March 3
This piece is available at the Democratic Policy Committee website,
here.
There is broad, bipartisan support among political leaders and national security experts for negotiating a follow-on START treaty with Russia. Further mutual reductions in U.S. and Russian Cold War-era nuclear arsenals are considered critical for maintaining strategic stability in our relations, enhancing the global nonproliferation regime, and, in effect, advancing U.S. security. Despite this widespread consensus in favor of a new START, some analysts have advanced unsubstantiated myths, unfounded concerns, and political slogans as negotiators have worked toward a treaty. With the Senate poised to consider the new treaty once finalized in the coming months, it is vital that these misleading and irresponsible claims be debunked, ensuring that the debate is grounded in the facts.
read more...New York Times Editorial
February 28, 2010
Available
here.
Every four years the White House issues a “nuclear posture review.”
That may sound like an anachronism. It isn’t. In a world where the
United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons —
and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear
appetites — what the United States says about its arsenal matters
enormously.
President Obama’s review was due to Congress in
December. That has been delayed, in part because of administration
infighting. The president needs to get this right. It is his chance to
finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as
it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.
read more...Livermore Opens Its Doors to Outsiders
Long-Secretive Weapons Labs to Build Energy Research Center Where Government Scientists, Businesses Can Collaborate
By BENJAMIN PIMENTEL
Found on WSJ.com; view
here.
Livermore, home to two major U.S. weapons laboratories, existed as a city of fences and secrets during the Cold War and for years afterward. Now, some of those fences are receding.
Both of the city's weapons labs—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories—are moving forward on plans to build a campus where government scientists and outside researchers can work together on clean-energy technology.
...
But the open campus also has attracted critics. Marylia Kelley, of
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, an advocacy
group long opposed to the labs' nuclear-weapons development, says the
project could be "a green-washing, public-relations move" meant "to
give an imprimatur of environmental responsibility" to what she calls
"the very dirty work of researching and developing new and modified
nuclear bombs."
read more...