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1. Iran Sanctions: The View From Iran

Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
World Politics Review
Abstract:
The ballistic missiles that Iran fired at two military bases in Iraq housing American troops could only be the start of Tehran’s retaliation. Many observers worry that more blowback could come in the form of Iran’s favored tactic of asymmetric warfare waged through its proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. This escalation did not begin with the killing of Soleimani, but in May 2018, when Trump unilaterally took the United States out of the international agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program, known as the JCPOA, and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy. What impact has the U.S. exit from the nuclear deal had in Iran? How has it changed the Iranian regime’s foreign policy calculations? And how have Iranian citizens reacted to Trump’s campaign of “maximum pressure” and more sanctions? This WPR report provides an essential view of events from Iran.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Sanctions, Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Iran

2. Nuclear Security, Arms Control and the U.S.-Russia Relationship

Author:
Steven Pifer
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
For nearly five decades, Washington and Moscow have engaged in negotiations to manage their nuclear competition. Those negotiations produced a string of acronyms—SALT, INF, START—for arms control agreements that strengthened strategic stability, reduced bloated nuclear arsenals and had a positive impact on the broader bilateral relationship. That is changing. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is headed for demise. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) has less than two years to run, and the administration of Donald Trump has yet to engage on Russian suggestions to extend it. Bilateral strategic stability talks have not been held in 18 months. On its current path, the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control regime likely will come to an end in 2021. That will make for a strategic relationship that is less stable, less secure and less predictable and will further complicate an already troubled bilateral relationship.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Military Strategy, Nuclear Power, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and North America

3. After Hanoi: Where do Trump and Kim Go from Here?

Author:
Victor D. Cha
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
There were high expectations at the second meeting of American and North Korean leaders in Vietnam last month after the absence of progress on denuclearization commitments made at the first summit in Singapore last summer. Yet at Hanoi, not only were the two leaders unable to deliver an agreement with tangible steps on denuclearization, but they also dispensed with the joint statement signing, cancelled the ceremonial lunch and skipped the joint press conference. In a solo presser, President Donald Trump said that sometimes you “have to walk, and this was just one of those times.”[2] The President indeed may have avoided getting entrapped into a bad deal at Hanoi. What North Korea put on the table in terms of the Yongbyon nuclear complex addresses a fraction of its growing nuclear program that does not even break the surface of its underlying arsenal and stockpiles of fissile materials, not to mention missile bases and delivery systems. And what North Korea sought in return, in terms of major sanctions relief on five UN Security Council resolutions that target 90 percent of North Korea’s trade, would have removed one of the primary sources of leverage, albeit imperfect, on the regime. In this instance, no deal was better than a bad deal for the United States. Nevertheless, the Hanoi summit has left the United States with no clear diplomatic road ahead on this challenging security problem, a trail of puzzled allies in Asia and the promise of no more made-for-television summit meetings for the foreseeable future. The question remains, where do we go from here? When leaders’ summits fail to reach agreement, diplomacy by definition has reached the end of its rope. President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put on the best face they could in Hanoi, talking about closer understanding and continued good relations between the two sides as a result of the meetings, but the failed summit leaves a great deal of uncertainty going forward. South Koreans will frantically seek meetings with Washington and Pyongyang to pick up the pieces. The North Koreans already have sent an envoy to China to chart next steps. While I do not think this will mean a return to the “Fire and Fury” days of 2017 when armed conflict was possible, we have learned numerous lessons from Hanoi for going forward.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

4. Redefining Success for the Trump-Kim Summit

Author:
Richard N. Holwill
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
A meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un (KJU), the Supreme Leader of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK), can be a success even if it fails to achieve President Trump’s announced goal: an end to the DPRK nuclear weapons program. This meeting starts by giving KJU one of his long-sought goals. It will, in effect, be more than a meeting. It will be a “summit” and will confer on KJU the status of the leader of a legitimate government. President Trump would be wise to redefine success. He should not fall into the trap of saying that success will be defined by a “denuclearization agreement.” While that should be a long-term goal, it will not happen at this meeting. Still, the summit will be successful if it produces a process that can lead to a substantial reduction of tension on the Korean Peninsula. This is not to say that an agreement on denuclearization is off the table. Rather, it is to rec­ognize that these talks could present a framework for negotiation that would be very valuable, even if they will fall short of a nuclear disarmament accord. To understand the difficulty of reaching a nuclear arms agreement, we need only look at the way the two leaders speak about denuclearization. Each appears to define it differently. President Trump applies the term to nuclear weapons in the DPRK. KJU speaks of it as applying to the entire Korean Peninsula. He will argue that, if he must allow a mean­ingful verification regime, so must U.S. forces in South Korea.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

