Russia Looking for Deterrence?

Russia has started putting its strategic bombers on regular flights, reviving a policy from the cold war. Strategic bombers carry nuclear warheads, and having them continuously fly is intended to preserve a nuclear deterrent even if the enemy carries out a first-strike. Josh Marshall has a really good post summing up some of the issues involved. Oddly, it’s not clear to me that this is a bad development. While it is a sign of increasing belligerence from Russia, there are arguments that American nuclear superiority has a destabilizing effect on geopolitics (see my earlier post for links). If that’s on the level, then moves by Russia to return to a partial equilibrium would be a good thing.

Hillary Contradicts Herself

Short version:

“I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table,” Mrs. Clinton told Bloomberg Television in an interview in April 2006, responding to a question about how the Bush administration would try to prevent Iran from building up its nuclear program.

Incidentally, reading this article gave me what I call iterated deja-vu: the sensation of having previously felt deja-vu in response to seeing what you are currently seeing.