Author Archives: kerr

Greece and Ottawa RevCon

I thought I’d bookend this post by nothing that, according to the final document from this past November’s Ottawa Convention RevCon,

There are now three States Parties for which the obligation to destroy stockpiled anti-personnel mines remains relevant – Greece, Sri Lanka and Ukraine – with two of these States Parties being noncompliant since 1 March 2008 (Greece) and 1 June 2010 (Ukraine).

Since the Third Review Conference, one of the main challenges in stockpile destruction has been the pending completion of stockpile destruction by Greece and Ukraine. Both of these States Parties have reported progress in destroying their stockpiled anti-personnel mines and have provided an expected end date for implementation.

U.S. Army on TNWs

In 1977, the U. S. Army Nuclear Weapons Agency published The Primer on Nuclear Weapons Capabilities. The topic’s importance is self-explanatory to me, but the authors evidently wanted to keep the soldiers’ attention:

There’s a bunch of solid material in the primer, including this advice on minimizing the effects on TNWs:

CIA and India and Proliferation, 1974

In this post about IC reforms after mid-1974, I noted that I could not “think of a 1974 proliferation-related event which would have incentivized these changes.”

An astute reader pointed me to this July 1974 CIA study, titled An Examination of the Intelligence Community’s Performance Before the Indian Nuclear Test of May 1974, which fills in that gap.

CIA on Nuclear Proliferation, 1976

This 1976 CIA report titled Nuclear Proliferation and the Intelligence Community is worth your time. The report’s beginning describes some bureaucratic IC changes with respect to nuclear proliferation.

I cannot think of a 1974 proliferation-related event which would have incentivized these changes. The bulk of the document contains the recommendations of a report on proliferation intelligence prepared for the Deputy Secretary of Defense. The findings make for interesting reading, but I am not in a position to assess them. Also, if you really want an early reference to the IC and nuclear terrorism, here it is:

Kakodkar on India 123

The Deccan Herald recently published an excerpt from Anil Kakodar’s book Fire and Fury: Transforming India’s Strategic Identity. Part of the excerpt briefly discusses the considerable effort just before a 2006 U.S. Presidential visit to finalize the separation plan related to the 123 agreement:

Two days before Bush’s arrival, the US team was in New Delhi to finalise the text of the Separation Plan and both the sides were negotiating in South Block till 2 AM on the night before the US President was reaching.

Glenn Kessler’s book The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy includes a somewhat-similar vignette: