Morning Joe: Ambassador Rice on U.S. Foreign Policy and Nonproliferation

Stories we're following today:

A new Course in the World, a New Approach at the UN - Remarks by Ambassador Susan Rice at NYU [link]

• "Our efforts are advancing one of President Obama’s top priorities: nuclear nonproliferation. Through the UN’s Conference on Disarmament, the U.S. is seeking a new treaty to verifiably end the production of fissile materials. We can thereby reduce the chance that al-Qaeda or another terrorist group could lay hands on nuclear weapons or their deadly material. We’re aiming to achieve a successful NPT Review Conference next year. And this year, next month, on September 24, during the U.S. Presidency of the Security Council, President Obama will chair a rare summit meeting of the Council to create a new momentum toward nonproliferation, nuclear security and disarmament."
• [Nod to Dipnote - The official blog of the State Department]

Thinking creatively about the North Korean stalemate - Hugh Gusterson in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [link]

• While we shouldn't give up on the goal of denuclearizing North Korea, we need to think in the short-term about creative ways of inducing North Korea to accept some sort of liminal status in between nuclear and nuclear-free.
• But there is more than one way of being nuclear and, in the emergent international system, stealthier and more virtual forms of nuclear weapons ownership are becoming more salient. We need diplomats, defense intellectuals, and arms control experts who, instead of seeing the world through the tired binaries of the Cold War, understand the dangers and possibilities of other ways of claiming nuclear power.

Pakistan denies al-Qaida targeting nuclear facilities - The Guardian [link]

• Pakistan's military has strenuously rejected allegations by a British academic that al-Qaida is targeting the country's nuclear facilities in an attempt to obtain weapons for use against the west.

There Is No Arms Control Tooth Fairy - Nukes of Hazard [link]

• Conservatives latched onto the report’s language about extended deterrence and Russian tactical nukes to suggest that the Commission believed that Obama’s policies were unworkable.
• Was the Posture Commission report so unabashedly pro-nuclear that there was nothing good for arms controllers to point out? Maybe... For whatever reason, however, liberals allowed conservatives to own the report. I think that was a political mistake because, like it or not, the Commission was high-profile and its report emerged at a pivotal time. It should have been aggressively co-opted by liberals to support President Obama’s arms control agenda.

Bolton: "The Glenn Beck of Foreign Policy" - Bloggingheads.tv [link]

• Video discussion between Daniel Drezner and David Frum
• Nod to UN Dispatch