5. Pragmatic, Not Mad: The Rationality of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Author:
Mark Halchin
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The reasoning behind North Korea’s continued efforts to develop a nuclear deterrent remains puzzling to many, with the heavy costs and behavior of the regime leading to the belief that it is irrational. This paper argues that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is instead a rational strategy for the regime. The perceived threat from South Korean and American military forces, as well as its own ineffective conventional forces, make a North Korean nuclear program a viable and relatively cheap deterrent. Its limited foreign relations and near-total dependence on China largely insulate it from economic punishment. Finally, the nature of the regime allows it to disregard popular opinion while forcing it to accommodate military demands for a nuclear deterrent. The necessity of nuclear weapons for defence and the few downsides of possessing them means that Pyongyang is unlikely to give them up, thus dooming denuclearization efforts to failure.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and North America

6. China and the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Promoting a Trilateral Dialogue

Author:
Heung-kyu Kim
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As the Republic of Korea faces an increasing threat from North Korea, evolving U.S.-China relations are becoming important to Seoul’s strategy for dealing with Pyongyang. The United States and China are competitors, but they also seek cooperation on a range of global issues. And although South Korea seeks to have good relations with both great powers, it is increasingly being pushed to take sides in the ongoing U.S.-China competition. As the U.S.-China relationship becomes more complex, South Korea needs to carefully evaluate its policy toward China in order to find the best ways to ensure Chinese cooperation on the North Korean issue, particularly taking into account China’s evolving view of North Korea. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China is profoundly changing its foreign policy, including its relations with the United States and the two Koreas. With more confidence in its own diplomatic, military, and economic capacity to protect its national interests, China under Xi’s leadership has begun to regard the entire Korean Peninsula as part of its sphere of influence.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

