It has been two years since Ma Ying jeou was elected president of Taiwan. As he approaches the mid-term milestone, President Ma’s record is puzzling. On the one hand, he has made significant progress toward his most important goals. First, he’s stabilized cross-Strait relations. The tension that gripped Taiwan and China during the Chen years has abated, high-level visits have become routine and the two sides are engaged in energetic negotiations on a wide range of issues. Also, after taking a hard hit in the global economic downturn of 2008, Taiwan’s economy is bouncing back. Exports in December 2009 were almost 50 percent greater than December 2008, and economic forecasters predict a 2010 economic growth rate between 4 and 5 percent, although unemployment remains high. Ma has also rebuilt the all-important Taipei-Washington relationship, culminating in the Obama administration’s recent announcement that it would complete a long-awaited arms sale to Taiwan.
What is puzzling is that these successes have failed to endear President Ma to his constituents. On the contrary, his popularity has plummeted since the election, and today his personal approval ratings hover below 30 percent. The dissatisfaction extends to his party as well, and it’s been manifested concretely in elections. Ma’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT), won a far smaller share of the vote in December’s local elections than it captured in the previous round, and it lost 6 out of 7 legislative by-elections in January and February. Municipal elections at the end of this year already are being touted as a bellwether for the 2012 presidential race, when Ma is expected to seek a second term, and the trends do not look good. Hence the conundrum: Why are Ma’s successes in areas believed to be important to voters – reducing cross-Strait tension and reviving the economy – not boosting his approval ratings or his party’s political fortunes?
When Ma Ying-jeou was elected president two years ago, there was a widespread feeling that Taiwan would “get back to normal.” From 2000 to 2008, relations between Taipei and Beijing stagnated, mainly because PRC leaders refused contact with Taiwan’s Sino-skeptical president, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Chen Shui-bian. For eight years, neither Taipei nor Beijing was interested in taking the political risks that reaching out to the other side would have entailed, and in the absence of progress, tensions increased. Thus, the return to power of the KMT, Taiwan’s long-time ruling party, was a welcome development in Washington and Beijing – and in Taiwan, where voters gave Ma 58 percent of the presidential vote as well as a legislature in which his party controlled almost 75 percent of the seats.
If Ma’s election meant things were “getting back to normal,” two years into his presidency we have a clear picture of what “normal” really means in the Taiwan Strait. In Taiwan’s domestic politics, “normal” is a highly-competitive democracy in which the executive is forced to accommodate an active and activist legislature while defending its positions from an energetic – and politically viable – opposition. In cross-Strait relations, “normal” means little overt tension, but no great breakthroughs to permanently resolve the conflict between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
To understand the state of play in the Taiwan Strait it is helpful to keep in mind Robert Putnam’s “two-level game” metaphor for international negotiations. Beijing and Taipei are working together to design a framework for relations that allows for mutually-beneficial economic and people-to-people interactions while balancing the two sides’ long-term goals regarding international status and potential unification. Some of this work is conducted by representatives of the two governments in high-level, formal negotiations. The content of those negotiations is shaped and constrained by what Putnam calls “level two” interactions – more commonly known as domestic politics. In Taiwan’s case, Ma’s domestic weakness constrains the pace and content of cross-Strait rapprochement.
Under President Ma, elite-level interactions have been smoother than ever before, but that only accentuates the ways domestic politics limit Taiwan leaders’ options. Those limitations are more evident today in part because the game was suspended for most of the Chen era. When Chen took office, PRC leaders paused the game because they perceived little benefit in negotiating with Chen, whom they believed was irreversibly committed to a pro-independence line. In their view, a small group of “stubborn independence elements” had wrested political control from the pro-China mainstream. They hoped that refusing to deal with Chen would help to restore the mainstream to power.
When Ma was elected, Beijing was happy to resume play. In the view of Chinese leaders, Ma was an improvement, not only over his immediate predecessor, but over the previous president, Lee Teng-hui, too. To give Ma a solid start, Beijing was prepared to concede important points. Rather than repeating their demand that Taiwan agree to their One China Principle as the basis for reopening negotiations, PRC leaders accepted Ma’s endorsement of the 1992 Consensus (a bit of verbal hand-waving in which the two sides agreed to set aside the problem of defining the “one China” they both claimed to believe in) as “close enough.”
Once it restarted the game, Beijing quickly discovered that having the right elite-level interlocutor was only the beginning. Many Taiwanese found Chen’s Sino-phobic policies unnecessarily provocative, but that did not mean they were ready to support blindly whatever policy the next administration proposed. As the pace of elite-level interactions accelerated, the focus of the domestic political debated shifted from restraining Chen’s provocations to scrutinizing Ma’s performance. At first, voters gave Ma the benefit of the doubt, but new government’s record was disappointing, and voters began to lose confidence.
A number of factors contributed to the public’s waning trust in Ma. The lack of transparency in decision-making has been a particular concern. DPP leaders suggest high-ranking KMT cross-Strait specialists might be willing to compromise Taiwan’s autonomy in order to reach an agreement with Beijing. They argue that the government’s closed cross-Strait decision-making is dangerous, because these specialists, whether out of perfidy or naïveté, might fail to protect Taiwan’s interests.
To protect Taiwan from a badly-negotiated deal, Ma’s critics are demanding ECFA be subjected to formal ratification, either by popular referendum or in the legislature. Legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng, a KMT member, has said the legislature might overrule the ECFA deal if it does not meet lawmakers’ standards. President Ma chairs the KMT, so the lack of support for his policies within the party reinforces the sense that he and his inner circle lack a firm hand for dealing with opponents – and a firm hand is exactly what they need to deal effectively with the ever-tough negotiators from Beijing. Several of the KMT’s recent electoral set-backs resulted from local politicians rebelling against Ma’s attempts to clean up local politics, a development that further reinforces this impression.
Declining confidence in the Ma government also reflects the public’s sense that their leaders have not responded well to domestic crises. The government’s reaction to the disastrous typhoon last summer attracted enormous criticism, much of it focused on the perception that Ma had failed to register the impact of the disaster and react swiftly and proportionately. The government also has been hammered for dismissing popular fears about H1N1 vaccine and beef imported from the U.S.
Paradoxically, Ma’s political weakness at home may help him protect Taiwan’s interests in negotiations with Beijing. Taiwan’s economic, political and military power all are declining relative to the PRC, so the negotiations are in danger of becoming perilously uneven. The practical difficulty of ratifying a cross-Strait deal in Taiwan’s nervous domestic climate helps balance that asymmetry. In his discussion of two-level games, Putnam argues that authoritarian states are at a disadvantage in international bargaining for precisely that reason: they cannot plausibly claim that certain agreements will fail the test of domestic ratification. Leaders from democratic states can make that case, and they can extract concessions from the other side on those grounds. The dynamic that Putnam describes may benefit Taiwan, but it is no fun for the man caught in the middle: President Ma Ying-jeou.
Beijing is unlikely to find any Taiwanese leader easier to deal with than Ma, so it is in China’s interest to keep the relationship on a positive track – even if that means accepting slower progress than it would like. That logic helps to explain why, even as Chinese leaders fulminated against the U.S. for its decision to follow through on arms sales to Taiwan, they chose not to direct their venom at Taipei. Likewise, the PRC continues to send high-level representatives and delegations to Taiwan despite large protests, including one in November 2008 that trapped PRC representative Chen Yunlin in a hotel for hours. And in December 2009 the two sides signed three technical agreements, even after Taipei nixed a fourth proposal.
Beijing has even made limited concessions on Taiwan’s demand for international space, which Ma stated last year: “There is a clear link between cross-strait relations and our international space. We’re not asking for recognition; we only want room to breathe.” The two sides are conforming to a tacit “diplomatic truce” proposed by Ma shortly after his inauguration; neither has poached a diplomatic partner from the other since that time. In 2009, Beijing even withdrew its opposition to Taiwan’s efforts to secure observer status at the UN World Health Assembly. The Ma administration touted that development as a breakthrough, but his political opponents took him to task for the opacity of the process and for overstating the benefits Taiwan derived from the deal. In fact, the WHA decision was less a precedent-setting breakthrough than a one-off deal that could be revoked in the future – but the alternative was continued exclusion and isolation.
In sum, Beijing is so far tolerating the measured pace of cross-Strait engagement imposed by Taiwan’s domestic politics. PRC leaders seem confident that over time, their position will strengthen, so there is no need to push for faster progress now. The slow pace works well for Taiwan, too, where even baby steps make many people nervous. Still, there is a sobering side to this picture. If the process slows too much, PRC leaders may determine that no Taiwan leader, including Ma, is capable of delivering any of what Beijing is seeking and so lose patience. That would mean game over for the Ma Ying-jeou approach to cross-Strait rapprochement.
Read more!
Sunday, March 14
Tuesday, December 15
Pashtunistan and The Tournament of Shadows
The plan Obama unveiled last week for Years 9 and 10 of the war in Afghanistan left a basic question begging for an answer: If Al Qaeda is the threat, and Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, why send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
Read more!
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
Read more!
Saturday, December 5
Nuclear Energy Commerce - No effect of economic recession
At the beginning of 2008, the nuclear power industry's euphoria over the much-hyped "nuclear renaissance" was in full swing. But as that year drew to a close, the hopes for a revival seemed delayed, if not derailed, due to faltering world economies. Little has changed this year to alter that prospect. As the global financial crisis has continued, demand for energy has plummeted along with the world's stock markets. Such news may help calm international security experts, who fear that a proliferation of nuclear energy know-how could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. Yet in the current economic environment dangers persist and there are still plenty of reasons to worry.
Nuclear distrust. Even if the majority of new nuclear plans never come to fruition, mere high-level discussion of the nuclear energy option can lead neighboring states to develop nuclear technologies themselves. The links between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons create strong incentives for states to respond to any nascent nuclear weapons capability in a rival by preparing against that eventuality. The rival may merely be interested in nuclear power--but it might also be acquiring a weapons capability. Whether a single centrifuge ever spins or a single kilowatt is generated, the lurking fear of the dual-use option will lead to regional mistrust.
It already has.
The Middle East is a prime example. Iran, with each revelation about the extent of its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program, has given its neighbors more reasons to acquire their own dual-use capabilities. For instance, Egypt has announced plans to build a reactor at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean. Similarly, the Gulf Cooperation Council (consisting of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait) decided in 2006 that its members would cooperate on civil nuclear power with the first joint plant to be announced next year. Additionally, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates each have signed agreements to cooperate with the United States on nuclear energy. Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco also have shown interest in nuclear power—all after Iran's program came to light.
Aware of the growing concerns in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted earlier this year that Washington would be willing to offer security guarantees to help reassure its regional allies (e.g., upgrading allies' defenses and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella). Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, however, brushed off this suggestion pointing out that such an agreement would necessitate foreign troops in Egypt and implicitly accept Iran as a regional nuclear power.
South Asia's nuclear arms race is a case in point of what could happen in the Middle East. In 1974, India tested its "peaceful" nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert (manufactured partly by diverting technology and material from its civilian nuclear program). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi contacted her Pakistani counterpart Z. A. Bhutto, dismissing fears that the move had destabilized regional security. She wrote that the energy crisis, especially acute at that time, made it vital to exploit the potential of nuclear energy, which she described as a "ray of hope for mankind." Bhutto, however, had already begun a Pakistani military nuclear program, and the Indian detonation only added impetus to Islamabad's quest for the bomb. The race for a Pakistani nuclear weapon in the decades that followed allowed A. Q. Khan to create his nefarious proliferation network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran.
New Delhi's leadership long claimed that its nuclear program was part of its economic development efforts. (Tehran has echoed such claims.) This rationale, along with Cold War considerations, enabled New Delhi to successfully cajole donor countries that were worried about the diversion of civilian technology to military aims. Linking the country's nuclear program to development also allowed New Delhi's nuclear energy establishment to build domestic support and harness the combined strength of the country's democratic institutions, nationalism, and hopes for upward mobility.
Today India continues to use such arguments to defend its nuclear program, even as it has emerged as a major world economy. The U.S.-India agreement on civil nuclear cooperation--which is widely seen as tacit U.S. acceptance of India's nuclear arsenal--was promoted by New Delhi as a recognition of the country's technological sophistication and a way to ensure its future energy supplies and sustain its economic growth rate.
Blasts from the past. Beyond the security threats posed by individual countries seeking dual-use nuclear technologies, the international nonproliferation system itself has proven weak at stopping proliferation--specifically the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
When the NPT and the IAEA were created, they weren't given the full powers they needed to do their jobs effectively. In the decades after World War II, countries viewed nuclear power as an incredibly positive discovery, which was why developing countries fought to retain the right to nurture it indigenously. It was believed at the time that nuclear fission offered these countries the potential for a revolutionary leap into the future, enabling them to skip several stages of development. Thus developing nations fought long and hard to secure the inclusion of Article IV in the NPT, allowing the development of nuclear energy for specifically peaceful purposes.
And so, the pillars of the nonproliferation regime were founded with a divided mandate--both to control the spread of nuclear weapons through safeguards and verification regimes and to encourage the peaceful development of nuclear energy and science. The IAEA's founding statute vows that it "shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world." At the same time, the agency was intended to verify that there would be no "diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Yet such a distinction is difficult to make since knowledge of nuclear technology can be used both for good and for ill.
At the same time, certain non-nuclear weapon states wanted to guarantee that the agreement wouldn't deny them the potential to build a viable nuclear deterrent if it was some day required. Accordingly, the NPT doesn't restrict the size of civilian fissile material stockpiles. The treaty also has an exit provision that is relatively simple--a state can withdraw with 90 days notice if it judges that continued compliance would harm its "supreme interests." These flawed institutions and their mandates continue to stymie effective international nonproliferation efforts today.
Many have recognized the faults in the existing nonproliferation regime, and as such solutions have been proposed. Technical answers include so-called proliferation-resistant reactors. Other solutions involve institutional fixes, with different strategies for parceling out the various processes of the nuclear fuel cycle so that no one country can control or divert fissile material. These proposals PDF include arrangements for guaranteeing nuclear fuel supplies, international fuel banks, and multilateral control of reactors. While some nations are willing to accept such arrangements, others have balked.
A safer nuclear revival. If the international community truly hopes for a safe nuclear revival responses must go deeper. First, the international community must spare some time from tackling full-blown proliferation crises in Iran and North Korea to work with states like Egypt that are just starting civilian nuclear programs. To help build and sustain a coalition interested in keeping the application of nuclear energy strictly peaceful, the international community should:
Read more!
Nuclear distrust. Even if the majority of new nuclear plans never come to fruition, mere high-level discussion of the nuclear energy option can lead neighboring states to develop nuclear technologies themselves. The links between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons create strong incentives for states to respond to any nascent nuclear weapons capability in a rival by preparing against that eventuality. The rival may merely be interested in nuclear power--but it might also be acquiring a weapons capability. Whether a single centrifuge ever spins or a single kilowatt is generated, the lurking fear of the dual-use option will lead to regional mistrust.
It already has.
The Middle East is a prime example. Iran, with each revelation about the extent of its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program, has given its neighbors more reasons to acquire their own dual-use capabilities. For instance, Egypt has announced plans to build a reactor at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean. Similarly, the Gulf Cooperation Council (consisting of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait) decided in 2006 that its members would cooperate on civil nuclear power with the first joint plant to be announced next year. Additionally, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates each have signed agreements to cooperate with the United States on nuclear energy. Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco also have shown interest in nuclear power—all after Iran's program came to light.
Aware of the growing concerns in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted earlier this year that Washington would be willing to offer security guarantees to help reassure its regional allies (e.g., upgrading allies' defenses and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella). Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, however, brushed off this suggestion pointing out that such an agreement would necessitate foreign troops in Egypt and implicitly accept Iran as a regional nuclear power.
South Asia's nuclear arms race is a case in point of what could happen in the Middle East. In 1974, India tested its "peaceful" nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert (manufactured partly by diverting technology and material from its civilian nuclear program). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi contacted her Pakistani counterpart Z. A. Bhutto, dismissing fears that the move had destabilized regional security. She wrote that the energy crisis, especially acute at that time, made it vital to exploit the potential of nuclear energy, which she described as a "ray of hope for mankind." Bhutto, however, had already begun a Pakistani military nuclear program, and the Indian detonation only added impetus to Islamabad's quest for the bomb. The race for a Pakistani nuclear weapon in the decades that followed allowed A. Q. Khan to create his nefarious proliferation network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran.
New Delhi's leadership long claimed that its nuclear program was part of its economic development efforts. (Tehran has echoed such claims.) This rationale, along with Cold War considerations, enabled New Delhi to successfully cajole donor countries that were worried about the diversion of civilian technology to military aims. Linking the country's nuclear program to development also allowed New Delhi's nuclear energy establishment to build domestic support and harness the combined strength of the country's democratic institutions, nationalism, and hopes for upward mobility.
Today India continues to use such arguments to defend its nuclear program, even as it has emerged as a major world economy. The U.S.-India agreement on civil nuclear cooperation--which is widely seen as tacit U.S. acceptance of India's nuclear arsenal--was promoted by New Delhi as a recognition of the country's technological sophistication and a way to ensure its future energy supplies and sustain its economic growth rate.
Blasts from the past. Beyond the security threats posed by individual countries seeking dual-use nuclear technologies, the international nonproliferation system itself has proven weak at stopping proliferation--specifically the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
When the NPT and the IAEA were created, they weren't given the full powers they needed to do their jobs effectively. In the decades after World War II, countries viewed nuclear power as an incredibly positive discovery, which was why developing countries fought to retain the right to nurture it indigenously. It was believed at the time that nuclear fission offered these countries the potential for a revolutionary leap into the future, enabling them to skip several stages of development. Thus developing nations fought long and hard to secure the inclusion of Article IV in the NPT, allowing the development of nuclear energy for specifically peaceful purposes.
And so, the pillars of the nonproliferation regime were founded with a divided mandate--both to control the spread of nuclear weapons through safeguards and verification regimes and to encourage the peaceful development of nuclear energy and science. The IAEA's founding statute vows that it "shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world." At the same time, the agency was intended to verify that there would be no "diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Yet such a distinction is difficult to make since knowledge of nuclear technology can be used both for good and for ill.
At the same time, certain non-nuclear weapon states wanted to guarantee that the agreement wouldn't deny them the potential to build a viable nuclear deterrent if it was some day required. Accordingly, the NPT doesn't restrict the size of civilian fissile material stockpiles. The treaty also has an exit provision that is relatively simple--a state can withdraw with 90 days notice if it judges that continued compliance would harm its "supreme interests." These flawed institutions and their mandates continue to stymie effective international nonproliferation efforts today.
Many have recognized the faults in the existing nonproliferation regime, and as such solutions have been proposed. Technical answers include so-called proliferation-resistant reactors. Other solutions involve institutional fixes, with different strategies for parceling out the various processes of the nuclear fuel cycle so that no one country can control or divert fissile material. These proposals PDF include arrangements for guaranteeing nuclear fuel supplies, international fuel banks, and multilateral control of reactors. While some nations are willing to accept such arrangements, others have balked.
A safer nuclear revival. If the international community truly hopes for a safe nuclear revival responses must go deeper. First, the international community must spare some time from tackling full-blown proliferation crises in Iran and North Korea to work with states like Egypt that are just starting civilian nuclear programs. To help build and sustain a coalition interested in keeping the application of nuclear energy strictly peaceful, the international community should:
- Invite diplomats and scientists from nuclear aspirant countries to international forums and appeal to their professional and national interests by offering genuine technology transfers. The nuclear industry has a role to play here as well, once it recognizes that proliferation in one state or region will ruin its business prospects elsewhere.
- Reduce the prestige associated with nuclear technology. Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology has been motivated by a desire to raise its regional and international profile as much as it has been about providing energy and, potentially, weapons.
- Candid and objective discussion about the reality and feasibility of nuclear power plants (e.g., whether national electricity grids can accommodate them, whether a sophisticated and trained workforce exists to build and operate them, and whether countries can handle the long time frames that nuclear power entails from construction to eventual decommissioning) would help sort those that are genuinely interested in pursuing nuclear energy from those that are simply interested in raising their prestige and/or developing weapons.
- A genuine commitment from the dominant nuclear powers to the security concerns and requirements of weaker states. This would involve admitting that such states have genuine security needs, and viewing their nuclear choices not in isolation, but as responses to regional and global decisions. In the Middle East, for example, it would be a mistake to evaluate each attempt at nuclear development individually. Egypt seeks to frame the problem in terms of the denuclearization of the entire Middle East, thus drawing attention to both Israel and Iran, which is the focus of global attention.
- The nuclear weapon states should seriously rethink the wisdom of signing bilateral nuclear energy deals with supposedly "safe" allies in light of the persistent security challenges that nuclear technology poses and the ramifications of its development.
Read more!
Would Britain and US let Africa be Nuclear-weapon-free?
On July 15, the Pelindaba Treaty, which established Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone, finally entered into force. The treaty is the latest regional agreement to ban nuclear weapons in its area of application.
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
Friday, November 27
Obama and India
It was fitting that the first state visit to be received by the Obama administration, with a formal dinner held Tuesday, would be that of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Relations between the United States and India are of critical and increasing importance to both nations.
India is the world's second most populous country, a rising economic power and a functioning and stable democracy. It is also perfectly positioned - geographically, economically and politically - to be of help with a number of issues important to the United States. While hardly identical, U.S. and Indian interests intersect in ways that, for now at least, make the two nations natural allies.
The longstanding animosity between India and Pakistan is a festering problem that from time to time threatens to erupt into full-scale war. Given that both have nuclear weapons, this has the potential for disaster.
But the tension between those two nations also means India has an even greater interest than the United States in keeping the Taliban or al-Qaida from gaining more power in Pakistan, and in working toward stability in Afghanistan. In that Pakistan's leadership apparently sees continued unrest in Afghan-istan as in its interest, India has all the more reason to back U.S. efforts to stabilize that country. India is already one of Afghanistan's biggest donors.
Plus, so long as Pakistani leaders are wary of India, they are deterred from making too many demands of the United States, such as more vehemently insisting on an end to U.S. drone strikes that have proven so effective in killing al-Qaida leaders.
India is also the only country in Asia with the political will and the economic heft to serve as something of a counterbalance to China. It is already a major U.S. trading partner - to the tune of $61 billion in 2007 - and is rapidly emerging as a global leader in technology.
And in an important subtext, the visit also marked the furtherance of a civilian nuclear agreement between India and the United States, entered into by then-President George W. Bush. That treaty ended India's nuclear isolation - a policy enacted in response to its testing of a nuclear device in 1973 - and could allow it to set up a regional center for reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Again, the alternative would appear to be China, a country the United States considers guilty of helping to spread nuclear weapons technology.
At the televised press conference, Obama referred to the United States and India as “nuclear powers," phrasing that signaled both recognition of that reality and U.S. acceptance of it. Obama wants India's help in a nuclear security summit he reportedly wants to hold next spring in Washington.
“As nuclear powers," the president said, “we can be full partners in preventing the spread of the world's most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear material from terrorists, in pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons."
India is home to one of the world's greatest and most ancient civilizations, as well as the birthplace of several of humanity's most influential religions. The clear message of this meeting is that India is now also recognized as one of the world's great powers.
There is every reason to hope that common issues and values will also allow India to be this nation's great friend.
Read more!
India is the world's second most populous country, a rising economic power and a functioning and stable democracy. It is also perfectly positioned - geographically, economically and politically - to be of help with a number of issues important to the United States. While hardly identical, U.S. and Indian interests intersect in ways that, for now at least, make the two nations natural allies.
The longstanding animosity between India and Pakistan is a festering problem that from time to time threatens to erupt into full-scale war. Given that both have nuclear weapons, this has the potential for disaster.
But the tension between those two nations also means India has an even greater interest than the United States in keeping the Taliban or al-Qaida from gaining more power in Pakistan, and in working toward stability in Afghanistan. In that Pakistan's leadership apparently sees continued unrest in Afghan-istan as in its interest, India has all the more reason to back U.S. efforts to stabilize that country. India is already one of Afghanistan's biggest donors.
Plus, so long as Pakistani leaders are wary of India, they are deterred from making too many demands of the United States, such as more vehemently insisting on an end to U.S. drone strikes that have proven so effective in killing al-Qaida leaders.
India is also the only country in Asia with the political will and the economic heft to serve as something of a counterbalance to China. It is already a major U.S. trading partner - to the tune of $61 billion in 2007 - and is rapidly emerging as a global leader in technology.
And in an important subtext, the visit also marked the furtherance of a civilian nuclear agreement between India and the United States, entered into by then-President George W. Bush. That treaty ended India's nuclear isolation - a policy enacted in response to its testing of a nuclear device in 1973 - and could allow it to set up a regional center for reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Again, the alternative would appear to be China, a country the United States considers guilty of helping to spread nuclear weapons technology.
At the televised press conference, Obama referred to the United States and India as “nuclear powers," phrasing that signaled both recognition of that reality and U.S. acceptance of it. Obama wants India's help in a nuclear security summit he reportedly wants to hold next spring in Washington.
“As nuclear powers," the president said, “we can be full partners in preventing the spread of the world's most deadly weapons, securing loose nuclear material from terrorists, in pursuing our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons."
India is home to one of the world's greatest and most ancient civilizations, as well as the birthplace of several of humanity's most influential religions. The clear message of this meeting is that India is now also recognized as one of the world's great powers.
There is every reason to hope that common issues and values will also allow India to be this nation's great friend.
Read more!
Wednesday, November 18
India and the CTBT: The debate in New Delhi
An article by By A. VINOD KUMAR in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Nov 2009
From the very start of the nuclear age, India was a vociferous proponent of a nuclear test ban. To wit, in 1954, India initiated a global call at the U.N. Disarmament Commission for an end to nuclear testing and a freeze on fissile material production. Likewise, in 1978 and 1982 at the Special Sessions on Disarmament, India proposed measures for banning nuclear testing, and in 1988, it introduced the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. These proposals were shaped by the belief that banning nuclear testing would be an irreversible step toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons within a specific time frame. However, after co-sponsoring a resolution for a test ban treaty in November 1993, India reversed course and tried to block the treaty text that was negotiated at the Conference on Disarmament. This stance was actually ideologically consistent, since India felt that the treaty was flawed because it wasn't linked to a time-bound disarmament plan.
Another crux of India's argument against the CTBT was the perilous security environment in South Asia, in which India had limited options as a non-nuclear weapon state to deal with the lurking challenges from China's nuclear arsenal and Pakistan's nascent weapons program. By signing the CTBT, India would have foregone the right to test nuclear devices, yet its primary nuclear-armed adversary, China, would be able to retain its nuclear weapons under the treaty and could even upgrade them through subcritical experiments. Pointing to this disparity, an Indian representative told the U.N. General Assembly in September 1995: "[We note that] nuclear weapon states have agreed to a CTBT only after acquiring the know-how to develop and refine their arsenals without the need for tests. . . . Developing new warheads or refining existing ones after [the] CTBT is in place, using innovative technologies, would be . . . contrary to the spirit of [the] CTBT." Later, New Delhi demanded a "complete cessation of nuclear tests in all environments and for all time" and "a binding commitment . . . within an agreed time frame, toward the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free world."
Specifically, New Delhi felt that the CTBT was inadequate in terms of securing disarmament commitments from the nuclear weapon states under declared deadlines. It saw this as a discriminatory replication of the imbalance inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime, in which nuclear weapon states are weakly obligated to disarm and non-nuclear weapon states are strongly obligated to remain non-nuclear. The lack of commitments by the nuclear weapon states to eliminate their nuclear weapons under a declared time frame also compelled India to oppose Article XIV of the NPT, which stipulates the CTBT's entry into force after 44 "Annex 2" countries sign and ratify it.
Clearly, much has changed since then. India's 1998 nuclear tests, growing nuclear arsenal, and partial integration into the nonproliferation regime via the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) waiver that was part of the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear deal--along with the Obama administration's moves to revive the treaty--have caused New Delhi to reconsider its approach to the CTBT. Although opposition to the treaty remains, several domestic justifications for a nuclear test ban have emerged. For example: In addition to the pressure likely to be placed on India to join the ban if the United States and China ratify the treaty, there is also apprehension in New Delhi that prospective supplier states will stipulate India's commitment to a test ban as a precondition for nuclear trade. Such concerns are underscored by the fact that many NSG members, while granting the India-specific waiver, wanted India to convert its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing into a legal pledge by signing the CTBT.
Many in India do continue to cite the lack of sufficient disarmament commitments as central to their opposition to the CTBT, but today this argument is weaker--especially because India is now a de facto nuclear weapon state. The shift from being a nuclear "have-not" to a nuclear "have" dramatically altered the Indian perspective on the CTBT. Consequently, it will no longer be tenable for India to hold on to the old argument of discrimination against have-nots. Instead, like other nuclear weapon states, India will have to ensure that the CTBT (and any other nonproliferation mechanism) will not impinge on its strategic weapons program. In other words, India's status as a de facto nuclear weapon state now places it in the same mode of thinking that the NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states held during CTBT negotiations in the mid-1990s.
Test ban opponents in India defend this position by arguing that its strategic program needs to be safeguarded until a credible disarmament process begins. On a sublime note, some in India will contend that the CTBT remains improvident until the nuclear weapon states commit to a time-bound disarmament framework. Yet to get the ball rolling on eliminating nuclear weapons, India passes the responsibility to the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council (the five nuclear weapon states recognized under the NPT). India has few justifications for its disinclination to propose any initiatives for a phased, definitive disarmament process--although a reasonable rebuttal would be its June 1996 statement to the Conference on Disarmament: "Countries around us continue their weapon programs. . . . India cannot accept any restraints on its capability if other countries remain unwilling to accept the obligation to eliminate their nuclear weapons."
Such arguments notwithstanding, the strongest hindrance to Indian support for the CTBT today revolves around two questions that have perplexed Indians over the past decade. First, does India really have a credible minimum deterrent that would allow it to continue to abstain from further tests? And second, is India's nuclear establishment capable of improving its existing arsenal without the aid of nuclear testing? Though the public is assured that a credible minimum deterrent does exist, some analysts passionately contend that India's purported deterrent has not yet matured to that point in terms of number or yield. India's arsenal, they argue, must be improved--especially its thermonuclear devices--via further testing, and hence, a global test ban cannot be joined. Similarly, an influential third party in the scientific and strategic communities assumes that full-scale nuclear testing will be needed for future weapon designs and argues for keeping the testing option open. That Chinese military modernization is in full swing empowers this faction to obstruct progress toward an Indian test-ban commitment.
During the debate in New Delhi over the U.S.-India nuclear deal, worries about India's freedom to conduct future nuclear tests and potential complications in nuclear commerce were prominent. To soothe these fears, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government assured the Indian Parliament that the nuclear deal wouldn't preclude India's ability to undertake nuclear tests. Singh reportedly also assured a group of disgruntled nuclear scientists that the strategic nuclear program was safe and promised to secure the wherewithal for its future augmentations.
Such promises have hampered the scope for positive political action in India on the CTBT; the government now will have a tough job convincing parliament of the prudence of signing the treaty. Even a mere political call to abdicate the right to future testing will happen only after the nuclear scientific establishment, as well as the national security establishment, certifies the credibility of the existing arsenal, and the former verifies that the nuclear complex is capable of subcritical testing and simulation-based improvisations. Getting the nuclear establishment's support for the CTBT, however, may not be difficult, considering that by endorsing the CTBT it is basically confirming its capability to refine the arsenal without full-scale nuclear testing and its confidence in the Indian minimum deterrent. Further, a forceful political push could neutralize the naysayers even within the establishment.
A greater political challenge could be how to justify stepping away from New Delhi's past history of disarmament advocacy, because India's accession to the CTBT in its present form could imply an abandonment of its disarmament ideals or even contradict its own disarmament activism at previous CTBT negotiations. As a result, it will be difficult for New Delhi to support the CTBT unless the treaty adopts structural changes with new, clear linkages to a time-bound disarmament process.
Any Indian decision ultimately will be influenced by the ratification process in the U.S. Congress. Many in India profoundly believe that some in the U.S. military and Republican Party might resist and stall the ratification process. The reported proposal to reinstate the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program is seen as an illustration of the U.S. military's mindset on nuclear weapons. There is a dominant feeling among New Delhi's strategic analysts that the U.S. military will use the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review to push for the modernization of its nuclear forces, an effort that could have implications for the CTBT ratification process.
However, if Congress manages to resist such pressures and ratifies the CTBT, it could trigger a domino effect among other non-signatories. India would then be left with few options but to truly reconsider its official stance regarding the CTBT.
Read more!
After Kim Jong-il ?
On June 1, members of the South Korean National Assembly's Intelligence Committee received some clarity about who would replace Kim Jong-il as North Korea's leader. A high official in Seoul's National Intelligence Service informed them that Kim had designated his 26-year-old third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. According to the National Intelligence Service, Kim Jong-il had ordered the North's military, politicians, and officials in overseas missions to swear allegiance to Kim Jong-un after Pyongyang's May nuclear test. This succession plan wasn't entirely surprising. In his 2003 memoir, Kenji Fujimoto, the Kim family's longtime chef, predicted that Kim Jong-un would replace his father, explaining that he was Kim Jong-il's favorite. According to Kim Jong-il's Chef, Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son, lost his father's confidence after being deported from Japan for using a false passport in May 2001, and Kim Jong-chol, the second son, was seen too weak to lead.
A few months earlier, Kim Jong-il supposedly had appointed Kim Jong-un as inspector of the country's prominent National Defense Commission, which supervises Pyongyang's national defense and which Kim Jong-il chairs. The inspector is a low-level position, but Kim Jong-un's position is expected to soar--much as his father's did in the 1960s and the 1970s. (Kim Jong-il was named inspector of the Workers' Party in 1964, and eventually, he was appointed to its second highest position.) To further bolster his son's standing, prominent Kim family members were named to the commission at about the same time. Specifically, Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and a department director of the Workers' Party, became a member of the commission and appears to be Kim Jong-un's patron, and O Kuk-ryol, another department director of the Workers' Party, became the commission's vice chairman.
To say the least, Pyongyang has a unique political culture that's hard to understand by any outside standard. It is a pre-modern dynastic state founded in 1948 by Kim Jung-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who ruled the country for the next 46 years. As a result, most of its prominent political and military appointments are intertwined and based on family networks. For instance, Kim Kyung-hee, Kim Jong-il's younger sister, controls the country's Department of Light-Industry, which directs ministries in the cabinet related to the production of smaller industrial goods; her husband, Jang Song-taek, oversees an important department in the Workers' Party; and Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il's half brother is ambassador to Poland. Meanwhile, Choe Ryong-hae, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hwanghae Provincial Committee, is the son of a former minister of the North Korean Armed Forces; and Hong Sok-hyong, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hamgyong Provincial Committee, is the son of a former vice prime minister.
Such familial networks extend across the North Korean government and help explain its recent provocative behavior--such as its April rocket launch, May nuclear test, and June threat to enrich uranium.
The country's elites constantly worry about the security of their positions if a successor were to arise from outside the Kim family. At the moment, their fears are particularly acute because Kim Jong-un's position isn't secure. His ascension to power has been rather quick, leaving little time to consolidate support, unlike Kim Jong-il who spent decades following a detailed succession plan outlined by his father. (Kim Jong-il's succession had three stages--first, in 1974, an informal decision was made that he would succeed his father; second, in 1980, he became a standing member of the Workers' Party Political Bureau; and finally, in 1993, he took his father's place as chairman of the National Defense Commission.) To ensure a smooth transition, the North's elite is willing to do whatever it takes to strengthen Kim Jong-un in the eyes of those in the country's government and military who aren't blood relatives. The result is a deliberately tense atmosphere intended to strengthen internal solidarity and bolster the succession. This tension will remain until Kim Jong-un is accepted by the military, Workers' Party, and cabinet.
In this way, it's not unlike the final moments of Kim Jong-il's ascension to power, where confrontation with the outside world was used to forge favorable conditions for domestic political change. In April 1993, a month before Kim Jong-il succeeded his father as National Defense Commission chairman, North Korea proclaimed a "state of semi-war" after disputes with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Washington concerning special inspections of its suspected nuclear sites. Two weeks later, the North declared it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The importance of the North's nuclear weapons.
If the North cannot secure long-term regime stability by manufacturing external strife to engender internal solidarity, it will do so by continuing its nuclear program. Although Pyongyang's nuclear activities date back to the 1950s, the 1994 Agreed Framework curbed its nuclear ambition with promises by the United States to provide light water reactors and by seemingly offering a path toward normalized U.S.-North Korean relations. But once George W. Bush took office and preemption became an official U.S. policy, the North renewed its push for nuclear weapons. And while U.S.-North Korean relations seemed to warm late in the Bush administration's tenure, in the summer of 2008 any and all perceived political gains disappeared when Pyongyang met its Six-Party Talks obligations and demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear site but the Bush team demanded still more concessions before it would fulfill its own obligations.
A few days later, Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, and the regime's interest in nuclear weapons intensified. Now regime survival was the primary issue. In particular, the North's second nuclear test in May was interpreted by experts in South Korea as a sign that Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear capability unless it received a guarantee that the regime's future was secure. Moreover, after the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution condemning the nuclear test and expanding sanctions against the regime, Pyongyang vowed that it would never give up its nuclear program. Although the North's nuclear ambitions originally stemmed from external threats--e.g., the United States--it now has two additional functions: (1) to strengthen the regime's control over its people; and (2) to be used as a bargaining chip for continued international aid.
Ultimately, Pyongyang wants to be treated like Pakistan and India, both of whom possess nuclear weapons outside of the framework of the NPT while still maintaining normal relations with Washington. Pakistan, for instance, receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid despite its nuclear arsenal, and India's economic ties with the United States only grow stronger even as New Delhi remains firmly opposed to joining the nonproliferation regime in any formal sense. Last year, Washington even agreed to lift its 30-year moratorium on nuclear trade with India, allowing it to assist with New Delhi's civilian nuclear energy program. North Korea wants similar accommodations.
Whether or not it receives such a deal, history indicates that some sort of negotiations will restart eventually. In 1998, the North began talking with Washington about a missile moratorium even though it had just recently launched a long-range missile. Pyongyang also came back to the Six-Party Talks after another long-range missile launch in July 2006 and a nuclear test that October. The real difference today is the transition in leadership to Kim Jong-un. Because the 26-year-old isn't established domestically yet, he is probably more apt to rely on the military's support and back policies that it favors. To truly become a viable leader, though, he should focus on developing the country's economy, which is in shambles. Obviously, reengaging with the United States and South Korea would help achieve this end. (It's worth noting that unlike his father, Kim Jong-un was educated abroad, and therefore, he might be more open to negotiating with the international community.)
At the moment, the North appears interested in talking to Washington. In August, an official from Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations visited New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to convey that the North wanted bilateral talks with Washington. This could be interpreted as evidence that Kim Jong-un has established himself in the domestic power structure.
How China and Russia fit in.
Beijing has been reluctant to comment on the North's leadership transition, hoping it can be accomplished without incident. This might explain why it strongly denied that Kim Jong-un had visited China in June, describing such reports as "a story like a 007 novel." Kim Jong-un's closest aide did visit China recently, however. It's likely that he was tasked with informing Beijing about the leadership change, as his visit coincided with Kim Jong-il's order for overseas North Korean officials to swear their allegiance to his son. Eventually, North Korea also will need Russia's help to facilitate Kim Jong-un's ascension.
Until now, Beijing and Moscow have tried to implement a balanced policy toward Pyongyang. But if the North remains reluctant to rejoin the Six-Party Talks or to take part in a meaningful dialogue with the United States, Chinese and Russian support will weaken. It's doubtful that North Korea could overcome such a split with its patrons, especially China. Beijing accounted for 73 percent of Pyongyang's annual foreign trade in 2008. China also provides enormous food and energy aid to the North. After North Korea's second nuclear test, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that Beijing was "resolutely opposed" to the test and demanded an end to any activity that might worsen the situation. Beijing is concerned that North Korea's aggression could cause Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea to develop either nuclear weapons of their own or elaborate missile defense programs--with the help of the United States, something that makes China particularly uncomfortable. In the meantime, Beijing is worried about the potential in North Korea for domestic tumult and the enormous influx of refugees it could bring. This helps explain China's reluctance to impose tough sanctions on North Korea.
In the context of succession, North Korea (and Kim Jong-un specifically) will need to rely on Beijing more than ever before, as it is the only economic and diplomatic partner Kim Jong-un has in the short-term--along with Russia, of course. Plus, Chinese and Russian support will be crucial to legitimizing him both domestically and internationally.
Barack Obama weighs in.
During its first year in office, the Obama administration has carefully watched the situation in North Korea. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the region in February, she specifically mentioned that a crisis was possible when the leadership transfer formally took place. Likewise, at a June conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a U.S. official who was quoted anonymously said that he didn't believe North Korea would return to the Six-Party Talks until succession was settled. It would appear that the U.S. administration is taking a wait-and-see approach and adjusting its diplomatic strategies accordingly.
That could be part of the reason why the Obama administration has been sending contradictory messages to the North. On the one hand, it frequently talks about how it won't reward North Korea's provocative behavior; yet on the other hand, it states that it won't abandon diplomacy. An example of this helter-skelter approach in practice: In March, Washington offered to send its special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang to discuss the nuclear issue. But once Pyongyang accepted, the United States reversed course, insisting that the North return to the Six-Party Talks first.
Obama must face one reality, however: It will take a long time to fully complete the leadership transfer from Kim Jong-il to Kim-Jong-un because the elder Kim's health isn't critical at the moment. (Kim Jong-il met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in August for more than three hours, and he frequently visits industrial areas throughout the North.) Therefore, the current U.S. "wait-and-see" strategy could backfire, as Washington might be waiting for a very long time to see the younger Kim take control. In the meantime, the North Korean nuclear program could reach a point of no return.
Read more!
A few months earlier, Kim Jong-il supposedly had appointed Kim Jong-un as inspector of the country's prominent National Defense Commission, which supervises Pyongyang's national defense and which Kim Jong-il chairs. The inspector is a low-level position, but Kim Jong-un's position is expected to soar--much as his father's did in the 1960s and the 1970s. (Kim Jong-il was named inspector of the Workers' Party in 1964, and eventually, he was appointed to its second highest position.) To further bolster his son's standing, prominent Kim family members were named to the commission at about the same time. Specifically, Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and a department director of the Workers' Party, became a member of the commission and appears to be Kim Jong-un's patron, and O Kuk-ryol, another department director of the Workers' Party, became the commission's vice chairman.
To say the least, Pyongyang has a unique political culture that's hard to understand by any outside standard. It is a pre-modern dynastic state founded in 1948 by Kim Jung-il's father, Kim Il-sung, who ruled the country for the next 46 years. As a result, most of its prominent political and military appointments are intertwined and based on family networks. For instance, Kim Kyung-hee, Kim Jong-il's younger sister, controls the country's Department of Light-Industry, which directs ministries in the cabinet related to the production of smaller industrial goods; her husband, Jang Song-taek, oversees an important department in the Workers' Party; and Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il's half brother is ambassador to Poland. Meanwhile, Choe Ryong-hae, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hwanghae Provincial Committee, is the son of a former minister of the North Korean Armed Forces; and Hong Sok-hyong, the chief secretary of the Workers' Party North Hamgyong Provincial Committee, is the son of a former vice prime minister.
Such familial networks extend across the North Korean government and help explain its recent provocative behavior--such as its April rocket launch, May nuclear test, and June threat to enrich uranium.
The country's elites constantly worry about the security of their positions if a successor were to arise from outside the Kim family. At the moment, their fears are particularly acute because Kim Jong-un's position isn't secure. His ascension to power has been rather quick, leaving little time to consolidate support, unlike Kim Jong-il who spent decades following a detailed succession plan outlined by his father. (Kim Jong-il's succession had three stages--first, in 1974, an informal decision was made that he would succeed his father; second, in 1980, he became a standing member of the Workers' Party Political Bureau; and finally, in 1993, he took his father's place as chairman of the National Defense Commission.) To ensure a smooth transition, the North's elite is willing to do whatever it takes to strengthen Kim Jong-un in the eyes of those in the country's government and military who aren't blood relatives. The result is a deliberately tense atmosphere intended to strengthen internal solidarity and bolster the succession. This tension will remain until Kim Jong-un is accepted by the military, Workers' Party, and cabinet.
In this way, it's not unlike the final moments of Kim Jong-il's ascension to power, where confrontation with the outside world was used to forge favorable conditions for domestic political change. In April 1993, a month before Kim Jong-il succeeded his father as National Defense Commission chairman, North Korea proclaimed a "state of semi-war" after disputes with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Washington concerning special inspections of its suspected nuclear sites. Two weeks later, the North declared it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The importance of the North's nuclear weapons.
If the North cannot secure long-term regime stability by manufacturing external strife to engender internal solidarity, it will do so by continuing its nuclear program. Although Pyongyang's nuclear activities date back to the 1950s, the 1994 Agreed Framework curbed its nuclear ambition with promises by the United States to provide light water reactors and by seemingly offering a path toward normalized U.S.-North Korean relations. But once George W. Bush took office and preemption became an official U.S. policy, the North renewed its push for nuclear weapons. And while U.S.-North Korean relations seemed to warm late in the Bush administration's tenure, in the summer of 2008 any and all perceived political gains disappeared when Pyongyang met its Six-Party Talks obligations and demolished the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear site but the Bush team demanded still more concessions before it would fulfill its own obligations.
A few days later, Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, and the regime's interest in nuclear weapons intensified. Now regime survival was the primary issue. In particular, the North's second nuclear test in May was interpreted by experts in South Korea as a sign that Pyongyang was determined to keep its nuclear capability unless it received a guarantee that the regime's future was secure. Moreover, after the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution condemning the nuclear test and expanding sanctions against the regime, Pyongyang vowed that it would never give up its nuclear program. Although the North's nuclear ambitions originally stemmed from external threats--e.g., the United States--it now has two additional functions: (1) to strengthen the regime's control over its people; and (2) to be used as a bargaining chip for continued international aid.
Ultimately, Pyongyang wants to be treated like Pakistan and India, both of whom possess nuclear weapons outside of the framework of the NPT while still maintaining normal relations with Washington. Pakistan, for instance, receives billions of dollars in U.S. aid despite its nuclear arsenal, and India's economic ties with the United States only grow stronger even as New Delhi remains firmly opposed to joining the nonproliferation regime in any formal sense. Last year, Washington even agreed to lift its 30-year moratorium on nuclear trade with India, allowing it to assist with New Delhi's civilian nuclear energy program. North Korea wants similar accommodations.
Whether or not it receives such a deal, history indicates that some sort of negotiations will restart eventually. In 1998, the North began talking with Washington about a missile moratorium even though it had just recently launched a long-range missile. Pyongyang also came back to the Six-Party Talks after another long-range missile launch in July 2006 and a nuclear test that October. The real difference today is the transition in leadership to Kim Jong-un. Because the 26-year-old isn't established domestically yet, he is probably more apt to rely on the military's support and back policies that it favors. To truly become a viable leader, though, he should focus on developing the country's economy, which is in shambles. Obviously, reengaging with the United States and South Korea would help achieve this end. (It's worth noting that unlike his father, Kim Jong-un was educated abroad, and therefore, he might be more open to negotiating with the international community.)
At the moment, the North appears interested in talking to Washington. In August, an official from Pyongyang's mission to the United Nations visited New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to convey that the North wanted bilateral talks with Washington. This could be interpreted as evidence that Kim Jong-un has established himself in the domestic power structure.
How China and Russia fit in.
Beijing has been reluctant to comment on the North's leadership transition, hoping it can be accomplished without incident. This might explain why it strongly denied that Kim Jong-un had visited China in June, describing such reports as "a story like a 007 novel." Kim Jong-un's closest aide did visit China recently, however. It's likely that he was tasked with informing Beijing about the leadership change, as his visit coincided with Kim Jong-il's order for overseas North Korean officials to swear their allegiance to his son. Eventually, North Korea also will need Russia's help to facilitate Kim Jong-un's ascension.
Until now, Beijing and Moscow have tried to implement a balanced policy toward Pyongyang. But if the North remains reluctant to rejoin the Six-Party Talks or to take part in a meaningful dialogue with the United States, Chinese and Russian support will weaken. It's doubtful that North Korea could overcome such a split with its patrons, especially China. Beijing accounted for 73 percent of Pyongyang's annual foreign trade in 2008. China also provides enormous food and energy aid to the North. After North Korea's second nuclear test, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that Beijing was "resolutely opposed" to the test and demanded an end to any activity that might worsen the situation. Beijing is concerned that North Korea's aggression could cause Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea to develop either nuclear weapons of their own or elaborate missile defense programs--with the help of the United States, something that makes China particularly uncomfortable. In the meantime, Beijing is worried about the potential in North Korea for domestic tumult and the enormous influx of refugees it could bring. This helps explain China's reluctance to impose tough sanctions on North Korea.
In the context of succession, North Korea (and Kim Jong-un specifically) will need to rely on Beijing more than ever before, as it is the only economic and diplomatic partner Kim Jong-un has in the short-term--along with Russia, of course. Plus, Chinese and Russian support will be crucial to legitimizing him both domestically and internationally.
Barack Obama weighs in.
During its first year in office, the Obama administration has carefully watched the situation in North Korea. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the region in February, she specifically mentioned that a crisis was possible when the leadership transfer formally took place. Likewise, at a June conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a U.S. official who was quoted anonymously said that he didn't believe North Korea would return to the Six-Party Talks until succession was settled. It would appear that the U.S. administration is taking a wait-and-see approach and adjusting its diplomatic strategies accordingly.
That could be part of the reason why the Obama administration has been sending contradictory messages to the North. On the one hand, it frequently talks about how it won't reward North Korea's provocative behavior; yet on the other hand, it states that it won't abandon diplomacy. An example of this helter-skelter approach in practice: In March, Washington offered to send its special representative for North Korea policy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang to discuss the nuclear issue. But once Pyongyang accepted, the United States reversed course, insisting that the North return to the Six-Party Talks first.
Obama must face one reality, however: It will take a long time to fully complete the leadership transfer from Kim Jong-il to Kim-Jong-un because the elder Kim's health isn't critical at the moment. (Kim Jong-il met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in August for more than three hours, and he frequently visits industrial areas throughout the North.) Therefore, the current U.S. "wait-and-see" strategy could backfire, as Washington might be waiting for a very long time to see the younger Kim take control. In the meantime, the North Korean nuclear program could reach a point of no return.
Read more!
Nuclear Notebook: Worldwide deployments of nuclear weapons
An article by By Robert S. Norris & Hans M. Kristensen in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Nov 2009
By far the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons reside in Russia and the United States, which possess 96 percent of the total global inventory (91 percent if you count only operational nuclear weapons). In addition to the seven other countries with nuclear weapon stockpiles (Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan), five non-nuclear NATO allies (Belgium, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) host about 200 U.S. nuclear bombs at six air bases.
The United States.
At the end of the Cold War, the United States maintained thousands of nuclear weapons outside of its borders on land and on the high seas.2 Ever since, however, Washington has significantly consolidated its arsenal—a trend that is likely to continue. For example, the single remaining nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany is in stark contrast to the estimated 75 distinct nuclear weapons storage facilities that were located there in the mid-1980s. Today, U.S. weapons are stored at a total of 21 locations in 13 states and 5 European countries.
Russia.
We estimate that Russia stores nuclear weapons permanently at 48 domestic locations, a dramatic reduction compared to the roughly 500 storage facilities it used before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union’s collapse and the end
of the Cold War triggered a withdrawal of Soviet nuclear weapons from forward locations in Eastern Europe, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In all, Moscow consolidated to less than 250 sites by the mid-1990s, fewer than 100 sites by 1997, and about 90 sites by 1998.
Since then, additional consolidation has taken place because of (1) the declared completion of the movement of all nonstrategic warheads to central storage locations by 2002; (2) consolidation of warhead production at two facilities; and (3) additional strategic force reductions under the Moscow Treaty.4 (Russia provides information about the location of deployed strategic nuclear weapons accountable
under the 1991 START treaty. The locations of other categories of nuclear weapons and their warheads, however, are not disclosed.)
Many sites that once stored weapons are still maintained because a nearby base—such as bases for Tu-22M Backfire and Su-24 Fencer bombers or Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft—continues to have a nuclear strike mission. The Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Ukraine also has a nuclear capability, but the weapons probably have been withdrawn to central storage in Russia. If the fleet relocates to Novorossiysk
when the lease of the Sevastopol area expires in 2017, a nuclear weapons storage facility might be built there as well.
Russian permanent nuclear weapon storage locations fall into three main categories: operational warheads at Strategic Rocket Force, air force, and navy bases; reserve/retired warheads at national-level storage sites; and warheads at assembly/disassembly factories.
One uncertainty when counting Russian nuclear weapons storage sites is whether the number includes overall sites or individual storage facilities co-located within a site. For example, the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Program statement in 2000 indicated that Russia had 123 nuclear weapons storage locations where it has requested security assistance, apparently counting separately fenced
areas within large national storage facilities. As a result, a large storage site with eight separately fenced areas would have been counted as eight sites instead of one.6 Using similar counting methods, the National Nuclear Security Administration recently listed 73 Russian warhead sites, including 39 navy sites, 25 Strategic Rocket Force sites (on 11 bases), and nine 12th Main Directorate sites.7 Our best estimate is 48 permanent nuclear weapons storage sites, many of which include several individually fenced storage bunkers.
Britain and France.
London and Paris have reduced the size of their arsenals and limited where their weapons are deployed. Britain only has one type of nuclear weapon, the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), since nuclear-powered ballistic submarines located at two facilities in Scotland. Facilities that previously housed navy strike and depth bombs and air forcebombs have been closed. France has retained two types of nuclear weapons: SLBMs at a submarine base in Bretagne and air-to-surface missiles for aircraft located at three air force bases and one
naval base.
China, Pakistan, and India.
Beijing, Islamabad, and New Delhi are quantitatively and qualitatively increasing their arsenals and deploying weapons at more sites, yet the locations are difficult to pinpoint. For example, no reliable public information exists on where Pakistan or India produces its nuclear weapons. Thus, we have used commercial satellite images, expert studies, and local news reports and articles to make the assumption that nuclear weapons are likely to be at, or near, wherever nuclear-capable weapon systems are deployed.
Whereas many of the Chinese bases are known, this is not the case in Pakistan and India, where we have found no credible information that identifies permanent nuclear weapons storage locations. (Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances; India is thought to store its nuclear warheads and bombs in central storage locations rather than on bases with operational forces.) But, since all three countries are expanding their arsenals, new bases and storage sites probably are under construction.
Israel and North Korea.
Israel is a wild card because of the opacity of its nuclear weapons program. In other words, it’s difficult to know whether or not there are any changes in its nuclear arsenal. If so, they seem to be modest and probably rely on existing facilities. Either way, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances. We are not aware of credible information on how North Korea
has weaponized its nuclear weapons capability, much less where those weapons are stored. We also take note that a recent U.S. Air Force intelligence report did not list any of North Korea’s ballistic missiles as nuclear-capable.
Read more!
Can Tiger attack Dragon?
There are scores of articles in every major newspaper and every major magazine comparing India with China on various economic progress indicators. There are even books written about Tiger of India pitted against Dragon of China. To those who base their opinions on such reports, articles and books, it looks as though India is posing a strong completion to China, when in fact every measurable economic indicator suggests that China is clearly leading India on all fronts. Moreover the gap between these two countries is only widening with each passing year. And yet, many Indian commentators continue to complacently believe that India has some edge somewhere when in fact none exists.
The tone of these reports and analysis comparing India with China suggest that India is actually inching towards China. That is not the case. In reality China is leaving behind India by a bigger margin every year. It is becoming tougher and tougher for India to catch up. In the last few years, Chinese have built the biggest dam on the planet, built the longest bridges, built the fastest cities, built their own planes, submarines, ships, magnetic trains, and even the highest railways while India continued to lay another layer of asphalt on its decrepit roads after each rainfall.
India is not even showing a promise of catching up. None of its policies suggest this. None of its initiatives give a glimmer of hope. Even the Indian industry is not thinking big. It is still content to play a small game.
Is English really India’s edge?
Indian commentators continue to tell us that all this China-leading-India comments are based in myth, because Indians have English which Chinese don’t have.
Is English really India’s edge? Only when India looks at itself as servicing the West using its BPOs then yes, English gives India the edge. However, if the competitor is bent on actually creating its own technology product industry to take on the West, does English still matter?
When was the last time a Japanese car company could not sell its cars because the makers were not good at English? When was the last time someone in Europe balked at buying a Sony Walkman because its makers couldn’t speak English? When it comes to China, how come their lack of good English not stop Huawei from becoming world #2 in telecom equipment? How come it did not stop Lenovo, Haier and ZTE from becoming leading global brands? Just to give a perspective to Indian readers – 2 telecom equipment companies of China, Huawei and ZTE put together made USD 30 Billion in 2008 while the entire IT-ITES industry of India put together made USD 58 Billion in 2008-09.
China is changing the rules of the games. It is taking on the West where the West has dominated so far, bringing the fight closer to the technology leaders, while India has conveniently told itself that it will not even play this game.
Indians are in self-denial. They foolishly believe everything Thomas Friedman tells them, and they are happy serving their European and American masters setting up BPOs, KPOs, LPOs, software services, helping them do their things in a cheap and cost-effective way, while Chinese are poised to take on these European and American masters head on. It’s as though the Chinese have completely overthrown their colonial inferiority complex.
For many years now, Indians gloated over the characterization that India is good at software services while China is good at manufacturing. This was a convenient characterization that only Indians believed because the books were written in English which only Indians could understand. Chinese blissfully unaware of what Friedman said were not constrained by this characterization and hence clearly violated all hierarchies.
Indians limited themselves to serving the West. When they looked in the mirror, they said, “I am an Indian. I am good at services. I should just stick to it”. That India is only good at software services became a cultural phenomenon with every major industry bigwig repeating it on various forums. Even Indian government fell into this trap where all incentives and subsidies were geared only to promote the software services companies. Go to a hardware park in India and compare it with a software park in India, you will recognize the step-motherly treatment meted out to the hardware companies.
India made no attempts at taking on China in manufacturing. Nor did they attempt to take on the West to go up the value chain to actually deliver technology and products. The Flat World theories told them that they can just concentrate on what they were good at, that is Software Services, KPOs, BPOs and LPOs, giving up on manufacturing forever thereby handing over the race on a silver platter to China, and giving up on technology products thereby continuing to serve the West.
China not only won the race in manufacturing and consolidated its position, it is now entering the technology product space, the domain held closely by the European, American and Japanese technology leaders. What more, it has started to beat these leaders at their own game. Huawei has recently won the contract to supply 3G equipment in Norway, the bastion of Nokia. While India made feeble attempts with C-DOT and ITI who are not even able to sell into BSNL, China has launched not one but two major telecom companies – Huawei and ZTE, that not only sells within their countries, they sell to BSNL also.
CK Prahlad in his closing comments at Nasscom Summit of February 2009 advised that Indian companies should foster more startups because they are the ones which bring vibrancy to the economy. His advice comes late, and even when it comes, it falls on deaf ears.
Infosys, TCS and Wipro, the giants of Indian software services which Thomas Friedman lauds, did not do much to sponsor or promote startups in India (barring few exceptions).
Their presence in India did not help any startup, except that many ex-employees went out and started companies on their own without any support or encouragement from these parent companies.
Meanwhile, China has launched extensive nationwide program to promote entrepreneurship in China. I was told that even a district head, equivalent to Indian District Collector, could invest up to half a million US dollars to a company that sets up shop in his district. Writing about China, a report says:
An analysis of documenting the tremendous growth of the Chinese entrepreneurial and cultural initiatives since the demise of Communist leader Mao Zedong reveals that this accounts for the Chinese economy’s double digit growth in the last couple of decades. [1]
It is clear to some countries that startups are essential for the growth in economy. Not so, thinks India. Indian has never believed in startups. They don’t think they add up to anything. The government is obsessed with giants because they look at them as employment provider – therefore the bigger the employer the better it is. Not a single major initiative has been taken in the last few years to promote startups in India. While the government boasts of loans to SMEs, when startups actually approach the banks, they feign ignorance of any such initiative.
All initiatives and decision making bodies in India are headed by people who have been good software services and therefore there is not a single policy that actually aids home grown brands, products and technologies. STPI still thinks that software is exported only as floppy, ftp or a CD. If you put that software in telecom equipment, a mobile handset, or a DVD player, then it does not recognize it as software and hence are not given the incentives. If Apple existed in India, there is not category for recognizing it. The prevailing mood is clear – you serve a foreign master you get the incentives; you try to become a master you don’t get any incentives.
Also, there are not many places a startup can raise funds in India. That’s why most startups continue to be family-owned or family-backed. First generation entrepreneurs find it impossible to raise money. The number of VC firms in India is limited while the government funds are small. Most government funds are small and therefore their mandate does not allow them to fund big ideas, while the miniscule few bigger size funds do not fund loss-making companies – which completely rules out startups.
China, on the other hand, is actively promoting startups through various forums and incentives. Though it is a communist country it hosts millions of entrepreneurs and VC firms which is aiding its economy.
China currently has over 200 million entrepreneurs and it houses 200 venture capital firms. The country accounts for 24.6% of the total entrepreneurship activities across the world, far ahead of Indian at 13.9% and the US at 14%, according to a survey by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.
About 116 Chinese companies are listed on NASDAQ, as against 2568 US firms, Israel’s 63, and a handful from India, says the study. [1]
China is even popularizing entrepreneurship as a cultural attitude with various initiatives including TV programs.
…a Chinese reality TV show “Win in China” has received applications for entrepreneurial ventures from over 1,20,000 aspirants. Of these, 108 were chosen for prize money and working capital of $5 Million. [1]
Indians don’t know what to do. They are confused. They don’t know if they are socialist or capitalist. The reality is that they are clueless – they are neither capitalist nor socialist. China is both socialist and capitalist playing these two cards really well. The only floating hope for Indians has been their mastery of English. And the following observation should submerge that hope as well.
To give competition to India and other cost-effective English speaking countries like the Philippines, millions of Chinese students are learning English systematically. “China will become the largest English speaking geography in the world by the end of this year”, Compton added. [1]
What’s your opinion?
Read more!
Monday, November 9
EU Presidency - Figurehead or Powerful Blair
In the end, Tony Blair’s great European adventure seems to have been a balancing act too far. As prime minister, Mr Blair built a career on political acrobatics. He was the Labour politician who left in place great chunks of Thatcherism. As prime minister, he swore he was a true European (the “most European of Englishmen”, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy once said) even as he defended opt-outs from such policies as ending internal European Union passport controls. More than any British leader, he backed closer European defence co-operation—and then he split Europe by joining America in Iraq.
But high-wire acts hurt when they fail. And, at an EU summit in Brussels on October 29th and 30th, Mr Blair fell, watching his bid to become the first permanent president of the European Council collapse. Mr Blair needed leaders to agree that he was a sincere European, and they could not. He needed his fellow socialists to admit he was one of them, and they declined (the centre-left Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, said Mr Blair represented “Bush and the war in Iraq”.)
The post at issue is not “president of Europe” but a narrower job, created by the Lisbon treaty, to chair meetings of the union’s 27 national leaders, and speak for them abroad, for up to five years. It replaces a rotating system under which countries set the agenda for, and chaired, EU summits for six months.
EU jobs were not on the agenda of this summit. Mr Blair was not even in Brussels. But he dominated the corridor talk. Officially, EU leaders were waiting for final treaty ratification, which came a few days later on November 3rd, after the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, ended a one-man campaign to resist Lisbon and signed it, paving the way for another summit to discuss top jobs. Yet even before Mr Klaus climbed down, leaders had found proxy means of debating Mr Blair.
At the October summit, socialists from Spain, Portugal, Austria and the European Parliament said their block should get the other big job created by Lisbon, that of high representative for foreign policy. Because the left controls a minority of EU governments and cannot claim both top jobs, that was code for ditching Mr Blair. Meeting socialist colleagues before the summit, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, testily urged them to “get real” and back Mr Blair. His browbeating failed. Euro-socialists say their top candidates for high representative are David Miliband, the British foreign secretary (who may prefer to stay in national politics), and Italy’s Massimo D’Alema, a wily ex-communist who was quite a successful foreign minister.
On the right, Mr Sarkozy declined to repeat his endorsement of Mr Blair. Sphinx-like, he would say only that EU jobs rarely went to early front-runners. In late-night briefings, the French murmured that Britain’s EU opt-outs were “not an advantage” for Mr Blair. In truth, Mr Sarkozy’s chief concern is to stick close to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. He announced proudly that France and Germany would jointly support candidates for the top jobs. Ms Merkel, a Christian Democrat, is more tribal than Mr Sarkozy. She reportedly feels the centre-right should provide the first council president, as it controls most national governments. The president should also come from a “small country”, she briefed German reporters, at least this time.
That will have big consequences for the EU and its image. Whatever people think of Mr Blair, making him president would have signalled that the EU wanted a spokesman with direct access to world leaders. Mr Blair’s apparent demise as a candidate (British officials loyally insist he still has a chance, once EU leaders ponder the unpalatable alternatives) signals the opposite. So does the rise of such alternative frontrunners as the Dutch or Luxembourgeois prime ministers, or the current darling of the corridors, Herman Van Rompuy, a clever, Haiku-writing ascetic who is prime minister of Belgium. Mr Van Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, is an Atlanticist and (a bit) less of a Euro-fanatic than previous Belgian prime ministers. He is endearingly modest: indulging in his first foreign caravan holiday this summer, he declared that at his age “you are allowed to go a bit mad”. But as prime minister, his main experience of international disputes is a Belgo-Dutch spat over the dredging of the River Scheldt.
Turning inwards, not outwards
When speaking jointly as the European Council, it turns out, EU leaders do not want to talk to the world. They want to talk to themselves. Pointing out that the new high representative will have lots of money and staff, as people in Brussels do, cannot hide this essential lack of ambition: he or she will be a peer of the world’s foreign ministers, not of its leaders.
The Blair saga also casts alarming light on Britain’s Conservative Party. Their foreign affairs chief, William Hague, told EU ambassadors in London that making Mr Blair president would be a “hostile” act. David Cameron, the Tory leader, called for a modest “chairmanic” head of the European Council. The Tories offered two arguments: that voters were denied a referendum on Lisbon so Mr Blair had no right to the job, and that Mr Blair would make the post too big a deal.
Britain was, indeed, denied a Lisbon referendum. But it is hard to see how Tory interests are advanced by helping a Belgian federalist into a top EU job. An even bigger Tory mistake is the belief that a modest president will mean a modest Europe. It will not. It means, rather, that the bit of the EU machine that directly represents national governments will have a weaker voice, to the advantage of the more federalist institutions: the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Europe is about balancing interests. Mr Blair knew that—just a little too well for his own, or Europe’s, good.
Read more!
But high-wire acts hurt when they fail. And, at an EU summit in Brussels on October 29th and 30th, Mr Blair fell, watching his bid to become the first permanent president of the European Council collapse. Mr Blair needed leaders to agree that he was a sincere European, and they could not. He needed his fellow socialists to admit he was one of them, and they declined (the centre-left Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, said Mr Blair represented “Bush and the war in Iraq”.)
The post at issue is not “president of Europe” but a narrower job, created by the Lisbon treaty, to chair meetings of the union’s 27 national leaders, and speak for them abroad, for up to five years. It replaces a rotating system under which countries set the agenda for, and chaired, EU summits for six months.
EU jobs were not on the agenda of this summit. Mr Blair was not even in Brussels. But he dominated the corridor talk. Officially, EU leaders were waiting for final treaty ratification, which came a few days later on November 3rd, after the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, ended a one-man campaign to resist Lisbon and signed it, paving the way for another summit to discuss top jobs. Yet even before Mr Klaus climbed down, leaders had found proxy means of debating Mr Blair.
At the October summit, socialists from Spain, Portugal, Austria and the European Parliament said their block should get the other big job created by Lisbon, that of high representative for foreign policy. Because the left controls a minority of EU governments and cannot claim both top jobs, that was code for ditching Mr Blair. Meeting socialist colleagues before the summit, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, testily urged them to “get real” and back Mr Blair. His browbeating failed. Euro-socialists say their top candidates for high representative are David Miliband, the British foreign secretary (who may prefer to stay in national politics), and Italy’s Massimo D’Alema, a wily ex-communist who was quite a successful foreign minister.
On the right, Mr Sarkozy declined to repeat his endorsement of Mr Blair. Sphinx-like, he would say only that EU jobs rarely went to early front-runners. In late-night briefings, the French murmured that Britain’s EU opt-outs were “not an advantage” for Mr Blair. In truth, Mr Sarkozy’s chief concern is to stick close to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. He announced proudly that France and Germany would jointly support candidates for the top jobs. Ms Merkel, a Christian Democrat, is more tribal than Mr Sarkozy. She reportedly feels the centre-right should provide the first council president, as it controls most national governments. The president should also come from a “small country”, she briefed German reporters, at least this time.
That will have big consequences for the EU and its image. Whatever people think of Mr Blair, making him president would have signalled that the EU wanted a spokesman with direct access to world leaders. Mr Blair’s apparent demise as a candidate (British officials loyally insist he still has a chance, once EU leaders ponder the unpalatable alternatives) signals the opposite. So does the rise of such alternative frontrunners as the Dutch or Luxembourgeois prime ministers, or the current darling of the corridors, Herman Van Rompuy, a clever, Haiku-writing ascetic who is prime minister of Belgium. Mr Van Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, is an Atlanticist and (a bit) less of a Euro-fanatic than previous Belgian prime ministers. He is endearingly modest: indulging in his first foreign caravan holiday this summer, he declared that at his age “you are allowed to go a bit mad”. But as prime minister, his main experience of international disputes is a Belgo-Dutch spat over the dredging of the River Scheldt.
Turning inwards, not outwards
When speaking jointly as the European Council, it turns out, EU leaders do not want to talk to the world. They want to talk to themselves. Pointing out that the new high representative will have lots of money and staff, as people in Brussels do, cannot hide this essential lack of ambition: he or she will be a peer of the world’s foreign ministers, not of its leaders.
The Blair saga also casts alarming light on Britain’s Conservative Party. Their foreign affairs chief, William Hague, told EU ambassadors in London that making Mr Blair president would be a “hostile” act. David Cameron, the Tory leader, called for a modest “chairmanic” head of the European Council. The Tories offered two arguments: that voters were denied a referendum on Lisbon so Mr Blair had no right to the job, and that Mr Blair would make the post too big a deal.
Britain was, indeed, denied a Lisbon referendum. But it is hard to see how Tory interests are advanced by helping a Belgian federalist into a top EU job. An even bigger Tory mistake is the belief that a modest president will mean a modest Europe. It will not. It means, rather, that the bit of the EU machine that directly represents national governments will have a weaker voice, to the advantage of the more federalist institutions: the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Europe is about balancing interests. Mr Blair knew that—just a little too well for his own, or Europe’s, good.
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
