Colin Kahl sent me a list of recent work he's done on the US-Iran standoff. The first is a CNAS report, Risk and Rivalry: Iran, Israel, and the Bomb (PDF). The abstract:As Iran's nuclear progress continues and negotiations fail to reach a breakthrough, the threat of...
International Affairs – the (increasingly policy oriented) official journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) has published a “virtual” issue of articles on the...
A recent credible report by the Democratic Voice of Burma that North Korea may have assisted Myanmar's junta to acquire nuclear weapons technology has raised concerns at the international and...
Even if the new sanctions against Iran prove effective at stopping an Iranian bomb, security analysts will not be able to breathe a sigh of relief. Eben Harrell in Time, April 8, 2010, explained the...
Something is brewing in the Middle East that merits close attention, because the more we learn about it, the more intriguing it becomes. It also brings home some chickens to roost, so to speak, for earlier Bush Administration foreign policy failures.Last week, Israel launched a highly secret air-strike deep into Syria. Despite the fact that Israel and Syria share a border (the direct route), the squadron of Israeli F-15's flew over the Med, through Turkey (a very close Israeli military ally), and dropped significant ordinance onto a Syrian target. The entire operation has been cloaked in...
Last Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill made a sudden and surprise visit to North Korea to talk directly with the North Korean government about their nuclear program.All I can say is-- its about (_______) time. And, it shows the power of good, pragmatic diplomacy.From 2001 through 2004, the Bush Administration held a very tough line toward North Korea--axis of evil, no direct talks, CVID, etc. This tough line was very popular with the Administration's base conservative philosophy about getting tough with the evil dictators around the world and not negotiating with...
Over the past two and a half years, I have been contacted periodically by an Iranian journalist for Fars News Agency who identifies himself (herself?) as Kia Kojouri (or maybe Kojoury). Note that the "informational materials" exemption to the U.S. embargo on Iran makes these kinds of exchanges perfectly legal. A few years ago, scholars circulated warnings about government interpretations of the sanctions law that made some rather ordinary intellectual activites illegal when involving Iranians. Later, however, that narrow interpretation was reversed.In any event, kia most recently asked for...
National Security is all about prioritizing tough decisions. Often, an administration can get away with avoiding the really tough calls, but from time to time, issues arise that force policy makers into pragmatic trade-offs between vital values and interests. Those choices are very instructive and insightful as to how a President sees the world. The NY Times reports that the Bush Administration faced just such a choice between its key goals of counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation:Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on...
What do other states think of America's nuclear arsenal and strategic posture? Defense analyst Lewis Dunn, with coauthors Gregory Giles, Jeffrey Larsen, and Thomas Skypek, recently completed a project sponsored by the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (ASCO) of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency that looked at this and related questions. Their report is available on the web: Foreign Perspectives on U.S. Nuclear Policy and Posture (warning: long pdf).On March 20, Dunn presented the findings at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Through his interviews with foreign individuals,...
I'm still reading reports of the North Korea nuclear deal, and I should have more to say as things develop. A few quick thoughts:1. The terms of the deal, at least as currently reported, seem reasonable. North Korea looks to get most of what it wants, but the benefits of a non-nuclear North Korea mitigate against that. The administration should ignore the howls of protest already emanating from hardliners. The US, Japan, and South Korea don't have any other good options. Military strikes are too costly, and the Chinese will only pressure North Korea so far in the current environment. As I...
I share Daniel Drezner's puzzlement concerning Jacques Chirac's retraction of pretty reasonable claims about the implications of Iranian nuclear proliferation for the Middle East. Example:Mr. Chirac said it would be an act of self-destruction for Iran to use a nuclear weapon against another country.“Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel?” Mr. Chirac asked. “It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed.” And:In the Monday interview, Mr. Chirac argued that Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon was less important than the arms race that would...
Yesterday, October 10, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked a number of questions about the apparent North Korean nuclear test. Here's my favorite:Q ...when you have a President who draws a red line three years ago and says, we will not tolerate nuclear weapons, and now you have a country that just tested a nuclear weapon -- you don't think it's fair to ask for some accountability as to what happened, or that there were mistakes made?MR. SNOW: David, the accountability lies in North Korea, not in Washington.Snow made many remarkable comments at that press conference, including...