US must stop North Korea threats, says China, as Kim Jong-un aims for military ‘equilibrium’
Chinese ambassador says America needs to do ‘much more’ to achieve cooperation as Kim Jong-un speaks of goal of equalling US military might, Guardian, Tom Phillips , 16 Sept The United States must stop threatening North Korea’s leader if a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis is to be found, China’s ambassador to Washington has said, as Kim Jong-un reiterated his country’s aim to reach military “equilibrium” with the US.
Cui Tiankai told reporters in Washington: “They [the US] should refrain from issuing more threats. They should do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation.”
“Honestly, I think the United States should be doing … much more than now, so that there’s real effective international cooperation on this issue.”
North Korea’s state news agency, KCNA on Saturday quoted Kim as saying: “Our final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the US and make the US rulers dare not talk about military option.”
US national security advisor HR McMaster said: “We have been kicking the can down the road and we’re out of road. For those who have been commenting about the lack of a military option – there is a military option. Now, it’s not what we prefer to do, so what we have to do is call on all nations to do everything we can to address this global problem, short of war.”
The Chinese ambassador was speaking after Pyongyang fired a missile over Japan for the second time in two weeks a move the UN security council said it “strongly condemned”.
After 30 years of the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is gradually healing The Conversation Andrew Klekociuk, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Tasmania, Paul Krummel, Research Group Leader, CSIRO This weekend marks the 30th birthday of the Montreal Protocol, often dubbed the world’s most successful environmental agreement. The treaty, signed on September 16, 1987, is slowly but surely reversing the damage caused to the ozone layer by industrial gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Each year, during the southern spring, a hole appears in the ozone layer above Antarctica. This is due to the extremely cold temperatures in the winter stratosphere (above 10km altitude) that allow byproducts of CFCsand related gases to be converted into forms that destroy ozone when the sunlight returns in spring.
As ozone-destroying gases are phased out, the annual ozone hole is generally getting smaller – a rare success story for international environmentalism.
Back in 2012, our Saving the Ozone series marked the Montreal Protocol’s silver jubilee and reflected on its success. But how has the ozone hole fared in the five years since?
The Antarctic ozone hole has continued to appear each spring, as it has since the late 1970s. This is expected, as levels of the ozone-destroying halocarbon gases controlled by the Montreal Protocol are still relatively high. The figure below shows that concentrations of these human-made substances over Antarctica have fallen by 14% since their peak in about 2000.
It typically takes a few decades for these gases to cycle between the lower atmosphere and the stratosphere, and then ultimately to disappear. The most recent official assessment, released in 2014, predicted that it will take 30-40 years for the Antarctic ozone hole to shrink to the size it was in 1980………
Reassuringly, a recent study showed that the size of the ozone hole each September has shrunk overall since the turn of the century, and that more than half of this shrinking trend is consistent with reductions in ozone-depleting substances. However, another study warns that careful analysis is needed to account for a variety of natural factors that could confound our detection of ozone recovery……..
While annual monitoring continues, which includes measurements under the Australian Antarctic Program, a more comprehensive assessment of the ozone layer’s prospects is set to arrive late next year. Scientists across the globe, coordinated by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organisation, are busy preparing the next report required under the Montreal Protocol, called the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018.
This peer-reviewed report will examine the recent state of the ozone layer and the atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting chemicals, how the ozone layer is projected to change, and links between ozone change and climate.
Obama-complex Fuels Trump and Netanyahu’s Fight Against Iran Nuclear Deal, Haaretz, Chemi Shalev Sep 17, 2017
Both were slighted by the former U.S. president and both are seeking payback by expunging his signature foreign policy achievement.
Donald Trump is obsessed with Barack Obama. The U.S. president never misses an opportunity to insult and taunt his predecessor. Trump does his best to diminish Obama’s achievements as he endeavors to erase them from the history books as well. His task is naturally easier in foreign affairs and national security, where his independent authority is wider. He withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership, backed away from the Paris Accord on global warming and scaled back Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba.
But just as repealing Obamacare was and remains the principle objective in expunging Obama’s legacy on the domestic front, so is Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran seen as the red flag that won’t let Trump rest until he tears it to shreds.
The hostility between the 45th president and the 44th, unprecedented in recent presidential history, is the product of Trump’s feelings of inferiority, his narcissistic personality and his cynical political exploitation of American racism, which he may or not share…….
he can’t stand the fact that as a direct consequence of his problematic presidency, most of the world misses Obama today more than it appreciated him when he was in office.
