Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from January 2000

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from January 2000

LETTERS.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2000... India's nuclear doctrine and public debate India's "draft nuclear doctrine," hailed by Uday Bhaskar ("Squaring The Circle," November/December 1999 Bulletin), rests on weak foundations. Its weakness stems primarily from the government's...

Will the United States take the lead?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... THE NUCLEAR POWERS PREACH NONPROLIFERATION but practice nuclear deterrence. This is a reality of life in the Nuclear Age. Not a single country that had nuclear weapons when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed in 1968 has given...

The guys who cried wolf.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... "Study Warns of North Korean Threat," read the headline. The story, which flashed across the Associated Press wire last November 3, said a new report had revealed a "dramatic improvement in North Korea's missile capabilities." The report...

WEB Watch.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Time, no doubt, has been on our minds' lately. Millennium fever, Y2K, and myriad end-of-the-world prognostications all conveniently converged on December 31 to make the New Year's count-down a particularly anxious one. But not all clocks tell...

In brief.(News Briefs)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... * Denting the Trident Inspired by the 1996 World Court ruling that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is "generally illegal" under international law, peace activists from Britain's Trident Ploughshares 2000 have staged a series of...

The fastest house in the industry.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... While many of us feel we spend way too much time in airplanes these days, MaxPower Aerospace, a Tennessee firm specializing in the resale of aircraft and aircraft parts, is betting that a few people out there just can't get enough of the...

How much did Japan know?
January 1, 2000... THEY SAY YOU LEARN BY YOUR MISTAKES. In the November/December 1999 issue of the Bulletin, we described the Pentagon's recently declassified, top-secret history of U.S. nuclear deployments abroad--History of the Custody and Deployment of...

PAKISTAN: After the coup.
January 1, 2000... THE PLACE: MURIDKE (LAHORE, PAKISTAN). The date: November 5, 1999. The occasion: the annual convention of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a militant Islamic organization fighting for an independent Kashmir. According to news reports, more than 350,000 men...

The Russian public speaks.
January 1, 2000... FOR THE FIRST TIME, A PUBLIC OPINION poll reveals what the Russian public thinks about a wide range of nuclear security issues, from the START process to nuclear smuggling. The poll, "Examining Attitudes of Russians Towards Nuclear Weapons...

Hua Di convicted.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... A report in the last issue of the Bulletin recounted the "Kafkaesque" case of Hua Di, a high-level Chinese missile scientist who eventually came to the United States to work, only to be imprisoned two years ago when he returned to China for a...

Time to re-up at Kwajalein.
January 1, 2000... FOUR BILLION DOLLARS DOESN'T LOOK like much from 3,000 feet: a building complex, hangars, houses, satellite dishes, and radar domes perched alongside an airfield and a golf range, surrounded on all sides by crashing surf. With its coconut-lined...

Zero tolerance.
January 1, 2000... The goal is not to reach a few thousand warheads, or a few hundred, but zero. FROM TIME TO TIME SINCE I BEGAN CAMPAIGNING FOR the worldwide abolition of' nuclear weapons a little more than four years ago, old friends and colleagues have...

Sharpen the fear.
January 1, 2000... The United States should make clear that it will use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack. ALTHOUGH NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL NEGOTIATIONS have stalled in recent years, U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals have been...

Outmaneuvered, outgunned, and out of view.
January 1, 2000... WHEN PRESIDENT CLINTON became the first world leader to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on September 9.4, 1996, he hailed the agreement as the "longest sought, hardest fought prize in arms control history." Ironically, having...

The Assault on Arms Control.
January 1, 2000... IF YOU THOUGHT THE SENATE'S rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was an historic tragedy, wait. It could get a lot worse. The battle over the test ban is part of a larger war over the future of the nonproliferation regime, the...

A world of trouble.
January 1, 2000... "IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN ON MY WATCH," Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proclaimed on October 1, as he and other Republicans maneuvered to reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). ...

Where to go from here.
January 1, 2000... THE SENATE'S DEFEAT OF THE COMPREHENSIVE Test Ban Treaty was an unmitigated disaster. Treaty proponents miscalculated the administration's ratification campaign came too late, and both were brushed aside by Republican partisanship. The one...

Still bound.
January 1, 2000... IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SENATE VOTED DOWN the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), President Clinton announced that "the United States will continue, under my presidency, the policy we have observed since 1992 of not conducting nuclear tests.......

Richard Lugar: Better Safe ...
January 1, 2000... Republican Richard Lugar, the senior senator from Indiana, is noted among his Republican and Democratic colleagues for his expertise in foreign affairs. In 1991, he and Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia, sponsored a continuing series of U.S....

W. K. H. Panofsky: We'll be sorry.
January 1, 2000... DEAR SENATOR LUGAR: Although I respect your legislative record, I am disappointed by the rationale for your vote. I share your advocacy for effective and verifiable arms control agreements. However, what does "effective and verifiable"...

That old designing fever.
January 1, 2000... Building new nukes was always part of the plan at the weapons labs. TEN YEARS AFTER THE END OF THE Cold War, the U.S. nuclear weapons labs are having no trouble staying busy. Inflation-corrected budgets are much higher than Cold War...

UNINTENDED Consequences.
January 1, 2000... U.S. dominance in "conventional" weapons may encourage rather than discourage the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. THE CONTINUING ENTHUSIASM some American political and military leaders have for nuclear...

America's Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security.(Review)
January 1, 2000... America's Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security By Jeffrey T. Richelson University Press of Kansas, 1999 330 pages; $35.00 On November 6, 1970, the earth shuddered and the dark, morning sky lit up like an early dawn. In the...

Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security.(Review)
January 1, 2000... Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security By Bill Gertz Regnery Publishing, 1999 291 pages; $27.95 Betrayal, by Washington Times national security reporter Bill Gertz, is as subtle as an H-bomb but, fortunately,...

Iceland melts.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The Last Word IN THE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER ISSUE OF THE Bulletin, my co-authors (Robert S. Norris and William Burr) and I wrote about secret Cold War deployments of U.S. nuclear weapons. We got one country wrong, as we explain on page 11....