by CKR
Lots of nuke stuff out there today. The Washington Post has devoted its Opinion page to nuclear weapons matters, and the State Department’s new blog “Dipnotes,” asks about nuclear policy in its first question. And I’ve got a meeting tonight.
The Washington Post coverage isn’t much for depth, but maybe that’s not a bad place to start. Matthew Bunn gives some of the basics of securing nuclear materials from the just-released report “Securing the Bomb 2007,” an annual report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Harvard University on progress in keeping nuclear materials and bombs out of the wrong hands. There’s a quiz and FAQs. The FAQs are probably the best of what the WaPo’s given us in this package.
Through a number of comments, in his article and the chat, on how hard it might be for terrorists to make a bomb, Bunn ignores an article that did just that analysis. The article itself is behind subscription walls, so I’ll link to my comments on it.
Nothing new there, except the report, which apparently has nothing newsworthy, but it’s all useful if you want to brush up or clarify some basics. I would like to see a breakdown on how well people collectively did on the quiz.
The State Department has something new, a blog. As I was writing my initial reaction to its name, it occurred to me that Dipnote could be State Department jargon, and sure enough, it is. I just don’t think I’d call my blog by any compound name beginning with Dip-. I’ve also got some thoughts about official blogs, like those on so many newspapers now, but I’ll concentrate on Dipnote’s first question:
In 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was created to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and express the intention of NPT signatories to achieve disarmament. Nonetheless, questions exist as to why the international community approves of some nations possessing nuclear materials and not others.That’s all the post says. No link to the NPT. No link to anything.
"What should determine who should be allowed to possess nuclear technology and who should not?"
What is the purpose of this question? Will the responses be rushed to the office of the Secretary of State? Will they be distributed among the lower-level policy developers? Will there be responses from knowledgeable people?
Or do the developers of the blog subscribe to the theory that there are lots of people out here who get their kicks from placing comments in cyberspace? If so, we can look forward to another place where people vent at each other, making for not very interesting reading.
But let’s look at that question post more closely:
Nonetheless, questions exist as to why the international community approves of some nations possessing nuclear materials and not others.Lots to unpack there. Questions exist. They do, hm? In whose minds? Where? The international community. And who is that, precisely? Approves of some nations possessing nuclear materials and not others. And what does approval mean?
It’s hard to get answers that mean anything to a question this vague. We can, of course, guess that the US State Department is referring to that disapproved nation whose president spoke at the UN yesterday. Oh, right! I need to be more specific!
The question, though, reeks of that sort of innuendo. It might have educated readers on the NPT, minimally through providing a link to the text. A bit more discussion would have been useful, but that could too quickly have led to Article IV, which says that all signatories are entitled to peaceful nuclear technology, in contrast to the US’s insistence that Iran stop enrichment now. (That’s specific.)
The Armchair Generalist (aka J.) has been there already and left a comment with the right focus. The other comments, not surprisingly, are all over the map.
As Sean McCormick says, though, they’re early on the learning curve. The server is running faster now than it was earlier, and so far today, more consistently. But there’s more to blogging than that!