Policy Forum

The following is text of a speech given on March 20, 2003 by Desaix Anderson at the Croft Institute of International Studies University of Mississippi Oxford. Anderson asserts that success through bi-lateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea was attainable last fall and might still be attainable if our diplomacy were flexible and deft. But time has become very short and it may already be too late. We may now be faced with only two options: catastrophic war or a nuclear-armed North Korea. Desaix Anderson served for thirty-five year as a Foreign Service Officer, U.S. State Department, working in and on Asian issues, was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-92) and executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) for over three years until April 2001. He currently writes on Asian issues and paints in New York City.

Markku Heiskanen is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asia Studies in Copenhagen. Heiskanen asserts that the European Union will undoubtedly produce an official response to the proposed ideas for a multilateral scenario on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, including the conference idea proposed by the European Parliament. If such a conference were successfully organized, it may be the first step on the way to a larger and deeper multilateral process on the Korean Peninsula, and in Northeast Asia, with the eventual participation of the European Union.

Kim Seung-kuk, Chairperson of the Solidarity of Korea Reunification Peace Committee in South Korea, asserts that the most visible way of preventing war on the Korean peninsula is to deploy human shields in potential areas of conflict to disrupt attackers from bombing the area. As severe international denunciation will be directed at any U.S. attack endangering the lives of U.S. or Japanese activists, they can really be a “shield” against a U.S. attack on North Korea.

This paper was presented on March 14, 2003 at a meeting of the North Pacific Working Group of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). The DPRK ambassador to the United Nations and two delegates from a Pyongyang defense think tank attended the meeting, along with 40 international officials or academic experts who attended as private citizens.

This paper was presented on March 14, 2003 at a meeting of the North Pacific Working Group of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). Delegates from both the DPRK and the ROK were in attendance, along with 40 international officials or academic experts who attended as private citizens.

Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online: Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online: Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat PFO 03-20: March 18, 2003 Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat By David C. Wright CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Essay by David C. Wright III. Nautilus Invites Your Responses I. […]

Michael A. Levi, Director of the Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists, asserts that today we again find the Bush Administration speaking loosely of tactical uses for nuclear weapons, in Iraq or in future contingencies. The enormous power of nuclear weapons often tempts military planners to inevitably view bigger as better. But the central lesson of the 1966 JASON study, echoed throughout fifty years of thinking about nuclear weapons, is that the wider the context in which nuclear weapons are viewed, the narrower their appeal.

Willis Stanley is Director of Regional Studies at the National Institute for Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia. In this essay, Stanley argues that while the JASON 1966 study of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia sufficiently concludes that in 1967, tactical nuclear weapons were not the tool most appropriate for the job of closing the supply routes between North and South Vietnam, it does not provide any universal truth about the utility of tactical nuclear weapons in 2003, in locales other than Vietnam. The US should not limit itself to assessing the utility of the Cold War nuclear force for the post-Cold War world-we should focus on how to best adapt and transform that force to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Today’s situation on the Korean peninsula is indicative of trends that will shape how we approach the future utility of nuclear weapons.

Peter Hayes, Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute and Nina Tannenwald of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University argue that the 1966 JASON study on the first use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam is a stark warning that using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, North Korea or transnational terrorists would make more likely increase the risk of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies.

In the essay below, Weinberg recounts his participation in the 1966 report that urged against the first-use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war. Weinberg concludes that today the US should beware of moving beyond nuclear deterrence by developing low-yield weapons for attacking underground facilities. Steven Weinberg won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979 and present teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.