Benjamin Netanyahu shares Trump’s Obama-complex but seeks to exploit it as well. Obama handed Netanyahu a stinging defeat, perhaps the worst of his career, when he moved the Iran nuclear deal through Congress, notwithstanding Netanyahu’s objections and despite his controversial speech before a joint session in March 2015. Obama didn’t hide his disappointment from Netanyahu, though there is a marked difference in his assessment of Trump and of the Israeli prime minister; the latter, as Obama has often conceded, is intelligent. What Netanyahu and Trump have in common, among other things, is their inability to accept criticism, their tendency to turn critics into enemies and their fervent wish to wipe the smile off what they see as Obama’s condescending face.
This is the backdrop to the meeting in New York on Monday between Trump and Netanyahu, the two senior members of the Obama Victims Club, who are both seeking payback by trying to erase his signature foreign policy achievement. In principle, the two are unlikely to disagree.
US warns of military option if North Korea nuclear and missile tests continue
UN ambassador and national security adviser float possibility if new sanctions fail: ‘We have been kicking the can down the road and we’re out of road’, Guardian, Julian Borger , Justin McCurry and Tom Phillips , 16 Sept 17, The US has warned it could revert to military options if new sanctions fail to curb North Korean missile and nuclear tests, after Pyongyang fired a missile over Japan for the second time in two weeks.
The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, and the national security advisor, HR McMaster, told reporters that the latest set of UN sanctions – imposed earlier this week after North Korea’s sixth nuclear test – would need time to take effect, but they suggested that after that, the US would consider military action……..
In a unanimous statement late on Friday, the UN Security Council said it “strongly condemned” the missile launch, but did not threaten further sanctions on Pyongyang.
The missile flew further than any missile tested by the regime, triggering emergency sirens and text alerts minutes before it passed over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Friday morning.
Flight data shows the missile travelled higher and further than the one involved in the 29 August flyover of Japan, suggesting the regime is continuing to make advances in its missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
A new UN security council session was called on Friday to address North Korean defiance, but Haley said there was little more that UN measures could do to change Pyongyang’s behaviour…….
when he was asked about a possible US military response, Mattis said: “I don’t want to talk about that yet.”…..
Many strategic analysts argue there is no feasible military option for curtailing North Korean nuclear and missile development, as any pre-emptive attack would be likely to trigger a devastating barrage on Seoul, without any guarantee that all Pyongyang’s missiles and nuclear weapons would be put out of action……..
The Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Beijing objected to North Korea’s latest launch but believed diplomacy was the only way to solve the “complicated, sensitive and grim” problem.
“The top priority is now to prevent any provocative acts,” Hua told reporters.
But Hua rejected the theory – advanced, among others, by Trump and Theresa May, the British prime minister – that Beijing held the key to thwarting Kim Jong-un’s nuclear and missile ambitious.
“China is not the focus. China is not the driving force behind the escalating situation. And China is not the key to resolving the issue,” Hua said.
Hua said China had already made “great sacrifices” and “paid a high price” in its bid to help rein in Pyongyang: “China’s willingness and its efforts to fulfill its relevant international responsibilities cannot be questioned.”
In an online editorial, the Communist party-controlled Global Times newspaper said it was the US and South Korea, not China, that needed “to guide North Korea into a new strategic direction” through dialogue.
Russia to the United States: Stay in Iran Nuclear Deal https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-09-15/russia-to-the-united-states-stay-in-iran-nuclear-dealSept. 15, 2017UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Moscow’s message to the United States during a likely meeting of the parties to the Iran nuclear deal next week on the sidelines to the United Nations General Assembly was to stay in the deal.
“That is not only our message, but the rest of the participants and those that are outside are trying to send this message across,” Nebenzia told reporters on Friday.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Reuters 13th Sept 2017, EDF, the French utility that runs Britain’s nuclear reactors, said on
Wednesday power plants could suffer extended outages if a new safeguard
regime and other measures were not in place when Britain exits the European
Union in 2019.
The regulation chief for EDF’s British unit, EDF Energy,
also said construction of Hinkley Point C – the first nuclear plant to be
built in Britain for more than 20 years – would be delayed unless Britain
had a new regulatory regime to replace the EU‘s.
Angela Hepworth was speaking at a parliamentary hearing on the impact of Brexit on Britain’s
energy security. Her comments illustrate the challenges faced by London as
it attempts to disentangle itself from decades of EU regulations, treaties
and institutions. In the nuclear industry, the race is on for the
government to replicate strict oversight of the industry and strike deals
with other countries or concoct a transition agreement, in time for
Britain’s withdrawal from the union in March 2019. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-nuclear/uk-nuclear-operator-warns-of-plant-outages-if-brexit-mismanaged-idUKKCN1BO212
Japan won’t accept North Korea as nuclear power, Abe says, Nikkei Asian Review, 14 Sept
Prime minister vows to fortify defense, but rejects pursuit of strike capability, TOKYO — As North Korea rapidly develops its nuclear weapons capability and China grows as the top economic and military power in the region, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear program and to strengthen Japan’s defense capabilities in an interview with The Nikkei and the Nikkei Asian Review……..
“The international community must put pressure on North Korea until it commits to give up the nuclear weapons program. There is little point pursuing dialogue for the sake of dialogue. It has to be aimed at changing North Korea’s policies. We welcome that a new sanctions resolution was passed by the U.N. Security Council at such a speed and in a unanimous vote with support from both China and Russia…..”
In a joint statement, the experts said the 2015 agreement, negotiated by the Obama administration and the governments of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, was a “net plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.”
Because of the monitoring powers contained in the agreement, they said, Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons had been sharply reduced. They also said the agreement made it “very likely that any possible future effort by Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, even a clandestine program, would be detected promptly.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly assailed the agreement — a signature achievement of his predecessor — describing it as ”a terrible deal” and a giveaway to Iran.
He also has said that he believes Iran is violating the accord, an assertion that has been contradicted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear monitor that polices Iran’s compliance. The accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, severely limited Iran’s nuclear activities in return for ending or easing many sanctions that were hurting the Iranian economy.
Under an American law, Mr. Trump must recertify every 90 days that Iran is complying with the nuclear accord, or the American sanctions that were lifted could be reinstated. The next 90-day deadline is in mid-October.
When he reluctantly signed the last recertification in July, Mr. Trump said “if it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago.”
The possibility that Mr. Trump may find a reason to declare Iran noncompliant, regardless of the merits, alarmed the nonproliferation experts.
They warned in their statement that “unilateral action by the United States, especially on the basis of unsupported contentions of Iranian cheating, would isolate the United States.”
Last week, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, suggested in a Washington speech that the president would be justified in decertifying Iran even if it was technically honoring the accord.
Iranian officials have said that any resumption of the nuclear-related sanctions by the United States would violate the accord.
Whether that would lead to its unraveling is unclear, but President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has suggested the country could quickly restore the nuclear-fuel enrichment capabilities that had been limited by the agreement.
The signers of the statement urging Mr. Trump to respect the agreement are experts in nuclear nonproliferation diplomacy from around the world.
They included Nobuyasu Abe, commissioner of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission; Hans Blix, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Thomas E. Shea, a former safeguards official at the International Atomic Energy Agency; and Thomas M. Countryman, a former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.
The statement was organized by the Arms Control Association, a disarmament advocacy group based in Washington.
The Trump administration’s concerns with Iran have come as the United Nations Security Council, prodded by the United States, has ratcheted up pressure on North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile testing and resume disarmament talks.
Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, expressed worry that if the administration abandoned the Iran agreement, any possibility of inducing North Korea to negotiate would be lost.
“Given that we are already struggling to contain the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis, it would be extremely unwise for the president to initiate steps that could unravel the highly successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which would create a second major nonproliferation crisis,” she said.
Tensions surface between UK and US over Iran nuclear deal, But Boris Johnson and Rex Tillerson unite in urging Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out against massacre of Rohingya, Guardian, Patrick Wintour, 15 Sept 17, Tensions between the US and UK over whether to tear up the Iran nuclear deal were exposed on Thursday when the secretary of state Rex Tillerson said the US viewed Iran in default of the deal’s expectations, but the British foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged the world to have faith in its potential to create a more open Iran.
North Korea Threatens Nuclear Weapon Action On Japan, U.S. For Supporting UN Sanctions”Japan is no longer needed to exist near us.” HuffPost 14/09/2017 A North Korean state agency threatened on Thursday to use nuclear weapons to “sink” Japan and reduce the United States to “ashes and darkness” for supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution and sanctions over its latest nuclear test.
