Carter Arrives in North Korea

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

Stories we're following today: Wednesday August 25, 2010.

Jimmy Carter Arrives in North Korea - New York Times [link]

• Former President Jimmy Carter arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Wednesday on a mission to win the release of an American held prisoner in the North, its state-run media reported.
• Officially, Washington described his trip as a private humanitarian mission to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American from Boston who was sentenced in April to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 for illegally entering the North.
• Mr. Carter is the second former American president to visit Pyongyang in a year. Analysts said the North’s government would use his visit to elevate the status of Kim Jong-il in domestic propaganda and to reach out to Washington for bilateral talks.
• Mr. Carter’s trip came after a further chill in the frosty ties between Washington and Pyongyang. In recent months, tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have grown as the United States and South Korea accused North Korea of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March.

Time for the Nuclear Test Ban - Daryl Kimball in Proliferation Analysis [link]

• A growing list of bipartisan national security leaders agree that by ratifying the CTBT, the United States can strengthen its security by limiting the ability of other states, such as China or even Iran, to proof test sophisticated nuclear weapons designs that could pose a threat to U.S. and international security.
• They also agree that after 1,030 U.S. nuclear test explosions, there is simply no technical or military rationale for resuming testing. Contrary to myth, the United States has never relied on nuclear testing to ensure that proven warhead designs still work, but rather to perfect new types of nuclear bombs, which the U.S. military no longer needs nor wants.
• Nuclear testing is a dangerous and unnecessary vestige of the past. U.S. inaction on the CTBT is self-defeating and counterproductive. The United States has neither the intention nor need to renew testing, yet its failure to ratify the CTBT undermines both U.S. leadership credibility and the United States’ ability to improve the detection and deterrence of testing by others.
• Following the approval of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), President Obama should undertake the major high-level campaign that will be needed to push the CTBT through the Senate in 2011.
  

NNSA Tries to Disprove Shakespeare - Nick Roth in All Things Nuclear [link]

• You know William Shakespeare’s “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?” This week the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) tried to prove him wrong by changing the name of “Nevada Test Site” (NTS) to the “Nevada National Security Site.”
• The name change is consistent with NNSA’s ongoing effort to publicly distance itself from the “image” of nuclear weapons. With the Cold War over and nuclear weapons increasingly being regarded as a liability, NNSA has made a concerted effort to rebrand the industrial infrastructure that maintains and modernizes nuclear weapons.
• In one sense, this rebranding reflects the outdated nature of nuclear weapons and the need for the nuclear weapons labs to focus on nonproliferation and the eventual, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, this effort has not been accompanied by a significant change in the programmatic scope of the nuclear weapons infrastructure.
• While this name change accurately reflects that nuclear tests are no longer conducted by the United States, it needs to be followed by true programmatic change at the NTS. Senator Reid's [recent] legislation should have asked for an independent, comprehensive study of all of the future options for the Nevada Test Site.

'Countdown to Zero' and the Threat of Nuclear Weapons - Eleanor Barkhorn in The Atlantic [link]

• In an interview with Countdown producer Lawrence Bender, he discusses why he started making documentary films, how to make people care about nuclear weapons, and more.
• Bender: I think [Countdown] is a little harder [than An Inconvenient Truth], and we need more help. But we've been getting extraordinary traction. We've been screening for Google, MySpace, eBay, Yahoo, YouTube. We had religious organizations, student organizations. We do have 50-some-odd NGOs that have gotten involved with it. It makes it works because it's really timely. It's happening right now with the START treaty.
• "An Inconvenient Truth might pull a bigger box office, but this movie could actually help push legislation, like, imminently."
• "On our website is [a petition] for people to sign on to encourage their senators to ratify the START treaty. We want people to make this a kitchen table conversation."
• "This movie really is a wake-up call…If you're going to college today, you were born after the Berlin wall came down. So it's not anywhere in your consciousness. They're dumbfounded. They have no idea what they've inherited." 

A View from the Dark Side

Why the Senate Should Block 'New Start' - VADM Robert Monroe in The Wall Street Journal [link]

• The Senate should block [New START] for another more important reason: It is the first major step in the implementation of Mr. Obama's broader nuclear strategy. This strategy would gravely weaken American national security.
• Mr. Obama's Nuclear Posture Review treats nuclear weapons as an evil to be eliminated, rather than as the ultimate foundation of America's security in a dangerous world…and the NPR is joined at the hip with New Start, and together they take this country down a dangerous path.
• By pledging not to develop new nuclear capabilities—including earth-penetration weapons and any new warheads—the new NPR also promises to let our deterrence atrophy. This ignores that threats and technology are changing, and our weapons must keep pace with them.
• The nuclear deterrent that has kept us safe for over half a century cannot be maintained under the Obama administration's limitations. Unless the Senate supports such nuclear disarmament, it must deny ratification to New Start, which is the first step in that direction.