Last week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accused Tehran of "stiffing the international community" by failing to hold up its end of the October United Nations agreement. Iran, of course, had agreed to send low-enriched uranium to Russia and then France. In return, it would receive uranium that was...

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- You've probably heard the word redundancy in its current embodiment. To refresh your memory, it refers to the duplication of the critical components of a system, such as an airplane, to enhance its reliability. Redundancy's rationale is obvious: The likelihood that the entire system will fail decreases...

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- According to a BBC report:

A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world's strongest beer -- with a 32% alcohol content. Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh.

South African track runner Oscar Pistorius, though not a double amputee -- he was born without lower legs -- has enjoyed great success competing in that class wearing state-of-the-art carbon-fiber prosthetics. After setting world records in the 100, 200, and 400 meters, he sought to move up in weight class,...

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power -- nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet...

Few fields are as lacking in fresh perspectives as nuclear weapons. Entire decades have been spent by nuclear strategists deliberating which state would strike first and how many weapons the victim would have left to retaliate. Then they came up with deterrence. What a concept -- as if equally armed...

Sometimes it seems as if neither the United States nor Russia got the message that the Cold War ended almost two decades ago. Last week I wrote about the Dooomsday Device, a back-up defense system that Russia developed in the 80's. In the aftermath of a nuclear attack, it...

A Personal 'Nuclear Posture Review'

When viewed on film, a nuclear weapons test might strike the discerning eye as a rip in the very fabric of existence. While one might view a supernova in the same light, not only doesn't the explosion of a star occur within the confines...

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- In the eighties it became more and more difficult to kill movie monsters dead. They'd re-surface again and again like your favorite musical artist in live performance with encores upon encores. Neither were monsters, supposedly dead once and for all, immune to resurrection. In one installment of...

Conventional wisdom holds that fear of death is epidemic in the Western world. Whatever the truth of that, cultural commentators are all too willing to chalk it up to everything from our materialistic society to our isolation from one another.

What's missing, though, is an honest acknowledgment that fear of...

It might surprise you to know that Southeast Asian political humor is on a par with America's best like Maureen Dowd, Lee Camp and the Onion. For example, visit Thailand's English-language website Not The Nation. Recent fare: "Kim Jong Il's Pancreas Sent To Labor Camp" and "Thai FDA Approves...

The Sanford case shines a spotlight on the central paradox of marriage.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford not only played fast and loose with the institution of marriage, but with email. However, help keeping affairs secret has arrived not only for politicians, but all of us. AshleyMadison.com just released apps...

The 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons review conference is just around the corner. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty awaits ratification by the U.S. Senate. The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is being negotiated by the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. What do they have in common?

I mean besides...

The Obama administration has just come up with another way to sweep torture under the rug -- allowing detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. What's the point of that? The New York Times explains:

The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the...

Aung San Suu Kyi probably knew she was courting danger when she allowed "that wretched American," as one of her lawyers called John Yettaw, to sleep overnight in her home. He'd exhausted himself swimming across the lake on which her house is situated and withholding mercy doesn't come naturally to...

Technically, Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution wasn't saffron. The term was coined out of deference to the saffron-yellow robes that Buddhist monks in Asia usually wear. The robes of Burmese monks are, in fact, plum colored (the better to hide the blood?).

The Saffron Revolution was triggered by Burma's military...

If you look up the word sanction, the definition that occupies pride of place in most dictionaries is: permission or approval for a specific course of action. But, one of those words that gives English a bad rap, sanction has two other meanings that are the exact opposite. To wit:...

Since President Obama approved the release of the torture memos, conservatives have jump-started their efforts to make the case that torture works. The testimony of everyone from historians to FBI agents aside, what if there's a germ of truth to what they allege?

Thomas Hilde, editor of On Torture...

Thailand seeks to mediate peace talks between Burma's ruling junta and the Karen ethnic group that it's been trying to wipe out for 60 years. Norway, meanwhile, hopes to heal the rift between warring Karen factions.

When we think of the face of the opposition to Burma's ruthless ruling junta,...

A refreshing side-effect of the Octomom phenomenon has been how little abuse Nadya Suleman has taken for her obviously Muslim given name. Her father is apparently from Iraq: In January, he told CBS News that he's a veteran of its military and -- in a sign of just how feeble...