Pyongyang’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, which handles the North’s external ties and propaganda, also called for the breakup of the Security Council, which it called “a tool of evil” made up of “money-bribed” countries that move at the order of the United States.
“The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the committee said in a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.
Juche is the North’s ruling ideology that mixes Marxism and an extreme form of go-it-alone nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong Un.
Regional tension has risen markedly since the reclusive North conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test on Sept. 3.
The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a U.S.-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions on Monday in response, banning North Korea’s textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies.
The North reacted to the latest action by the Security Council, which had the backing of veto-holding China and Russia, by reiterating threats to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea.
News 24 2017-09-12 Vienna – The UN atomic watchdog hit back on Monday at US criticism of the Iran nuclear deal, insisting its inspections there are the world’s toughest and that Tehran is sticking to the accord.
“The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under [the 2015 accord] are being implemented,” International Atomic Energy Agency head Yukiya Amano told reporters.
“The verification regime in Iran is the most robust regime which is currently existing. We have increased the inspection days in Iran, we have increased inspector numbers… and the number of images has increased,” he said in Vienna.
Macomd Daily 12th Sept 2017, The Canadian federal government has all but approved plans by Ontario Power
Generation to build an underground nuclear waste dump on the shores of Lake
Huron but U.S. officials are still making their objections known.
The Cold War Never Ended: Historical Roots of the Current North Korea Crisis,Portside, 12 Sept 17The current conflict is one of the many unintended consequences of the continuing Cold War and the arbitrary division of the Korean peninsula that has lasted to this day. In a military confrontation with the United States, North Korea faces a terrible choice between using its weapons first or losing them in a conventional war against a far superior power.Suzy Kim, American Historical Association
With tensions at an all-time high between the United States and North Korea, theNew York Times headlined its recent digital newsletter with Lies Your High School History Teacher Told You About Nukes. The basic point was to debunk the theory of “mutually assured destruction” that is often used to explain why the Cold War remained cold and did not result in a nuclear holocaust. The article argues that despite possessing a nuclear arsenal that guaranteed “mutually assured destruction,” both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a costly arms race that attempted to outmaneuver the other with more numerous and powerful warheads, delivered with more precise and faster missiles. This happened not because they wanted to engage in actual nuclear warfare, but because of the threatthat the other could “escape” mutually assured destruction, fight back, and win. This justified pursuing weaponry that could, in theory, take out the other side before it could retaliate. The Soviet Union was so terrified of this prospect that it spent enormous resources to retain at least the power to deliver a second strike, ultimately at the cost to its own ailing economy.
This is precisely what North Korea is doing now, but from a much weaker position, which only increases the risk of war. In a military confrontation with the United States, North Korea faces a terrible choice between using its weapons first or losing them in a conventional war against a far superior power. …….
British social historian E.P. Thompson pointedly asked whose needs the Cold War served and whether it was necessary. In a lecture delivered in 1981, Thompson asked us to think “beyond the Cold War” to a world where peace and freedom made common cause. Peace activists during the Cold War were lumped together with the Soviet “peace offensive” and branded naïve at best or dupes at worst, replicated today against those who seek engagement and peace with North Korea. Blaming appeasement and failure of diplomacy to stop Hitler and World War II while forgetting that World War I was the result of increased militarization and lack of diplomacy, the goal of peace was equated with appeasement and forsaken in the name of protecting freedom and “our way of life.”
Thompson concluded that the Cold War was an “addiction,” “a habit supported by very powerful material interests in each bloc,” from the military-industrial complex to intelligence and national security agencies, and the politicians they serve. This is no less true here in the United States as it is in North Korea today, where the American threat has been used to justify draconian measures since the Korean War.
North Korea’s threat of turning the United States into a “sea of fire,” while rhetorically inflammatory and unproductive, is based on its historical experience of the Korean War, during which the United States engaged in a literal scorched earth campaign of incendiary bombing that exhausted all targets. Despite American introduction of nuclear weapons into South Korea in 1958 in violation of the 1953 Armistice Agreement, North Korea began developing its own nuclear weapons in earnest only in the 1990s when it could no longer rely on the Soviet nuclear umbrella.
