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…
In the following report Michael Hamel-Green reviews the historical and institutional precedents supporting recent proposals to establish a nuclear weapons free zone both on the Korean Peninsula and in the wider Northeast Asian region. “Despite the fact that the Northeast Asia…has not yet progressed to government-to-government negotiations on a regional nuclear free zone concept, or even agreement in principle on such a concept…the negotiation history and background of the six currently established [Nuclear Weapons Free] zones suggest that there is often a quite lengthy pre-negotiation phase in which civil society campaigns, Track 2 negotiations and proposals…and catalysing changes or crises …can serve to concentrate the minds of regional governments and the wider international community.”
Michael Hamel-Green is the Dean of and Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development at Victoria University, Melbourne.
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 Austral Peace and Security.
Washington’s Pacific pivot is essentially a matter of the Obama administration drawing a line under the distractions of the Bush-era disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, and re-focusing strategic planning on the rise of Chinese economic, political and military power…
