Why do we have nuclear submarines? Nuclear submarines are nuclear in two senses: First, they have nuclear engines. Second, they have nuclear weapons aboard. In both senses, they’re damned dangerous. They’re damned expensive too, often costing several billion dollars each. So why do we ha...

In a must-read post today, Glenn Greenwald challenges Ruth Marcus and the establishment Washington consensus, in which the pursuit of war crimes charges against soon-to-be-former Bush officials is arbitrarily dismissed as either too polarizing, too partisan, or just too goddamn difficult to successf...

Pigeons may be rats with wings, but it’s hard to match the volume of shit produced by a flock of resident geese.  If you live anywhere near a park or other area in their flightpath with short-cropped grass and water nearby, you’ll have experienced the futility of walking without steppin...

The only deterrence that still matters: With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to ha...

In his April 18 op-ed, "Deterring the Undeterrable," Charles Krauthammer claimed that, with respect to Iran, "deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble." But sometimes it is hard to notice that something has not happened. What hasn't happened is a chemical or biological attack on Israel....

Last week, in the much-maligned Democratic debate in Pennsylvania, Senator Hillary Clinton said that she would greatly expand the US nuclear umbrella in the Middle East: Well, in fact, George [Stephanopoulos], I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much furth...

As is common with most things dominating the news cycle, important background explanations and underlying principles are often if not always left inadequately answered or not touched on at all. One such example is the US missile shield which now has the official backing of NATO and the issue of Iran...