Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report—Contributor’s blog entry for Climate Change Adaptation.
The environment is becoming a noteworthy reason for migration in Asia and the Pacific, especially in low-lying coastal zones and eroding river banks. In the year 2010 alone, climate related disasters and weather extremities forced around 31.3 million people in this region to relocate their dwellings…
Roger Cavazos considers two bounded cases of an artillery attack on Seoul. The question is pertinent since it bears on whether there is conventional stability on the Korean Peninsula. If there is a conventional military stability, that is neither South Korea nor North Korea have the military capacity to successfully invade then both parties have an interest in cutting the Gordian knot of present relations. Legal frameworks such as a Korea Japan Nuclear Weapon Free Zone are far cheaper, less resource intensive yet still confrontational enough to relieve some pressure of an antagonistic relationship. The conclusion is that there is a conventional military stability which allows for the time and effort to seek alternative resolutions such as a Korea Japan Nuclear Weapon Free Zone which allows the DPRK to trade almost no cost legal framework for a tangible security guarantee.
Roger Cavazos consults on Northeast Asia security. He is recently retired from a 22 year career in the United States Army with assignments at tactical, operational, and strategic levels.
This report was originally presented at the East Asia Nuclear Security workshop held on November 11, 2011 in Tokyo, Japan.
Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report—Contributor’s blog entry for DPRK.
Continuing with the theme of North Korea paradoxically dividing and unifying Asia, the past few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of activity. Ironically, it also seems the source most likely to report the details of this activity has been the Chinese press…
Peter Hayes evaluates the plausibility South Korea attaining nuclear weapons, either through the development of a domestic nuclear program or though the deployment of weapons from the United States. Hayes reviews recent calls from US Representative Trent Franks and the Saenuri Party’s Chung Mong-joon to arm South Korea with nuclear weapons and concludes that, “Indeed, to the extent that they inflame an already tense situation in Korea, these statements recall an old adage with particular resonance to South Koreans still living with the loss of the ship Cheonan and its crew, viz: “Loose Lips Sink Ships.””
Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report—Contributor’s blog entry for Deterrence.
On May 30, 2012, the DPRK official website “My Country” issued a revised North Korean constitution. (Intriguingly, the text appeared only in Korean)…
Piers Williamson offers this summary of the lectures given May 31st, 2012 by Professors Frank von Hippel (Princeton University) and Gordon MacKerron (University of Sussex) on the problems associated with reprocessing nuclear spent fuel. Williamson states that two things were made clear at the event: first, spent fuel reprocessing originates from the production of weapons materials and the initial move nations made towards reprocessing was spurred by wishes to gain nuclear weapons capabilities. Although Japan does not possess nuclear weapons, its large plutonium ‘stockpile’, combined with its advanced technological base, means that it could establish a nuclear weapons program very easily. Second, there has been a global move away from using plutonium for nuclear fuel and also from civilian reprocessing (plutonium separation). Japan’s persistence in reprocessing thus bucks an international trend. Arguments that it is impossible to stop appear flimsy when the global experience and the UK case are taken into account…Put simply, reprocessing is defunct and should be buried with the waste it cannot handle.
Piers Williamson is a research assistant to Professor Andrew DeWit at Rikkyo University.
Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly Report—Contributor’s blog entry for Energy Security.
Frank von Hippel says of the Japanese continuing production of plutonium – in addition to the 35 tons stored around the world – for possible use in a “next-generation” fuel in power reactors, “It’s crazy…There is absolutely no reason to do that.” Perhaps not…
