Carroll and Cirincione: North Korea Attack is Not a Crisis

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Wednesday, November 24, 2010:

Why North Korea Attack is Not a Crisis - Paul Carroll and Joe Cirincione for CNN Opinion [link]

• Headlines and pundits once again declare that we have a crisis on our hands in the wake of discovering that North Korea is building a new nuclear reactor and a uranium enrichment plant.
• More ominously, Tuesday brought news of direct artillery barrages between North and South Korea, heightening tensions and costing lives. But as provocative and serious as this is, neither is a crisis. Both fit a clear pattern of North Korean behavior -- a pattern that ultimately holds out the opportunity for progress.
• First, the fundamental security situation with respect to North Korea has not changed. Pyongyang's estimated stockpile of plutonium bombs remains the same (four to eight bombs' worth). It does not have the capability to deliver these devices by aircraft or missile and its plutonium program remains frozen or perhaps even further eroded, as described in a report by Dr. Sig Hecker, who visited the North's nuclear facilities two weeks ago.
• Second, as difficult as engagement is, it is preferable to the alternative, isolation and instability. Remember that North Korea succeeded in acquiring or building these new facilities during a time when sanctions were extreme and U.S. engagement was absent.
• So where does this leave us? What can or should the United States do to respond to these latest developments? Here again, everything old is new again: Creative, thoughtful approaches to engaging North Korea have to be designed and tested -- persistently.
• Yes, U.S. overtures will annoy allies in the region, but not if done in concert with or through consultation with them. Yes, the administration will suffer reactionary criticism from the right for "dealing with evil" or similar screeds. But the stakes are too high to allow the long-term threats that North Korea poses to be hamstrung by near-term political scorekeeping.

The Case for Ratifying New Start - Vice President Joseph R. Biden for The Wall Street Journal [link]

• In September 2009, when President Obama decided to alter his predecessor's plans for missile defense in Europe, some critics claimed that we had sacrificed our allies in the interest of the "reset" with Russia. Others thought that we would derail the reset by proceeding with the new plan. The skeptics were wrong on both counts.
• At NATO's summit in Lisbon last weekend, President Obama united Europe behind our missile-defense plans and received strong support for the New Start Treaty that is currently before the Senate. In doing so, he proved that missile defense and arms control can proceed hand-in-hand.
• NATO missile defense also provides the opportunity for further improvements in both NATO-Russian and U.S.-Russian relations.
• New Start is also a cornerstone of our efforts to reset relations with Russia, which have improved significantly in the last two years. This has led to real benefits for U.S. and global security. Russian cooperation made it possible to secure strong sanctions against Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and Russia canceled a sale to Iran of an advanced anti-aircraft missile system that would have been dangerously destabilizing. Russia has permitted the flow of materiel through its territory for our troops in Afghanistan. And—as the NATO-Russia Council in Lisbon demonstrated—European security has been advanced by the pursuit of a more cooperative relationship with Russia. We should not jeopardize this progress.
• The Lisbon summit showed that American leadership in Europe remains essential. It also reminded us why the stakes of the New Start Treaty are so high. Our uniformed military supports it. Our European allies support it. Our national security interests are at stake. It is time for the Senate to approve New Start.
  

North Korea's Consistent Message to the U.S. - Jimmy Carter for The Washington Post [link]

• No one can completely understand the motivations of the North Koreans, but it is entirely possible that their recent revelation of their uranium enrichment centrifuges and Pyongyang's shelling of a South Korean island Tuesday are designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future.
• Ultimately, the choice for the United States may be between diplomatic niceties and avoiding a catastrophic confrontation.
• This past July I was invited... to Pyongyang to secure the release of an American, Aijalon Gomes, with the proviso that my visit would last long enough for substantive talks with top North Korean officials. They spelled out in detail their desire to develop a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a permanent cease-fire, based on the 1994 agreements and the terms adopted by the six powers in September 2005.
• Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the "temporary" cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime.

