What U.S. Could Do if Pakistan Loses Control Over Nuclear Weapons By Elaine M. Grossman

WASHINGTON -- A longtime expert on terrorism and nuclear arms is calling on the United States and others to identify fresh responses to a potential crisis in which a nation such as Pakistan or North Korea loses control over nuclear weapons or fissile material, without the West necessarily intervening by force.

Pakistani nuclear-capable Hatf 2 missile

“Outside intervention in these circumstances is a long shot, at best,” in terms of entering a nation in crisis and attempting to locate and secure any so-called “loose nukes” held by rogue actors or extremists, Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser to the RAND Corp. president, said at a Wednesday presentation.

“One should not have any degree of optimism that we can do this,” he said, speaking at the Stimson Center. “This is much more complicated than, for example, going after Osama bin Laden.”

The U.S. Defense Department for years reportedly has war-gamed the possibility of forcibly securing Pakistani or North Korean nuclear warheads in the event of a serious crisis.

Both nations have maintained strict secrecy about their nuclear arms. Pakistan is estimated to have roughly 100 warheads, while North Korea might have a half-dozen or more.

Reports about the Pentagon drafting contingency plans for possible intervention in an emergency scenario have triggered outrage in Pakistan, as well as concerns elsewhere about the feasibility or wisdom of such action.

Jenkins said the need for a U.S. armed initiative in this type of scenario should not be ruled out. However, he underscored the unforeseen risks of any military intervention.

“This really gets complicated,” he said, suggesting that domestic or external armies or insurgents might pose serious obstacles. “The notion that we’re going to be operating in a benign environment is … nonsense.”

A former Army officer who served in the Green Berets, Jenkins urged the world community to think creatively about what it might do short of inserting boots on the ground.

He noted that during the Cold War, Russia and the United States agreed on hotlines and other stability measures that could be used in the event that rogue elements were to gain control of nuclear arms, despite extensive systems aimed at keeping them secure.

“It may be appropriate to start revisiting some of those things in what would be a more complex situation,” Jenkins said. “Is it realistic to think that we can -- where a weapon goes missing or there’s a situation like that -- can we actually quarantine, effectively quarantine, a nation?”

He said he was doubtful of that prospect, but suggested this idea and others nonetheless should be further explored.

“In terms of intelligence, can we rapidly mobilize a swarm of sensors and other things to try to quickly locate and track [missing items]?” he asked. “I’m talking about an all-out push.”

In the end, a lack of effective options might suggest that Washington or other world powers would be limited in the support they could provide to a nation grappling with dangerous weapons or materials on the loose, he said.

 

Fidel Castro to North Korea: nuclear war will benefit no one

Retired Cuban leader sternly cautions North Korea and US of dangers of nuclear war in first column in nearly nine months.

Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro published his first column in nearly nine months on Friday, urging both friends and foes to use restraint amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

In the brief piece published in Communist Party daily Granma and other official media, Castro warned of the impact that nuclear war could unleash in Asia and beyond. He said Havana has always been and will continue to be an ally to North Korea, but gently admonished it to consider the well-being of humankind.

"Now that you have demonstrated your technical and scientific advances, we remind you of your duty to the countries that have been your great friends, and it would not be fair to forget that such a war would affect ... more than 70% of the planet's population," he said.

Castro used stronger language in addressing Washington, saying that if fighting breaks out, President Barack Obama's government "would be buried by a flood of images that would present him as the most sinister figure in US history. The duty to avoid (war) also belongs to him and the people of the United States."

North Korea has issued a series of escalating threats in recent weeks as the United States and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises beginning in March, and expressed anger over U.N. sanctions imposed after it held a nuclear test in February. Pyongyang says it needs nuclear weapons for self-defense, and on Tuesday it announced it would restart a plutonium reactor that was shut down in 2007.

Analysts say the elevated rhetoric is probably calculated to push for concessions from South Korea, prod Washington into talks and bolster the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But Castro called the situation "incredible and absurd," and said war would cause terrible harm to the people of both Koreas and benefit no one.

"This is one of the gravest risks of nuclear war since the October Crisis in 1962 involving Cuba, 50 years ago," he wrote, a reference to what is known in English as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Castro last published one of his columns known as "Reflections" on June 19, 2012. In October, amid the latest round of rumors of his purportedly dire health, he said he had stopped writing them not due to illness but because they were occupying space in official newspapers and state TV news broadcasts that was needed for other uses. More

 

Joe Cirincione talks to CNN on North Korea

 

North Korean leader, in rare address, seeks end to confrontation with South

SEOUL | Mon Dec 31, 2012 (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media.

The address by Kim, who took over power in the reclusive state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011, appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year editorial published in leading state newspapers.

Impoverished North Korea raised tensions in the region by launching a long-range rocket in December that it said was aimed at putting a scientific satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation.

North Korea, which considers North and South as one country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests.

"An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south," Kim said in the address that appeared to be pre-recorded and was made at an undisclosed location.

"The past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war."

The New Year address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader after the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather. Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public and disclosed his national policy agenda in editorials in state newspapers. More

 

2010 Korea Bomb 'Tests' Probably False Alarms, Says Study

Amid Nuclear Tensions, a Seismic Reality Check

This spring, a Swedish scientist sparked international concern with a journal article saying that radioactive particles detected in 2010 showed North Korea had set off at least two small nuclear blasts--possibly in experiments designed to boost the yields of much larger bombs. Shortly after, the pot was stirred with separate claims that some intelligence agencies suspected the detonations were done in cooperation with Iran. Now, a new paper says the tests likely never took place—or that if they did, they were too tiny to have any military significance. The new report, by seismologists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be published later this month in the journal Science & Global Security, where the earlier paper also appeared.

Paul Richards - Seismologist

It is generally accepted that North Korea has carried out at least two nuclear test explosions, in 2006 and 2009. The Lamont scientists studied both those blasts via the seismic waves they generated. They concluded that the second test—thought to be in the range of about 2 to 4 kilotons—was five times more powerful than the first, though still dwarfed by the weapons of established nuclear powers. (A kiloton equals the explosive energy of 1,000 tons of TNT.)

The suspicions of more tests in 2010 were based on whiffs of radioactive xenon and barium detected in South Korea, Japan and Russia in May that year; but it was not until March 2012 that Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric scientist with the Swedish Defense Research Agency, published the information, and suggested clandestine explosions of 50 to 200 tons as the sources. Several weeks later, a former high German defense official publicly suggested that thetests might have been done on behalf of Iran. Many experts quickly expressed skepticism, as there was no public evidence of seismic waves normally linked to such explosions; however, since then, tensions have continued to rise. In August, defense analysts warned that North Korea had made significant progress on a plant to produce highly enriched uranium, suitable for bombs. And lately, there have been increasing calls for pre-emptive attacks by the United States or Israel to keep Iran from developing a bomb. More

 

North Korea Agrees to Suspend Its Nuclear Program - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — North Korea announced on Wednesday that it would suspend its nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors to monitor activities at its main nuclear complex. The surprise announcement raised the possibility of ending a diplomatic impasse that has allowed the country’s nuclear program to continue for years without international oversight.

The Obama administration called the steps “important, if limited.” But the announcement seemed to signal that North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, is at least willing to consider a return to negotiations and to engage with the United States, which pledged in exchange to ship tons of food aid to the isolated, impoverished nation.

A freeze on nuclear activity, if it holds, could significantly ease anxieties over North Korea’s behavior at a time when the Obama administration, in an election year, is focused on halting Iran’s nuclear program and reducing the possibility that Israel could attack Iran. The last significant effort to negotiate a dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons collapsed in the waning weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency more than three years ago.

The United States and other nations have been watching closely to see whether Mr. Kim’s rise to power late last year after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, would result in a change in North Korean behavior. The signals have been mixed. Only days ago, Mr. Kim delivered a bellicose speech suggesting that he could resort to military actions against South Korea as he consolidated his power. More

 

A World of Gray

CANBERRA – Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and dissident turned president, and North Korean despot Kim Jong-il might have lived on different planets, for all their common commitment to human dignity, rights, and democracy. When they died just a day apart this month, the contrast was hard for the global commentariat to resist: Prague’s prince of light against Pyongyang’s prince of darkness.

But it is worth remembering that Manichaean good-versus-evil typecasting, to which former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were famously prone, and of which we have had something of a resurgence in recent days, carries with it two big risks for international policymakers.

One risk is that such thinking limits the options for dealing effectively with those who are cast as irredeemably evil. The debacle of the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 should have taught us once and for all the peril of talking only through the barrel of a gun to those whose behavior disgusts us.

Sometimes, threats to a civilian population will be so acute and immediate as to make coercive military intervention the only option, as with Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya, at least at the time of the imminent assault on Benghazi in March. But more often it will be a matter of relying on less extreme measures, like targeted sanctions and threats of international prosecution – and on diplomatic pressure and persuasion. More

North Korea Could Face New Round of Sanctions

UNITED NATIONS —June 10, 2009- The Security Council’s five permanent members agreed on Wednesday on a draft resolution that would ratchet up sanctions against North Korea by concentrating on its financial transactions and its arms industry, including allowing for inspections of its cargo vessels on the high seas.

Text of United Nations Draft Resolution on North Korean Sanctions (June 11, 2009)
The sharply worded resolution, while diluting some of the sanctions sought by the West and Japan, would still serve notice on North Korea that its nuclear and other weapons programs had created sufficient alarm to forge a rare unified front among the world’s major powers. More >>>