war and potential catastrophic use of nuclear weapons
Tom Nichols Makes His Case. Strategic Demands’ editor responds… Former US Defense chief, William Perry, weighs in… Negotiating horizon? Time to prep? Two months. Negotiating prep to date? No visible prep. Korean Ambassador? No US Ambassador. Nuclear weapons experts? Arms Control team? Questionable at best. Winging it? Admittedly. Other options? War. Nuclear war. Dead-Hand Disaster.
‘On Nuclear Weapons’… ‘The U.S. is now spending annually, in constant dollars, more than three times what the US did for comparable activities during the Cold War.’ (2022/LASG) 2024 WASHINGTON – MARCH 11, 2024 The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) released its portion of President Biden’s Fiscal Year […]
Last week we wrote of President Obama and his National Security counsel as they prepared to leave office and leave behind the power of the White House to shape security policy. This week we continue on the theme of the president’s legacy and strategic nuclear risks by again considering My Journey at the Nuclear Brink […]
A decade ago your editor organized a policy conference in Washington DC with a group of national security experts that ranged from a former NSC senior staffer (and Kissinger aide who resigned in protest of the Cambodia invasion) Roger Morris to current National Security Advisor Susan Rice. The 2006 conference was inauspiciously called “Surviving Victory”