GOP Risks a New Cold War - Patrick J. Buchanan for The American Conservative [link]

• Before Republican senators vote down the strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, they should think long and hard about the consequences.
• Maintaining the credibility of the U.S. deterrent is a vital national interest. But does this justify holding the treaty hostage?
• Without a treaty, we lose our right and our ways and means to verify that Russia is carrying out the terms of arms treaties already agreed upon.
• How does leaving the United States in the dark about who is doing what with Moscow’s nuclear weapons enhance our security?
• Not only are our allies behind this treaty — as are Republican secretaries of state and defense and ex-national security advisers — so, too, is the Pentagon.
• Among Russia’s elite, there is an understandable distrust of the intentions of their old superpower rival. For Republicans in the Senate to kill New START would clinch the case of the anti-Americans in Moscow that we are not interested in nuclear parity but seek strategic superiority.
• Killing the treaty would morally disarm those Russians who see their future with the West.
• Richard Nixon would have supported this treaty. Ronald Reagan would have supported this treaty, as he loathed nuclear weapons and wished to rid the world of them. And simply because this treaty is “Obama’s treaty” does not mean it is not in America’s interest.
• If Republicans should kill New START, and Vladimir Putin responds by using U.S. rejection to rev up Russian nationalism to terminate the “reset” and return to a policy of cooperating with America’s enemies from Pyongyang to Tehran to Caracas, does the Republican Party wish to be held responsible for that?

Republicans Need to Support DISCLOSE and START - Norman J. Ornstein for "Roll Call" [link]

• I have found two things of late in the Senate to be particularly unsettling and depressing--because they involve in a bad light some of the lawmakers I respect and like the most.
• The first is the failure of any Republican Senator to step up and support the DISCLOSE Act, to bring sunlight to the outrageous, anonymous huge funders who played a major role in the 2010 campaigns...
• As important as campaign reform may be, it still takes a back seat to national security. And nothing is more puzzling, or infuriating, than what is happening to the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. This treaty is supported enthusiastically by Henry Kissinger, James Baker, George Schultz, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), Adm. Mike Mullen, virtually every significant military leader active and retired, and all our NATO allies.
• The reasons go beyond the arms control provisions. Reaching agreement on this treaty was a key step in a new and broader relationship with Russia, and with President Dmitry Medvedev. Of course, Russia and the U.S. remain rivals and adversaries in many ways. But the cooperation we have received on sanctions toward Iran--including especially the Russian refusal to send potent S-300 missile systems to Tehran--and on the drug trade in Afghanistan, among other things, has been a major plus.
• The failure of START in the Senate would endanger future cooperation and be a major embarrassment to Medvedev and a big boost to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It would also devastate the existing regime of inspection over nuclear arms, ramping up the danger of nukes getting into the hands of highly undesirable people and groups.
• Of course, the treaty left some gaps and ambiguities. These were recognized and pointed out by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the conservatives' point man in the Senate on START. The administration, Lugar and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) have bent over backward to accommodate Kyl's concerns, with flat assurances that they will provide the resources to modernize our weapons and will not use the treaty to erase missile defense systems.
• But in this corrosive political environment, where even key national security issues get caught up in partisan warfare, where the goal of making the president a one-termer can trump any issue, and where too many lawmakers are afraid that they will be the next Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), the fact is that START needs to get through in the lame duck, where only eight Republicans are required to make the 67 votes needed for ratification.
• Our military leaders are not prone to wishful thinking or peace-at-any-price thinking. The stakes for America's national interest, including Iran and Afghanistan, are immense here. Please, guys, suck it up and find a way to make this work.

Time for New START is Now - William D. Hartung for The Washington Times [link]

• It's worth reminding ourselves why it is so important for the treaty to move forward now. New START will make us safer by cutting U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by one-third, from about 2,200 each to 1,550 each.
• It also will make it clear to other nuclear-armed nations that Russia and the United States...are serious about reducing the nuclear danger. This will set the stage for greater global cooperation, both in reducing existing arsenals and in working together on other crucial issues, such as protecting nuclear weapons and bomb-making materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists.
• Equally important, the treaty will re-establish rigorous monitoring procedures that will enable each side to keep tabs on the other's nuclear forces. There have been no verification measures in place since the last START agreement lapsed nearly a year ago.
• A growing chorus of former government officials and military leaders, including seven former commanders of U.S. nuclear forces, have made a persuasive case that in the current chaotic international environment, large, unregulated arsenals of nuclear weapons are liable to do much more harm than good. They have been joined by former secretaries of state and national security advisers from every administration going back to Ronald Reagan's.
• The time to ratify New START is now. In doing so, the Senate will be following a long tradition of bipartisan support for agreements of this kind, including the original START accord, which passed the Senate by a margin of 93 to 6.
  

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