Bad Posture
In the Wall Street Journal, retired Vice Admiral Robert Monroe has an op-ed ostensibly about the New START arms control deal with Russia, but he’s really writing about the U.S. administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). He sees the treaty as “the first major step” in President Obama’s broad scheme—the NPR—to “weaken American national security.” Nuclear weapons are the world’s peacemakers, Monroe says, and if the United States pledges not to develop new atomic weapons U.S. deterrence will “atrophy.” To see what Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz think of Obama's nuclear agenda in TNI's latest issue, click here.
There’s also an op-ed on the Palestinian territories, of course, but it only makes passing mention of the recently started peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. Lawyer David Tafuri says giving Gaza and the West Bank internet access would be a great economic and humanitarian boon, allowing the people trapped within their borders to have contact with the outside world—and, in the case of protesters, with each other. Tarfuri hopes access to more (and, he says, “better") info will lead Palestinians to make better decisions.