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Often, it seems as though unimportant policy issues are constantly debated, while important ones are forgotten. For those decision makers who want to maintain the status quo, the advantage of the latter situation is the absence of any pressure for policy change. U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe are a perfect example. Despite the end of the Cold War about two decades ago, approximately 200 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons quietly remain on European soil. Whether they retain any relevance in the twenty-first century is debatable to say the least.

Editor's note: Since the publication of this article, the authors and David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security have had a lively online exchange disagreeing over estimates for the enrichment capabilities of Iran's IR-1 centrifuges. A discussion about this debate by Bulletin columnist Joshua Pollack can be found on the blog, Arms Control Wonk.

On June 1, members of the South Korean National Assembly's Intelligence Committee received some clarity about who would replace Kim Jong-il as North Korea's leader. A high official in Seoul's National Intelligence Service informed them that Kim had designated his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. According to the National Intelligence Service, Kim Jong-il had ordered the North's military, politicians, and officials in overseas missions to swear allegiance to Kim Jong-un after Pyongyang's May nuclear test. This succession plan wasn't entirely surprising.

On Saturday, October 24, President Barack Obama declared the H1N1 flu a national emergency. To date, more than 20,000 people have been hospitalized and more than 1,000 have died.

In the past six months, President Barack Obama has taken three major steps to protect the world from nuclear terrorism and advance the disarmament agenda. First, during his April speech in Prague, he outlined his arms control and nonproliferation objectives and announced a U.S.-led international effort to secure all of the world's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years.

When the Berlin Wall came down November 9, 1989, the decades-long division of Europe was over. But there was another event, just two weeks before, that also broke down barriers and changed the course of the Cold War. In the last week of October, the director of the Soviet All-Union Institute of Ultra-Pure Biological Preparations, Vladimir Pasechnik, was on a business trip to France. He used a phone booth in Paris to call the British Embassy and offered to defect. The British Secret Intelligence Service responded with alacrity, and Pasechnik was soon on his way to London.