In a Washington Post op-ed, five former secretaries of state—all of whom served under Republican presidents—urged ratification of the New START Treaty, although they did not press for ratification during the current lame duck session. Could they all be wrong? In a word: Yes … The authors argue: (1) New START promotes verification; (2) New START permits missile defenses; (3) New START’s ratification Read More ›
President Obama pushed his New START Treaty through Congress before Christmas. Do not celebrate. The Russians will, and should. Why? First, the Russians got an arms-reduction treaty negotiated on their terms, relieving them of the pressure to maintain a strategic nuclear arsenal beyond what the economic base permits, enabling them to hide telemetry test data on their newest strategic missiles Read More ›
Two solid analysts, ex–Bush 43 speechwriter Marc Thiessen and Hudson Institute intelligence scholar Gabriel Schoenfeld, have published defenses of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) controversial new scanning and patdown policies. They argue that TSA’s policy is a necessary reaction to the evolution of terrorism. Their analysis rests on eight air-security myths. 1. The fact that there have been no attacks since 9/11 vindicates Read More ›
President Obama’s push for lame-duck Senate ratification of his New START arms treaty ran into a brick wall when Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, a GOP arms-treaty expert, announced that he opposes a floor vote before the new Congress is seated in January 2011, when a more extensive, detailed exploration of treaty issues can be conducted. Sen. John Kerry intends to press Read More ›
This article, published by Blogger News Network, references Bruce Chapman of Discovery Institute: Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute in Seattle has asked all the right questions about a recent Russian media report suggesting that Russian killers have been dispatched to the United States to execute a former Russian spy. The rest of the article can be found here.
The most infuriating argument made on behalf of those (mostly Democrats) pushing for the Senate to ratify the New START Treaty signed by President Obama last April is on verification. The argument is that because existing verification provisions under prior START treaties lapsed December 5, 2009, senators should ratify New START to restore verification, else there will be no verification at Read More ›
Discovery Institute Fellow Claire Berlinski is featured this week on National Review’s Uncommon Knowledge. Check back to National Review’s website daily to catch each segment. The program’s website is linked below. http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/
Earlier this summer tensions exploded in the Middle East as Israel defied a flotilla sent from Turkey to Gaza to break Israel’s shipping blockade. Some think Turkey’s political atmosphere is shifting from one of established secularism to one in step with the Islamism of its neighbors, notably Iran. New Discovery Institute international relations fellow Claire Berlinski provides a revealing look at the Read More ›
With the help of prognosticator John R. Miller — former U.S. ambassador-at-large on modern slavery, visiting scholar at the Institute for Government Studies at UC-Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute — we present this memo from the year 2016, which explains what misfortunes might have befallen the Middle East by then. SBU (Sensitive but Unclassified) February 20, 2016 Read More ›
Istanbul — I moved here five years ago. In the beginning, I was sympathetic to the argument that Turkey’s ban on headscarves in universities and public institutions was grossly discriminatory. I spoke to many women who described veiling themselves as an uncoerced act of faith. One businesswoman in her mid-30s told me that she began veiling in high school, defying her Read More ›