The Institute for Science and International Security, founded by former United Nations IAEA nuclear inspector David Albright, released a report today warning that North Korea has “moved beyond laboratory-scale work” and now has the “capability to build” a highly enriched uranium-producing centrifuge plant. The report says North Korea’s centrifuge capabilities makes them “both a horizontal and a vertical proliferation threat.” The Washington Post further reports that the study “comes as a senior South Korean official warned that North Korea’s nuclear program is ‘evolving even now at a very fast pace,’” …
In her recent op-ed, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D–NH) expresses her favorable opinion about the New START Treaty that was voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. However, the op-ed, as well as the committee vote, raises more questions than answers. First, there were only 12 open and classified hearings examining the implications of New START for the national security of the United States. And as usual, the devil is in the details—with more than 20 witnesses, the minority was only allowed to hear testimony from three of …
On September 13, 2010, South Korea released an extensive report detailing North Korea’s responsibility for an unprovoked attack on the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan. The 313-page report provides overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that Pyongyang deliberately sank the Cheonan with a torpedo launched from a submarine. Although North Korea’s motives for this act of war remain uncertain, the evidence is beyond doubt. The report describes in minute detail the results of a five-nation, two-month long investigation. The report uses scientific methods to inextricably link Pyongyang to the egregious attack. The release …
Was it wise for the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration’s policy of distancing the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council? With the Council’s 15th session underway, it’s a question worth asking. The Council has been receiving more attention than unusual lately because the administration recently submitted a report on the U.S. human rights record for the Council’s Universal Periodic Review process. The report has led many to question what America gets out of membership on that body. In response, the U.S. ambassador to the Council, Eileen …
In The Wall Street Journal, John Bolton, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, raises significant concerns that the New START treaty will place numerical limits on conventional and non-conventional weapons launchers, delivery vehicles, and accountable warheads. These limitations will in turn weaken U.S. capabilities—not Russia’s. Bolton emphasized that a return to these Cold War limits would cripple our long-range conventional warhead delivery capability and severely constrain our nuclear flexibility and resiliency. And while limiting the quantity of weapons launchers is only one of many restrictions …
In yesterday’s New York Times, International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen reported: “Since taking office, President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world as a whole, to China, to Turkey and to Iran, but has devoted scant serious diplomatic energy to Europe.” Cohen then went on to quote prominent Paris-based defense analyst Camille Grand: “Europe is the object of benign U.S. neglect. Obama has not established or re-established a strategic relationship with any single European country or with Europe as a whole.” This analysis is dead on. In their …
North Korea’s status as an international pariah is richly deserved. The country is a proliferator of nuclear technology having helped build a Syrian nuclear site that was destroyed by Israel and is believed to be assisting Burma in its own clandestine nuclear program. North Korea successfully detonated two nuclear devices on October 9, 2006, and May 25, 2009 and the U.S. believes North Korea has enough plutonium for at least half a dozen nuclear weapons. The regime has been striving to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering these …
A recent story by Fox News provides yet another example of the United Nations Development Program’s refusal to accede to an unfortunate reality: that the organization’s efforts to work with, and through, the world’s most despotic regimes are regularly twisted to serve the goals of the regime rather than the people suffering under their rule. According to the story: An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it ‘disappointing,’ and ‘unsatisfactory,’ and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next …
Those following the debate over the New START treaty inked by Presidents Obama and Medvedev in April know that both governments dispute what it means. Russia says it’ll impose real restrictions on U.S. missile defenses. U.S. officials brush off those claims. The dispute centers on language in the preamble linking strategic offensive and defensive weapons and claiming such linkage “will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.” Treaty supporters in the U.S. say this language is merely rhetorical; it won’t restrict our ability to defend against missiles from …
The Obama Administration is apparently readying a “Fall Surprise” regarding its policy toward Cuba. The New York Times reports that the White House intends to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba and return to the “people-to-people” policies of the Clinton Administration. It will also reportedly make private assistance flows easier. Claimed one Democratic policy mandarin, the Administration has worked up “a smarter Cuba policy.” The decision to loosen restriction comes as Cuba’s mismanaged economy is again in free fall and seeks help from any quarter. Cubans recently were informed that …
