Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly

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"Nautilus Peace and Security Weekly", NAPSNet Weekly Report, August 02, 2012, https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-weekly/nautilus-peace-and-security-weekly-16/

2 August 2012

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. Each week, one of our authors also provides a short blog that explores these inter-relationships.

CONTENTS

See this week’s blog from our DPRK contributor, Roger Cavazos.

DETERRENCE:  U.S. force posture strategy in the Asia Pacific region: an independent assessment, Center for Strategic and International Studies (27 June 2012)

Korea presents the highest risk of war.  Even here, US forces can adjust so as to strengthen the conventional deterrent against the DPRK while expanding trilateral and multilateral interaction with other PACOM states related to the Korea conflict.  Nuclear weapons are hardly mentioned in the study.

DPRK: Troop deployment row halts China-N. Korean island project, Koicihiro Ishida, Asahi Shimbun (31 July 2012)

While there are some surface changes in North Korea, most things continue as they always have and reflect a period of relative stability.  China and North Korea recently exchanged two high-level visits leading to speculation Kim Jong Eun may visit China.  South Korea and China agreed to a Ministerial-level Defense hotline indicating China believes any North Korean reaction is manageable. North Korea suffered a drought and floods in the same month.

Check out this week’s DPRK blog: Mutual Trust: Collective Hedge

ENERGY SECURITY: India’s power network breaks down, Amol Sharma, Saurabh Chaturvedi, Santanu Choudhury, Wall Street Journal India (31 July 2012).

More than a half these people would not have had electricity even if the grid had not gone down. Their lives were dark last week and will be dark again next week. The rest of South Asia also suffers the same syndrome of shortages for the rich, darkness for the poor. A monumental failure of infrastructure planning and delivery.

GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: China protests highlight simmering unrest, Lisa Murray Australia Financial Times (31 July 2012)

The PRC faced a wave of criticism from civil society this week. Violent protests in Qidong forced the cancellation of an industrial pipeline after protestors stormed the local government building. Protestors in Hong Kong demonstrated against perceived “brainwashing” by a new textbook that glosses over CCP history. A ROK activist claims PRC authorities tortured him, leading the Foreign Ministry to pledge to interview all 625 ROK nationals held in China for instances of abuse.

CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: The economic value of natural and built coastal assets, Part 2: built coastal assets, Sally Kirkpatrick, NCCARF (March 2012) [2.96 MB, PDF]

Both natural and built coastal assets are under increasing pressure from a growing population and also from the projected impacts of climate change. There is a need to better understand how much these assets are worth to the society and also how these assets might be at risk from diverse and dynamic pressures, both current and future.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SECURITY: Global warming’s terrifying new math, Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone (19 July 2012)

For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers. They provide intellectual clarity about the greatest challenge humans have ever faced. We know how much we can burn, and we know who’s planning to burn more.

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