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351. US-Russian Partnership for Advancing a Nuclear Security Agenda

Author:
Anton Khlopkov
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Abstract:
Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the United States and the Russian Federation have engaged in bilateral and multilateral nuclear security efforts to secure nuclear materials and facilities in the region. This cooperation contributed to nuclear security globally and developed various tools, mechanisms, and approaches that need to be fully utilized by the international community. As new nuclear security challenges emerge, the implementation of sustainable nuclear security measures is constrained by limited expertise and resources, particularly in some key regions. For this reason, the application of US-Russian expertise and experience in cooperative threat reduction is essential to successful implementation of the global nuclear security agenda. Researchers investigate nuclear security challenges in other countries and regions—specifically in Southeast Asia and the former Soviet states of Central Asia—and examine possible ways by which the lessons learned from US-Russian nuclear security cooperation over the past two decades can be a
Topic:
Security, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, Nonproliferation, and Nuclear Safety
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, United States of America, and Post-Soviet Europe

352. The Nuclear Security Summit and South Korea’s Growing International Role

Author:
Sang-Hyun Lee
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East Asia Institute (EAI)
Abstract:
On March 26-27, 2012, South Korea successfully held the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. This was the largest diplomatic gathering ever held in South Korea with fifty-three countries and four international non-governmental organizations participating. Alongside the summit, President Lee Myung-bak held twenty-seven bilateral talks which helped to elevate South Korea’s international role. The Seoul Summit has been judged to have produced a more concrete outcome that has strongly supported the achievements made at the Washington Summit in 2010. The result is the Seoul Communiqué, which states that nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy are the shared goals of humanity while also reconfirming the commitment to seeking a safer world for all and sharing the objective of nuclear security. Moreover, the communiqué stresses the fundamental responsibility of all countries, consistent with their respective national and international obligations, to maintain effective security of all nuclear material, which includes nuclear weapons and nuclear facilities under their control, as well as to prevent non-state actors from acquiring such materials and from obtaining information or technology required to use them for malicious purposes. The communiqué further reaffirms that measures to strengthen nuclear security will not hamper the rights of states to develop and utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. With North Korea’s nuclear threat still overshadowing the Korean Peninsula, the summit had some meaningful implications. South Korea will have undoubtedly enhanced its national image from passive recipient to an active rule-maker in international norms. In preparing for the summit, the South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) focused on comprehensive and action-oriented measures under the belief that by only transforming political commitments from the Washington Summit into action would guarantee the success of the summit. As a result, the Seoul Summit has demonstrated that the promises from the 2010 Washington Summit have now advanced to fruitful outcomes. The seventy-two commitments from that summit have now been almost realized with only a few still to be finalized. In addition, the Seoul Summit has proven itself to be the transition point for global nuclear security moving from political declaration to concrete implementation. The summit itself has also widened its agenda including nuclear safety, the safe use of nuclear energy and radioactive materials, therefore able to address some of the key issues raised following the Fukushima accident. Despite the achievements, some limitations are evident when looking at the preparations for the summit and its aftermath. In the build-up to the summit in South Korea, there were problems in communication between state and people. While the summit is dedicated to preventing nuclear terrorism, some questioned why South Korea was hosting a summit that did not address issues closer to home such as the North Korean nuclear issue or the U.S.-Korea nuclear energy agreement controversy. Such criticism required strong justification of why South Korea was hosting the summit. Another area of difficulty was that nuclear security itself actually lacks a clear definition even among experts. To cope with such questions, MOFAT sought for advice and creative ideas by hosting advisory board meetings during the preparation for the summit.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Summit
Political Geography:
Asia and South Korea

353. North Korea and the Politics of Visual Representation

Author:
Dirk Nabers and David Shim
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Within international discourses on security, North Korea is often associated with risk and danger, emanating paradoxically from what can be called its strengths—particularly military strength, as embodied by its missile and nuclear programs—and its weaknesses—such as its ever-present political, economic, and food crises—which are considered to be imminent threats to international peace and stability. We argue that images play an important role in these representations, and suggest that one should take into account the role of visual imagery in the way particular issues, actions, and events related to North Korea are approached and understood. Reflecting on the politics of visual representation means to examine the functions and effects of images, that is what they do and how they are put to work by allowing only particular kinds of seeing. After addressing theoretical and methodological questions, we discuss individual (and serial) photographs depicting what we think are typical examples of how North Korea is portrayed in the Western media and imagined in international politics.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Politics, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Israel and North Korea

