by Daryl G. Kimball
North Korea's second and the world's 2,052nd nuclear weapon test explosion represents yet another low in the long-running multilateral diplomatic effort to freeze and verifiably dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities. Pyongyang's test blast is also a stark reminder of the need to finally bring about a permanent, global test ban.
Coming just two years after North Korea agreed to refreeze its plutonium separation operations and disable some of its key nuclear facilities in accordance with the 2005 Six-Party denuclearization agreement, North Korea's estimated 2-4 kiloton test blast, missile launches, and renewal of plutonium separation are reckless and exasperating.
But we've seen this behavior before. In each of the past three major nuclear-related crises in 1994, 2002, and 2006 - when Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test - North Korea has raised the stakes with provocative actions. Each time, U.S.-led diplomacy, backed by sanctions, has led to agreements involving food aid, fuel, and offers of normalized relations in exchange for verifiable constraints on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Since there is no viable or prudent pre-emptive strike option and punitive sanctions alone cannot stop North Korea's nuclear and missile buildup, the latest crisis requires a renewed diplomatic push, led by Washington, combined with the implementation of more effective economic, military, and political sanctions that have the full support of North Korea's main trading partner, China.
Containing the North Korean nuclear threat will likely be even more difficult this time around. Kim Jong Il's poor health and an opaque succession process probably mean that North Korea's leadership will be reluctant to return to the path of verifiable disarmament for a year or more.
For now, North Korea possesses fissile material for fewer than a dozen bombs. It is not yet capable of delivering working nuclear warheads on long-range ballistic missiles. Such a threat is still deterrable without the United States or other countries resorting to nuclear weapons threats.
But if left unchecked, North Korea can and will separate more plutonium (at a rate of about one bomb per year), and conduct more nuclear tests. If desperate enough, it could sell some of its fissile material to third parties. Over time, Japan and South Korea might reconsider their nuclear options, which would lead to even more instability and the unraveling of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
So far, the Obama administration, which had hardly begun to re-engage Pyongyang following last year's impasse over the verification of North Korea's denuclearization, has promised that North Korea will "pay a price" for its defiance. Diplomats have been deployed to reassure allies in the region. International condemnation has been strong, swift, and universal. The UN Security Council will likely call for enhancing the implementation of the sanctions authorized by Resolution 1718.
But history shows that punitive sanctions and stern lectures will not by themselves halt North Korea's nuclear activities or force the collapse of the already-isolated regime. As he has done with his policy toward Iran, Obama must reject the false ideology that dialogue with adversaries is a reward for bad behavior. Rather than waiting in vain for North Korea to return to the Six-Party negotiating table while it improves its nuclear and missile capabilities, Obama should authorize official and non-official direct talks with senior North Korean officials to gather facts, and resolve differences regarding the implementation of the Six-Party agreement.
Most importantly, such talks are needed not only to clarify the costs of further defiance, but also to highlight the benefits of cooperation. The United States must outline, again and in detail, the security assurances, trade benefits, and energy support that the U.S. and other regional allies would be prepared to provide if North Korea once again halted its nuclear and missile programs, ended its proliferation behavior, and dismantled its nuclear complex.
China must also step up and exert its diplomatic and economic influence to rein in the North's provocative behavior. Beijing's leaders should be more concerned about the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea triggering a full-blown East Asian arms race than the possibility that tighter sanctions might lead to a refugee crisis. China, which accounts for 73 percent of North Korea's international trade, must do its part by helping to shut down trade in military items, and luxury items, and joining others in using financial sanctions to shut down entities involved in Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs.
Without bold U.S. and Chinese diplomatic leadership to contain proliferation in North Koreas well as steps that would strengthen the global nonproliferation system - including ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiation of a global fissile material production cutoff - Pyongyang's test may become a nuclear proliferation tipping point.
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Testing the World's Patience
Lots of Hedging, Little Leading: An Analysis of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission Report
by Hans M. Kristensen and Ivan Oelrich
Among the flood of security policy reports issued in recent months, one of the most
anticipated has been the one from the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture
of the United States.1 The panel, which Congress established last year, is a bipartisan, 12-member group of policy veterans, headed by former Secretaries of Defense William Perry, the commission’s chairman, and James Schlesinger, the vice chairman.
The report, released May 6, is supposed to help guide the Obama administration’s Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR), which is scheduled to be completed within the next year.
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Toward a Legally Binding Arms Trade Treaty: An Interview with British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Bill Rammell
Bill Rammell serves as minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs in the United Kingdom. His responsibilities encompass the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran; counterterrorism; counterproliferation; the Far East and Southeast Asia; North America; drugs and international crime; and migration policy. Arms Control Today met with Rammell May 5 to discuss the United Kingdom’s efforts on an arms trade treaty and other international arms control issues.
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Enhanced Prospects for 2010: An Analysis of the Third PrepCom and the Outlook for the 2010 NPT Review Conference
by Rebecca Johnson
The just-concluded third Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting for the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference has been heralded as a much needed
success story, with much of the credit given to the Obama administration’s more positive
approach to multilateral diplomacy and arms control.
In the most constructive and collegial atmosphere seen in an NPT meeting since 2002, the agenda and all significant procedural decisions for 2010 were adopted expeditiously in the first week of the May 4-15 meeting in New York. Barring any unforeseen and dramatic deterioration in relations, there is an excellent chance that next year’s review conference will be able to open smoothly and get down to work without the kind of frustrating procedural delays that marred the 2005 NPT Review Conference.1 Although the PrepCom was not able to agree on substantive recommendations to transmit to the review conference, the negotiations on the chair’s three successive drafts established a useful framework for forward-looking recommendations to be negotiated in 2010 and provided a reality check on the commitments that different states will seek to include in or exclude from the documents that emerge from next year’s conference.
