Susan Rice does not speak very often on nuclear policy, but behind the scenes she played a major role in shaping Barack Obama's nuclear weapons positions in the 2008 campaign.

Her appointment as national security adviser completes the assembly of a team of Cabinet members, including Secretary of Defense...

"For too long, U.S. policy toward Iran has been mostly about tactics and too little about strategy. It's time to play chess not checkers." This finding, from a new report from the prestigious Atlantic Council, comes as nuclear talks with Iran resume this week in Almaty,...

You may not know Alex Wellerstein's work, but Jon Stewart does.

In a recent Daily Show bit, "World War III Update," Jon Stewart showed a news clip describing what a hypothetical North Korean nuclear blast would do. The clips noted that a 15 kiloton blast -- equivalent to 15,000 tons...

The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will stay at five minutes to midnight for the year 2013, say the scientists and experts at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who maintain one of the world's most famous time pieces.

In an open letter to President Obama, the...

The President of the United States sends me a lot of email. Mostly he asks for money. But if the President were to ask me for advice, here is what I would recommend he say when he goes to the United Nations on Tuesday.

You have got to remind these...

Iran is nuclear capable. If Iran's leaders decided they wanted a nuclear bomb, they could build one. They have the material, the technical ability, and likely have a design. They have had these capabilities for at least five years, when they accumulated enough raw material that could be converted into...

The United States is about to buy a nuclear bomb that costs 1.5 times its weight in solid gold. It would make even King Midas blush. Nuclear weapons programs now cost so much they are actually more expensive than if they were made of gold.

The defense budget

President Barack Obama is a stronger president overseas today than he was yesterday. His victory on health care reform is very good for American national security.

We often look at the presidents of other nations and judge them as strong or weak depending on their support domestically. Are they on...

The Avengers puts a new twist on Hollywood's view of nuclear weapons. The nuke in this blockbuster film is both a villain and a hero. This may be very post-modern, but it's an ambivalence the film industry should finally shed.

The Avengers is a hugely entertaining film, and...

Are you giving mom candy for Mother's Day? Seriously? Or are you going with a Hallmark card... again?

Mother's Day should mean something more than cards or candy. It used to mean more; in fact, the holiday was originally a day for peace. Believe it or not, Mother's Day celebrations...

Senator Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA) has come out in strong support of a political solution to the Iran crisis. She is cautiously optimistic that the next round of talks in Baghdad on May 23, "may lead to a breakthrough on Iran's nuclear program," she wrote in the

When a Republican president negotiates reductions in nuclear arsenals, it is statecraft; when a Democratic president does the same, it is treason. That, at least, is the position advanced this week by several leading Republican politicians and their political advisors.

In his remarks at Hankuk University in Seoul last weekend,...

Phil Taubman writes in the Sunday New York Times what many people in Washington think about our outdated nuclear policy, but few say. He makes six key points.

Taubman knows what he is talking about, having spent years as the Times bureau chief in Moscow and Washington. He...

The Iraq War is the greatest strategic blunder in American history. It cost our nation $1 trillion, the lives of thousands of our finest warriors, and our international credibility. It made defeating al-Qaeda harder, stopping Iran more difficult, and global security more precarious. It was not, as some...

Washington is planning to spend over $700 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs over the next ten years. Some programs are necessary, some are questionable and some are simply turkeys gobbling up defense dollars.

With the failure of the Supercommittee almost certain, pressure to cut...

As the congressional "supercommittee" moves toward recommendations to cut over $1 trillion from the government's budgets, House members have squared off over whether some savings can come from the hundreds of billions of dollars planned for nuclear weapons over the next 10 years.

The first shots were fired on Oct....

The collapse of the Gaddafi regime firmly establishes the benefits of Obama's national security strategy over the failed war policies that preceded him -- and are still promoted by his critics.

There is mop-up fighting in the streets of Tripoli and much work needed to consolidate a new Libyan government....

Congress just took a small but important bipartisan step to make America safer.

On July 13 the House of Representatives approved an amendment offered by Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), along with Rick Larsen (D-WA) and John Garamendi (D-CA), to increase by $35 million the funding...

It wasn't the mutants. It was humans that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only luck saved us from nuclear war. But other than that, the new film, X-Men: First Class, gets a lot right about the historic crisis that is central to its plot.

So far, the film...

Kansas City wants to build nuclear weapons. Some of its citizens don't think that's such a good idea.

Kansas City is about to become the first city in the nation to own a nuclear bomb factory. For over 60 years, the U.S. has produced non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons...