Peter Scoblic

Last month the United States put on the most impressive display of precision bombing in the history of warfare and demonstrated the unmatched power of the U.S. military. But despite this overwhelming conventional superiority, the Bush administration is looking to pursue new nuclear weapons too -- nuclear weapons designed to be used on rogue-state battlefields.

Congress is now considering whether that's a good idea, as it marks up and votes on the 2004 defense authorization bill, in which the Bush… more

Although the Moscow Treaty's goal of reducing deployed nuclear arsenals is noble -- which is why the U.S. Senate approved it 95-0 in March -- its abandonment of long-held arms control principles makes the agreement a rather serious gamble. In fact, the treaty threatens to give us the worst of both the old and the new worlds, maintaining (and perhaps even destabilizing) the Cold War reliance on assured destruction while feeding the threat from nuclear terrorism.

The… more