7. Selected Essays on the Transition to a New Nuclear Order

Author:
Judith Reppy and Catherine M. Kelleher
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Abstract:
What conditions are needed for a stable transition to a new nuclear order, one in which the total number of nuclear weapons would be reduced to very low numbers, perhaps even zero? We have addressed the myriad issues raised by this question with funding from a grant on “Creating Conditions for a Stable Transition to a New Nuclear Order,” co-directed by Catherine Kelleher and Judith Reppy, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. The essays collected here are a sample of the work supported by the grant. The goals of our project are three-fold: to take a fresh look at the theoretical underpinnings of the arguments about strategic security and nuclear doctrines; to encourage members of the younger generation (NextGen) scholars working on nuclear security issues to see themselves as part of a network that stretches from scholars in the field to active participants in the policy process; and to disseminate the products of the project to the policy community, in Washington and elsewhere. We have convened four workshops—in Berlin (December 2014); Ithaca, NY (November 2015); Monterey, CA (February 2016); and Washington, DC (May 2016)—and held several discussion dinners in Washington, DC. We received very welcome assistance in organizing these events from the German Marshall Fund, which hosted our Berlin workshop, and Bill Potter and Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey. Elaine Scott and Sandra Kisner at Cornell provided invaluable support throughout, as did Ari Kattan, Jessica Gottesman, and Debak Das.A number of themes have emerged from these meetings, which we outline below. First, however, it is worth discussing the broader context in which the project has unfolded. In a very real sense, the seeds of our project were sown by the “Gang of Four” op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in January 2007 calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament. This call, coming from four highly respected individuals in the policy world, re-invigorated the debate over the usefulness and dangers of nuclear weapons around the world, and spurred a number of similar calls from diplomats and politicians in other countries. In April 2009, President Obama gave an important speech in Prague, in which he stated that the United States was committed “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”2 The shift in the political discussion encouraged scholars to return to the topics of strategic security and nuclear deterrence, topics that had fallen into neglect following the end of the Cold War. One such effort was a series of meetings organized by Catherine Kelleher under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which resulted in our co-edited book, Getting to Zero. In that volume the question of what a transition to nuclear zero would look like was broached, but not analyzed in detail. The current project is intended as a step toward filling that gap. The dangers that nuclear weapons pose—from accidents, miscalculation in times of crisis, or their acquisition by non-state actors—have persuaded many people that a nuclear-weapons free world is desirable. The optimism that nuclear disarmament might be feasible was based in large part on the success of European countries following World War II in building a zone of peace across the European continent, historically the site of so many bloody wars, and on the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Russian annexation of Crimea in spring 2014, however, ushered in a period of conflict in Ukraine and threw the validity of the European model into question. In Asia, stability has been threatened by North Korea’s detonation of nuclear devices and a more assertive international policy on the part of China. These shifts in the international situation have made it clear that a new nuclear order will have to be robust enough to weather unexpected political shocks, as well as the challenges arising from technological changes that can undercut strategic balances and other changes that we cannot foresee. As Harald Müller has cogently argued, global nuclear disarmament will not happen in a world that looks like the world of today, minus nuclear weapons. Instead, it will be the result of a step-by-step process of changing ideas, building new modes of cooperation and trust among states, and finding ways to respect regional differences within a global order. The essays in this Occasional Paper offer ideas for this process. We have selected them from the larger number of commissioned papers and commentaries produced by the participants in the project. We have confined our choices to papers by NextGen participants and included examples from each of the four workshops. The issues discussed include new ways to frame deterrence logics, important both for understanding the history of the Cold War and current questions of nuclear learning (Harrington; Akhtar). Security perspectives both within and between regions are analyzed (Zhao; Martin), and the importance of cooperative approaches to security addressed (Kühn; Gheorghe).
Topic:
National Security, Nuclear Power, Denuclearization, and Transition
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, Asia, and North America

8. Keeping the Bombs in the Basement: U.S. Nonproliferation Policy toward Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan

Author:
Or Rabinowitz and Nicholas L. Miller
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Many accounts suggest that the United States did little to prevent Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa from developing nuclear weapons. These accounts are flawed, however. The United States did attempt to stop all three countries from acquiring the bomb and, when those efforts failed, to halt additional proliferation measures such as further testing and weaponization.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Military Strategy, Nonproliferation, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, Israel, and South Africa

9. North Korea: Negotiations Work

Author:
Leon V. Sigal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
In a laudable about-face, President Bush has decided at last to accept North Korea's longstanding offer to suspend production of plutonium by shutting down and sealing its reactor and reprocess- ing plant at Yongbyon, halting construction of a larger reactor and not restarting a newly refurbished fuel fabrication plant. In so doing, he is rejecting the counsel of American hardliners who have kept the United States from making and living up to earlier agreements while managing to convince much of America that it is North Korea that has been the one at fault. By negotiating in earnest, Bush has achieved an important goal for U.S. and Asian security.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

10. The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal: Triumph of the Business Lobby

Author:
Subrata Ghoshroy
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
South Asia has come a long way since the days of SEATO and CENTO1 —the U.S.- sponsored pacts to contain China and keep India under check. Gone are the days when the Seventh Fleet flexed its muscle on the Bay of Bengal in support of a beleaguered Pakistan in its military campaign against the “mukti bahini”—the freedom fighters in erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Once the leader of the non-aligned, the Indian government has not expressed even a whimper of protest about what has been happening to Iraq, Lebanon, or Gaza. India and the United States now are “natural allies,” apparently forged primarily by mutual economic interests. But there was the China factor as well. Although left unsaid, China entered in to the calculation of both India and the United States. The Bush administration is careful not to revive the notion of the Cold War policy of containing China, but many in the Congress are not so reticent. At the same time, the Indian government is equally careful to highlight the growing normalization of relations and the growing trade ties with Beijing. But the clamor in the security community in New Delhi is all about countering China—a topic I heard repeatedly during my recent visit to the region. So its importance cannot be discounted. But the economic incentives of the deal have not earned as much scrutiny, a major oversight in the public discourse.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, India, Asia, and North America