This illogical notion is enshrined in Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which rewards signatories who do not yet have nuclear weapons with the “inalienable right” to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”
Now comes the international low-enriched uranium bank, which opened on August 29 in Kazakhstan, to expedite this right. It further reinforces the Article IV doctrine— that the spread of nuclear power will diminish the capability and the desire to manufacture nuclear weapons.
The uranium bank will purchase and store low-enriched uranium, fuel for civilian reactors, ostensibly guaranteeing a ready supply in case of market disruptions. But it is also positioned as a response to the Iran conundrum, a country whose uranium enrichment program cast suspicion over whether its real agenda was to continue enriching its uranium supply to weapons-grade level.
The bank will be run by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose remit is “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy.” Evidently the IAEA has been quite successful in this promotional endeavor since the agency boasts that “dozens of countries today are interested in pursuing nuclear energy.”
A caveat here, borne out by the evidence of nuclear energy’s declining global share of the electricity market, is that far more countries are “interested” than are actually pursuing nuclear energy. The IAEA numbers are more aspiration than reality.
Superficially at least, the bank idea sounds sensible enough. There will be no need to worry that countries considering a nuclear power program might secretly shift to nuclear weapons production. In addition to a proliferation barrier, the bank will serve as a huge cost savings, sparing countries the expense of investing in their own uranium enrichment facilities.
The problem with this premise is that, rather than make the planet safer, it actually adds to the risks we already face. News reports pointed to the bank’s advantages for developing countries. But developing nations would be much better off implementing cheaper, safer renewable energy, far more suited to countries that lack major infrastructure and widespread electrical grid penetration.
Instead, the IAEA will use its uranium bank to provide a financial incentive to poorer countries in good standing with the agency to choose nuclear energy over renewables. For developing countries already struggling with poverty and the effects of climate change, this creates the added risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident, the financial burden of building nuclear power plants in the first place, and of course an unsolved radioactive waste problem.
No country needs nuclear energy. Renewable energy is soaring worldwide, is far cheaper than nuclear, and obviously a whole lot safer. No country has to worry about another’s potential misuse of the sun or wind as a deadly weapon. There is no solar non-proliferation treaty. We should be talking countries out of developing dangerous and expensive nuclear energy, not paving the way for them.
There is zero logic for a country like Saudi Arabia, also mentioned during the uranium bank’s unveiling, to choose nuclear over solar or wind energy. As Senator Markey (D-MA) once unforgettably pointed out: “Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of solar.” But the uranium bank could be just the carrot that sunny country needs to abandon renewables in favor of uranium.
This is precisely the problem with the NPT Article IV. Why “reward” non-nuclear weapons countries with dangerous nuclear energy? If they really need electricity, and the UN wants to be helpful, why not support a major investment in renewables? It all goes back to the Bomb, of course, and the Gordian knot of nuclear power and nuclear weapons that the uranium bank just pulled even tighter.
Will the uranium bank be too big to fail? Or will it even be big at all? With nuclear energy in steep decline worldwide, unable to compete with renewables and natural gas; and with major nuclear corporations, including Areva and Westinghouse, going bankrupt, will there even be enough customers?
Clothed in wooly non-proliferation rhetoric, the uranium bank is nothing more than a lupine marketing enterprise to support a struggling nuclear industry desperate to remain relevant as more and more plants close and new construction plans are canceled. The IAEA and its uranium bank just made its prospects a whole lot brighter and a safer future for our planet a whole lot dimmer.
“To date, we have had wars which have been initiated after a well thought-out decision,” Guterres said in an interview published by the French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“But we also know that other conflicts have started through an escalation caused by sleepwalking.
“We have to hope that the seriousness of this threat puts us on the path of reason before it is too late,” said Guterres, according to the French language account of the interview.
“It’s the most serious (crisis) that we have had to face in years,” he said, admitting he was “very worried”.
Guterres said the key question was to get North Korea to stop its nuclear and ballistic missile programme and respect UN Security Council resolutions.
“But we must also maintain the unity of the Security Council at all costs, because it is the only tool which can carry out a diplomatic initiative with a chance of success,” he said.
The United States wants the Security Council to vote on Monday to impose tougher sanctions against Pyongyang, despite resistance from China and Russia.
A US-presented draft resolution calls for an oil embargo on North Korea, an assets freeze on Kim, a ban on textiles and an end to payments of North Korean guest workers.