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BOOK REVIEW: Facing the Reality of the Bomb
by Barclay Ward
Better Safe Than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb
By Michael Krepon
Stanford University Press, 2009, 270 pp.
President Barack Obama's enlightened statement April 5 in Prague on the future of nuclear weapons raised the possibility that we are at a turning point in our long life with the atomic bomb. What we do now will depend a great deal on how much we have learned over these years. One of the uniquely important aspects of Michael Krepon's excellent book is that, among other things, it is a book about learning and forgetting.
Click here to return to the full article.In Memoriam: Herbert York
by Katherine Magraw
Herbert York, who began his career as a Manhattan Project nuclear physicist and later became a champion of arms control, died May 19. He was 87.
Recruited for the Manhattan Project before he was 21, York's career in weapons research and technology advanced rapidly. He was the first director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, holding that post from 1952 to 1958. He also was the co-founder and first chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in 1958 and a member of the first President's Science Advisory Committee from 1958 to 1961.
Click here to return to the full article.N. Korean Nuclear Test Prompts Global Rebuke
by Peter Crail
North Korea conducted its second nuclear test May 25, prompting international condemnation for violating UN demands and raising tensions in the region. The test comes a month after North Korea declared that it would no longer participate in multilateral talks on its denuclearization and would carry out nuclear and missile tests to strengthen its deterrent capability. (See ACT, May 2009.) After the test, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) struck a similar note, saying the blast was "part of the measures to bolster up [North Korea's] nuclear deterrent for self-defense."
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Progress Seen in Iranian Missile Test
by Peter Crail
Iran carried out its first successful flight test of a two-stage solid-fuel ballistic missile May 20, demonstrating increasing sophistication with its medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), U.S. officials and technical experts said.
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Pakistani Nuclear Stocks Safe, Officials Say
by Peter Crail
Pakistani and U.S. officials have sought to allay increasing concerns in recent months that instability in Pakistan might threaten the security of Islamabad's nuclear weapons. Pakistani security forces have been engaged in open conflict with militant factions that now control large areas of the country's northwestern territories.
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U.S., UAE Sign New Nuclear Cooperation Pact
by Daniel Horner
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States signed a new version of their nuclear cooperation agreement May 21, signaling President Barack Obama's support for a pact that boosters have portrayed as a model for the development of nuclear energy in the Middle East but that critics have said does not go far enough in that regard.
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Congress Weighs Iran Sanctions, Diplomacy
by Peter Crail
Congressional committee leaders are prepared to delay consideration of new legislation intended to stiffen existing sanctions aimed at Iran's energy sector in order to allow time for the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue to make progress, according to public and private statements from Capitol Hill.
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Nonproliferation Budget Sees Some Hikes
by Cole Harvey and Daniel Horner
The Obama administration is asking Congress for significant funding increases in programs designed to secure nuclear material in Russia and detect radioactive material passing through the world's busiest ports, according to budget documents released in May.
But the proposed budget would also reduce funding for some other nonproliferation initiatives, including the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. The request partially reflects President Barack Obama's pledge, made during his April 5 speech in Prague, to "set new standards, expand our cooperation with Russia, [and] pursue new partnerships" in order to "secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years." However, Thomas D'Agostino, who heads the Department of Energy's semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said in congressional testimony that the fiscal year 2010 budget request is not fully representative of the president's four-year plan because budget planning for that fiscal year already was well under way when Obama took office and spelled out his goals to the NNSA. Fiscal year 2010 begins Oct. 1, 2009.
Click here to return to the full article.Obama Shifts U.S. Stance on CTBTO Funding
by Meri Lugo and Daniel Horner
The Obama administration's fiscal year 2010 budget request for the Department of State includes $26 million for the U.S. contribution to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), the first request to meet or exceed the CTBTO's assessed contribution since the Clinton administration.
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Obama Budget Seeks Rise in Tritium Capacity
by Daniel Horner
The Obama administration's fiscal year 2010 budget request includes funds to increase production capacity for tritium, a radioactive gas used to boost the explosive power of U.S. nuclear weapons, even as the U.S. government is taking steps to scale back the amount of tritium it produces.
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Missile Defense Programs, FY 2009 and 2010
by Cole Harvey
he fiscal year 2010 Department of Defense budget request, released in May, provides additional detail on the Obama administration's refocusing of U.S. missile defense efforts. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates outlined the reorientation at an April 6 press conference. (See ACT, May 2009.) The revised approach emphasizes terminal-phase missile defense programs over midcourse and boost-phase ones. The following table compares major missile defense programs in the fiscal year 2010 request with requests and appropriations from fiscal year 2009.
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U.S., Russia Continue Talks on START
by Cole Harvey
U.S. and Russian delegations met in Moscow May 18-20 for the first full-fledged negotiations on a successor to START and said the talks went well.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State called the talks in Moscow "positive" but declined to provide any substantive details on the ongoing negotiations.
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CD Breaks Deadlock on Work Plan
by Cole Harvey
The Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) agreed on a program of work May 29, ending 12 years of deadlock. The 65-member conference, which operates by consensus, agreed to negotiate a verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, or a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT). The CD also agreed to enter into substantive discussions on nuclear disarmament, the prevention of an arms race in outer space, and assurances that non-nuclearweapon states will not be attacked with nuclear weapons. The CD agreed to establish working groups to consider all four issues.
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