- DETERRENCE: The war that must never be fought
- DPRK: The third session of 13th SPA: Business as usual
- GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: Seoul getting its first-ever vertical farm
- CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: The Safe Cities Index 2015: Assessing urban security in the digital age
- AUSTRAL PEACE AND SECURITY: Body count: casualty Figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror”
DETERRENCE: The war that must never be fought, James Goodby, George Shultz, edited, Hoover Press (March 2015)
18 authors including from China, Japan, and Korea argue (mostly) that a world without nuclear weapons is desirable and in the national security interests of the United States, its allies, friends, partners and even enemies. Moon Chung-in and Peter Hayes argue that South Korea’s non-nuclear strategy will defeat the North’s nuclear strategy.
- Proposal: A comprehensive approach to a Northeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki University (March 2015) English and Japanese [PDF, 1.4mb]
- Disarm and modernize, in terms of warhead numbers, the nuclear arms race may be over. But massive weapons upgrades now underway challenge the entire disarmament regime, John Mecklin, Foreign Policy (24 March 2015)
DPRK: The Third Session of 13th SPA: Business as usual, Alexandre Mansourov, US-Korea Institute at SAIS (15 April 2015)
North Korea shows external signs of stasis at home and a desire to be left alone. North Korea held its annual Supreme People’s Assembly where North Korea’s legislators: 1) rubber-stamp decisions already made and 2) approve reports on North Korea’s budget. The entire affair is important because this is what North Koreans also tell themselves. Everything this year conveyed system stability. Kim Jong-un did not appear at the meeting; an indication the political system is moving back to stasis. North Korea’s missile threats are meant to prevent foreign intervention, and continue to display signs of systematic inefficiencies, for example it is not clear that missile designers and war head designers are even co-located.
- The North Korean budget report 2015: Ten Observations, Ruediger Frank, US-Korea Institute at SAIS (15 April 2015April 2015)
- Korea, U.S. to devise plan to negate N.K. launchers, Song Sang-ho, The Korea Herald (16 April 2015)
- North Korea transfers missile goods to Iran during nuclear talks, Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon (15 April 2015)
GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: Seoul getting its first-ever vertical farm, Eum Sung-won, Hankyoreh (14 April 2015)
Seoul plans to establish its first vertical farm utilizing three floors of a redeveloped apartment complex as a training and cultivation center and hoping to promote R&D in the field. Vertical farms have struggled previously in Korea given high costs and low profitability, but have seen success in Japan, where a former semiconductor facility is now the world’s largest indoor farm, producing up to 10,000 heads of lettuce daily.
- World’s largest ‘vegetable factory’ revolutionizes indoor farming, Cole Mellino, EcoWatch (28 January 2015)
- Why vertical farming could be on the edge of a revolution—and what’s keeping it down, Joseph Erbentraut, Huffington Post (12 March 2015)
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: The Safe Cities Index 2015: Assessing urban security in the digital age, the Economist Intelligence Unit-EIU (2015) [5.30 MB, PDF]
The Safe Cities Index 2015 measures urban safety and security. It ranks 50 cities worldwide across five continents. The report points out how the frequency of terrorism and natural disasters has changed the nature of urban safety; power, communications and transport systems must be robust and able to withstand new external shocks.
- Summary: climate change, disaster risk, and the urban poor, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ World Bank (2011) [632 KB, PDF]
- Enhancing urban safety and security: global report on human settlements 2007, United Nations Human Settlements Programme-UN-HABITAT (2007) [subscription required]
AUSTRAL PEACE AND SECURITY: Body count: casualty Figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror” – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany), Physicians for Global Responsibility, and Physicians for Global Survival (March 2015) [PDF, 3.3MB]
“The war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.”
- ADF sensitive to Iraq civilian casualties, Paul Osborne, AAP, The Australian (25 March 2015)
- Civilian harm tracking: analysis of ISAF efforts in Afghanistan, Center for Civilians in Conflict (19 May 2014)
- Australia in Iraq, Australian Forces Abroad Briefing Book, Nautilus Institute
The Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report presents articles and full length reports each week in six categories: Austral security, nuclear deterrence, energy security, climate change and security, the DPRK, climate change adaptation and governance and civil society. Our team of contributors carefully select items that highlight the links between these themes and the three regions in which our offices are found — North America, Northeast Asia, and the Austral-Asia region.
Subscribe to NAPSNet to receive free weekly email reports.
- Editor: Arabella Imhoff
Contributors:
- Deterrence: Peter Hayes
- DPRK: Roger Cavazos
- Governance and Civil Society: Dyana Mardon
- Climate Change Adaptation: Saleem Janjua
- Austral Peace and Security: Richard Tanter