354. Gambit or Endgame? The New State of Arms Control

Author:
Alexei Arbatov
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The pursuit of nuclear arms control has enjoyed something of a renaissance recently, with the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in spring 2010 in Prague. Whether that momentum will dissipate after New START or lead to further nuclear arms control agreements depends on several factors: The new U.S. and Russian nuclear doctrines. While there is always some distance between a state's declared policy and that policy's implementation, both documents show that, behind their more ambitious disarmament rhetoric, the United States and Russia maintain conservative nuclear policies that make radical nuclear disarmament unlikely—to say nothing of a nuclear-weapon-free world. The peculiarities of the recently signed and ratified New START agreement. Among these are the modest cuts stipulated by the treaty relative to its predecessors; the acrimonious ratification debates in both the U.S. and Russian legislatures; and the dim prospects for a follow-on agreement (in sharp contrast to the mood prevailing after past START agreements). The dynamics of obsolescence and modernization of U.S. and Russian strategic offensive forces. The United States should have little problem cutting its forces to get below New START's limits. Russia, however, will have problems, not in reducing its numbers, but in raising them to treaty ceilings, due to their removal of obsolete weapons from service and slow deployment of new systems. Either Russia can negotiate a New START follow-on treaty with even lower ceilings or it can accelerate the development and deployment of new systems. While the former is obviously a more attractive alternative, it would require the United States and Russia to resolve many thorny arms control issues, such as ballistic missile defense, conventional strategic weapons, and tactical nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defense. President Obama's decision to modify the Bush administration's ballistic missile defense plans in Central Europe opened the way for New START and eased Russian concerns, even if they could never have been allayed entirely. Moscow believes that U.S. ballistic missile defense programs are ultimately designed to degrade Russia's nuclear deterrent, and it is far from clear that U.S. proposals to jointly develop such capabilities with Russia would allay those concerns—or that the idea even makes any sense. Russia's perceptions of U.S. conventional strategic weapons. Russian officials are especially concerned about the U.S. Prompt Global Strike concept and do not trust American assurances that such capabilities are only directed at terrorists and rogue states. There has already been some progress made in dealing with these weapons in negotiations, and future progress on this issue will likely depend on legal agreements and confidence-building measures to scale U.S. capabilities in ways that would threaten Russia's (or China's) strategic deterrent. Joint development of ballistic missile defenses with Russia. This issue could seriously complicate Washington's and Moscow's strategic relations with China and India. Officials on both sides would do well to start small and proceed step-by-step, using incremental successes to build the momentum necessary to work through more difficult issues. Non-strategic—that is, tactical—nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, the United States and Europe relied on tactical nuclear weapons to counterbalance Warsaw Pact superiority in conventional forces in Europe; today, the situation is reversed, with Moscow relying on tactical nuclear weapons as a counterbalance not only to NATO conventional superiority but also to U.S. strategic nuclear superiority and long-range precision-guided weapons. No one now knows which weapons systems should be categorized as non-strategic, and how limits across regions could be accounted for and verified. In addition, reviving the moribund Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty is essential to dealing with the issue of tactical nuclear weapons.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, Washington, and Moscow

355. Coping with a failing Pakistan

Author:
Stephen P. Cohen
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
As a state and a nation Pakistan has been in trouble for many years, but both now seem to be in a downward spiral. As a recent Brookings study observed, it is very difficult to predict Pakistan's short-term future, or the impact on its neighbours, let alone the wider international community. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, its history of irresponsible behaviour as a nuclear proliferator, the close ties between radical Islamists and Pakistan, and its continuing hostile relations with India and Afghanistan all complicate efforts to look ahead even five years, let alone to speculate about effective policies.
Topic:
Islam, Nuclear Weapons, and Politics
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia

356. Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia the Middle East

Author:
Matake Kamiya
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
For those who live in the American International Relations community, Etel Solingen's Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia the Middle East undoubtedly represents a stunning success of the study of nuclear proliferation. In 1994, Solingen published an influential article in this field of research, 'The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint', in International Security, and argued that countries with ruling coalitions pursuing economic liberalization have stronger incentives to refrain from developing nuclear weapons than those with 'inward-looking, nationalist, and radical-confessional coalitions'. Based on the review of cases in South Asia, on the Korean Peninsula, in the Middle East, and in Latin America, she concluded that the former are internationalist in nature and are unwilling to damage international trade and investment by going nuclear, whereas the latter are more likely to pursue nuclear weapons because they care much less about the economic costs of nuclearization. In Nuclear Logics, Solingen expands such findings of her 1994 article and argues even more persuasively that 'internationalizing models of political survival make the development of nuclear weapons less likely than inward-looking models' (p. 46). Starting from 'the puzzle of contrasting historical trajectories' across East Asia and the Middle East since the late 1960s (p. 4), Solingen conducts the first ever 'systematic efforts' (p. 11) to explain why East Asia has largely moved toward denuclearization while the norm among the core Middle East powers has been nuclearization. Criticizing four alternative theories of nuclear choices of states, i.e. neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism, and 'theories about democracy and foreign policy', as insufficient to solve her puzzle, Solingen insists that the study of nuclear proliferation must pay more attention to the effects of internationalization on domestic politics and nuclear policy. According to Solingen, '[w]hereas inward-looking models might have regarded nuclear weapons as assets in the arsenal of building regime legitimacy, outward-oriented ones regarded them as liabilities' (p. 277) and the two distinct patterns of nuclear choices in the Middle East and East Asia during the 'second nuclear age' can be well explained by the heavy regional concentrations of respective models in respective regions. In East Asia, the concentration of leaders who stake their political survival on economic growth through integration into the global economy reinforced individual, domestic incentives of leaders to avoid nuclearization across the borders. In the Middle East, the concentration of leaders who resist internationalization by trade protection, import substitution, and state entrepreneurship had the opposite effect. In fact, Solingen's careful case studies of four 'nuclear aspirants' in East Asia and five in the Middle East successfully demonstrate that '[t]he nuclear choices of all pertinent cases' in the two regions since the 1960s 'are compatible with domestic survival models' (p. 277).
Topic:
International Relations, Nuclear Weapons, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
America, Middle East, East Asia, and Korea

357. The Idea of a Strategist's Education

Author:
Steven Anthony Pomeroy
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This essay adopted from “Ancient Alexandria, Alexander, and History: The Relevance of Humanistic Thought in the Contemporary Strategic Environment,” a talk the author gave on December 28, 2009, Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, Colorado. The comments herein are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Unites States Air Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. The author wishes to thank the following professors: Colonel (Dr.) Thomas A. Drohan, Dr. James R. Titus, and Dr. John Farquhar of the Military and Strategic Studies Department at the United States Air Force Academy. The comments herein are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 406. Contending that nuclear weapons had fundamentally changed the character, if not the nature, of warfare, Brodie emphasized the importance of rigor and a scientific approach to strategic problem solving in the nuclear era.
Topic:
Climate Change, Education, Government, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States and Colorado

358. The Battle of Dubai: The United Arab Emirates and the U.S.-Iran Cold War

Author:
Karim Sadjadpour
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
As the United States seeks to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions through economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has come to play a critical yet often ambiguous role. The UAE, namely the emirate of Dubai, is a top source of Iranian imports and a key transshipment point for goods-legal and illegal-destined for the Islamic Republic. Dubai's bustling and loosely regulated ports have repeatedly frustrated international sanctions against Iran.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Dubai

359. Where Do We Stand in the Field of Nuclear Disarmament: What Is Next After the New START

Author:
Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Global Political Trends Center
Abstract:
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) agreement, without any doubt, has started a new debate on whether the international community has finally entered a renaissance in the field of disarmament after a long period of stalemate. In this regard, the New START agreement, together with the New York Nuclear Safety Summit of 2010 and the NPT Review Conference of 2010, seems to be creating a rather positive atmosphere. Yet, if one examines the discussions that took place at the US and the Russian parliament's before and after the ratification of the New START, he/she will come to the conclusion that the progress on nuclear disarmament, at the levels of both strategic and nonstrategic weapons, will not be an easy one. The situation will remain unchanged unless certain contentious military issues between Washington and Moscow are somehow resolved. In this regard, the next round of the New START agreement will be crucial. This situation will not only affect the future of the US and the Russian militaries' relationships to one another, but it will also change the balance of relations among the nuclear “haves” and “have nots” of the NPT Treaty. It is, therefore, expected that the NPT's two tracks, namely disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation, will be affected either in a positive or negative way in the future, depending on the evolution of the post New START era. Within this perspective, the possibility that US and Russia will implement new disarmament agreements has gained utmost importance in the aftermath of the New START for the future implications of the US President Barack Obama's “Global Zero Policy.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and New York

360. Attacks on Nuclear Infrastructure: Opening Pandora's Box?

Author:
Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Advocates argue that air strikes against the nuclear infrastructure of a targeted state can deny it the option of producing nuclear weapons or at least create delays in its nuclear weapons program. Critics counter that such attacks may intensify the state's determination to acquire nuclear weapons and make a difficult problem more challenging in the long term. Despite the apparent appeal of targeted strikes, states rarely resort to them.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq