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Non-Proliferation

North Korea Will Not Be the End of the Security Council

Japan's vice minister for foreign affairs is going a little over the top here:

"If we don't do adequate and swift action for these serious violations, the existence of the Security Council as a meaningful institution will become doubtful," Ito said. "The adequate reaction is to adopt a resolution," he said.

"This is a serious problem for regional peace and security. And also this is a big test for the United Nations Security Council."

North Korea violated a Security Council resolution, so yes, this is a serious issue for the Security Council. But a North Korean missile clearly won't be blowing up UN headquarters anytime soon. So what is the minister, Shintaro Ito, really upset about? That the United States and Japan differ on whether companies to be sanctioned for abetting North Korea's attempted launch should be named before or after a resolution. Really? The Security Council will effectively disintegrate over that?

More substantively -- but not much -- there is the question of whether the Council will issue a "resolution" or a "presidential statement" objecting to the launch. The latter is conventionally described as "weaker," though, as Tim Fernholz points out, the likes of Charles Krauthammer would likely just deride any such resolution as "weak" anyway.  Moreover, this seems like rather an overhyped kerfuffle over a missile that completely flubbed in its objectives.

The reality here is that China and Russia don't want to come out too harsh on North Korea. That is a problem, but it is not a reason to scrap the Security Council.

(image of Shintaro Ito)

U.S. to Join Nuclear Talks With Iran

Good news on both the international cooperation and effective non-proliferation policy fronts:

Six big powers said on Wednesday they would invite Iran for talks to try to solve a dispute over its nuclear programme and, in a major shift, the United States said it would take part in future talks with Tehran. The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said in a statement they would ask European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana to invite Tehran to a meeting to find "a diplomatic solution to this critical issue."

Go figure -- if you want a country to end its nuclear weapons programs, it helps to actually talk to that country.

UPDATE: The Cable stresses that the U.S. will be at the table "from now on."

How nuclear non-proliferation apparently became laughable

Sure, it's easy to criticize the goal of no nuclear weapons -- articulated yesterday by President Obama -- as excessively optimistic (not quite calling him a "hope-mongerer," but close). And not all of the critiques are as tendentiously partisan as Bill Kristol's. Anne Applebaum reasonably points out that the French and the Brits, let alone the Indians or the Pakistanis or the Chinese, might not be so keen on kissing their nukes goodbye. Thomas Barnett warns, only a little jokingly, that we might need nukes for outer-space visitors who might not like us. And Judah Grunstein doesn't think that this is the time for non-proliferation:

I'd suggest further that such a volatile and uncertain historical moment isn't the best time to tear down the scaffolding that's held the global security order together for the past fifty-odd years.

The problem with this "bad timing" argument is that, according to these conditions, it will never be a good time to pursue non-proliferation. The world is always "volatile and uncertain;" this is not a reason not to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons, which only make the world more volatile and uncertain. Nor is the fact that other deadly weapons of mass destruction exist reason, as Applebaum implies, not to try to take one of these dangerous categories of weapons off the list.

The current "global security order" is not the same as the one that reigned during the Cold War. Nukes no longer serve as a deterrent against one global power; rather, the gravest danger now regarding nuclear weapons is the possibility of non-state terrorists acquiring them. This may not be likely, but eliminating nuclear weapons will only make it less so.

And to rebut Bill Kristol, no, this is not 1939.

(image from flickr user Lebatihem under a Creative Commons license)

“North Korea” and “Missile” Are All I Hear

Well, this was predictable. No sooner had North Korea's attempted missile splashed prematurely into the ocean than giddy UN-bashers began pointing their fingers accusingly at the UN Security Council, diplomacy, and, hell, even the entire goal of non-proliferation. Simply because the words "North Korea" and "missile" were involved, hawks are shaking their sabers in the direction of the easiest scapegoat -- which is, unsurprisingly, the United Nations.

A little perspective: North Korea broke the rules. But it also completely flubbed its highly touted missile launch, an achievement that was supposed to achieve glory for the DPRK and strike fear in the heart of America. Instead, the missile is lying dormant on the ocean floor -- probably bubbling its musical paeans to Kim Jung Il incomprehensibly. There was never any danger to U.S. security, and now there's even less so, given the project's failure.

Keep in mind that this missile launch also had nothing to do with North Korea's nuclear program. Yes, the rocket would be -- in Kim Jung Il's fantasy world -- filled to the brim with nuclear explosiveness...but it wasn't. And couldn't be -- thanks, it's worth pointing out, to the shift toward diplomacy that the Bush Administration undertook in its second term. Its first term warmongering and stick-wielding only pushed North Korea out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, induced it to kick inspectors out of the country, and re-start its uranium enrichment process. As Dana Carvey might put it, before diplomacy, nuclear program; after diplomacy, no nuclear program.

So why mock the entire principle of non-proliferation over a failed, overhyped missile test that couldn't even carry nuclear material? And what exactly do hawks have in mind when they sputter about "getting tougher" with North Korea? Bombing? Tighter sanctions? Even this latter step -- unlikely to occur, given Chinese and Russian opposition, and of questionable efficacy, considering the possible damage to North Korea's already beleaguered civilian population -- would amount to taking the bait of Pyongyang's petty provocation. North Korea had rashly threatened to withdraw from the six-party talks in response to even Security Council discussion of its "satellite" launch; this is ridiculous bluster, but there is no sense in feeding such brinkmanship. Rather than escalate tensions between both sides, the best solution remains to ignore North Korea's latest bit of melodramatic theater (and a poor performance it was indeed), reprimand its rule-breaking, and focus on more important non-proliferation work.

(image from flickr user BHowdy under a Creative Commons license)

An Atomic Election

Tomorrow, the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency will select a new Director, to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, who is concluding his third term in the position. None of the candidates has as much of a public profile of ElBaradei, who has won a Nobel Peace Prize and was often a controversial figure for opposing the Bush Administration’s more hawkish approach toward Iran’s nuclear program. But then, at the start of his tenure 12 years ago, neither did ElBaradei, really. Funny how leading the world's nuclear regulator will do that to someone. The election tomorrow will likely come down to the Japanese ambassador to the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, and his South African counterpart, Abdul Samad Minty. The vote will likely be tight, with Amano expected to attract Western support and Minty to get much from developing countries. Amano is said to be in the lead, but perhaps with not enough votes in the 35-member body to claim the required 2/3 supermajority. Japan exerts no small amount of clout, as they are the IAEA's (and the UN's) second-largest contributor and evidently "take UN appointments very seriously" (as if South Africa doesn’t?). Both Amano and Minty seem qualified to take up what is really a very difficult position -- one that, all things considered, ElBaradei handled very well. The IAEA General's position is, rather awkwardly, simultaneously political and apolitical. As a monitoring body, the IAEA undertakes a scientific and investigative role, eschewing any particular agenda. As South Africa's Minty admitted, though, given that it reports to the Security Council, which then takes action based on its information, the IAEA "by its very nature has a political role." And its elections seem just as political. UPDATE: Results are in...and still no winner. (image of Yukiya Amano, 2005)

North Korea to Fire A Kitchen Knife Into Space

North Korea is upset that the UN Security Council is more than a little curious about the "satellite" that the country plans to launch in a couple weeks.
"It is perversity to say satellite launch technology cannot be distinguished from a long-range missile technology and so must be dealt with by the U.N. Security Council, which is like saying a kitchen knife is no different from a bayonet," state media quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
Well, except that the rocket being used to launch the satellite -- the Taepodong 2 -- is the same that is used to launch missiles. Missile launching, of course, falls directly in the purview of current UN Security Council sanctions on the DPRK. So it seems like the Foreign Ministry spokesman's analogy was a little off; unless North Korea makes it a habit of attaching kitchen knives to a rifle body, then it seems that what differs here is more like what kind of bullet is being used. This seems like at least a legitimate concern for inquiry by the Security Council. And North Korea's bluster about ending the six-party talks in the face of a Council response certainly isn't in the interests of peace. Given the high priority of sustaining these talks, though, coupled with North Korea's allies on the Council and the obstinance with which it has pursued its missile program, there do not appear to be many sticks in the offing. One strategy that might not be a good idea: Japan shooting down the rocket, creating a bunch of debris that it won’t know what to do with. North Korea has promised this would be "an act of war," and the Japanese foreign minister has rather disturbingly admitted that "Our country has not done this before. We don't know how or where it will fly." Let's hope that it is just a DirecTV satellite, after all. (images from flickr users IceSabre and idua_japan, respectively, under a Creative Commons license)

One Bank That’s Not Failing

On Friday the government of Kuwait pledged $10 million toward the International Atomic Energy Agency's proposed nuclear fuel bank. And $10 million, it seems, was the magic number that pushed the proposed fuel bank over the $100 million mark that was required to start setting it up. This is some all-too-rare good news on the nuclear non-proliferation front. The nuclear fuel bank is an idea that (United Nations Foundation sister organization) the Nuclear Threat Initiative has been pushing for a few years. In 2007, billionaire investor Warren Buffet breathed life into it by providing a $50 million seed grant, which would be paid once countries raised $100 million themselves. The idea behind the bank is this: Countries that want nuclear power, but do not have the will or capacity to enrich their own uranium must import the so-called "low-enriched" uranium. The problem here is that countries that depend on importing low-enriched uranium must be assured that their supplies are reliable and uninterrupted. Fears that uranium supplies might be disrupted can encourage countries to develop their own enrichment capacities, which raises the specter that uranium enrichment facilities would eventually be used to create nuclear weapons-grade uranium. This is where the nuclear fuel bank comes in. A standing reserve of low-enriched uranium, housed by a neutral body like the IAEA, would act as an insurance policy for countries that seek to develop civilian nuclear power, but must import their enriched uranium. If supplies are interrupted, the bank can step in and resume shipments. It is sort of like an FDIC, but for fissile material. I, for one, am glad that this ideas' time has finally come.